celticlord2112
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quote:
CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.
As undemocratic as it may sound, Cheney does have a point.
In late 1967, the United States arguably was winning the Vietnam conflict. The massive bombing campaigns of North Vietnam during 1966/67 had devastated that nation's economy, straining its ability to support military and insurgency operations in South Vietnam:
quote:
By 1966-1967, however, after the infliction of massive casualties by the allies, stalemate on the battlefield, the destruction of the northern economy by U.S. air power, there was a dawning realization that, if current trends continued, Hanoi would eventually lack the resources necessary to affect the military situation in the South. As a result, there were more strident calls by the moderates for negotiations and a revision of strategy. They felt that a return to guerrilla tactics was more appropriate since the U.S. could not be defeated conventionally. They also complained that the policy of rejecting negotiations was in error. The Americans could only be worn down in a war of wills during a period of "fighting while talking." During 1967 things had become so bad on the battlefield that Le Duan had to order Thanh to incorporate aspects of protracted guerrilla warfare into his strategy.
The North Vietnamese gambled in January 1968 on sparking a mass uprising and general overthrow of the South Vietnamese government with the Tet Offensive. Beginning on 30 January 1968, North Vietnamese forces attacked targets across South Vietnam, hoping to capitalize on the apparent unpopularity of the South Vietnamese government. By most classic measures of the military success, the Tet Offensive was a total defeat for the North Vietnamese:
quote:
The leadership in Hanoi must have been initially despondent about the outcome of their great gamble. Their first and most ambitious goal, producing a general uprising, had ended in a dismal failure. In total, approximately 85,000-100,000 NLF and PAVN troops had participated in the initial onslaught and in the follow-up phases. Overall, during the "Border Battles" of 1967 and the nine-month winter-spring campaign, 75,000-85,000 NLF and PAVN troops had been killed in action.
Media coverage of the Tet Offensive, produced a much different perception in the United States:
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The Tet Offensive created a crisis within the Johnson administration, which became increasingly unable to convince the American public that it had been a major defeat for the communists. The optimistic assessments made prior to the offensive by the administration and the Pentagon came under heavy criticism and ridicule as the "credibility gap" that had opened in 1967 widened into a chasm.
While it would be foolhardy to argue with certainty that ignoring the shift in public opinion and escalating troop levels in Vietnam ("surge" perhaps?) would have produced a dramatically different outcome and potentially success for the United States in Vietnam, the possibility cannot be discounted. While North Vietnam lost the military battle of Tet, the political/diplomatic aspects were a clear victory for North Vietnam, based upon the reaction of the American public to news footage of the offensive.
Public opinion should be used to set government policy and to guide evolutions in government policy. Public opinion is a most dangerous vehicle for crafting and executing even the broadest military strategy.
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