美国国家公共电台 NPR Military Victory But Political Defeat: The Tet Offensive 50 Years Later

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

All this year, we are looking at the events of 1968 that continue to shape our world today. It was 50 years ago this week when thousands of North Vietnamese troops and their Viet Cong allies launched an audacious attack sweeping¹ into cities throughout South Vietnam, even slipping through the gates of the American embassy in Saigon. This was a stealthy, coordinated² attack that became known as the Tet Offensive. NPR's Tom Bowman reports that the offensive solidified³ American opposition⁴ to the Vietnam War and began the slow erosion of trust that Americans have in their government leaders.

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HOWARD PRINCE: What I saw was probably the most intense ground fighting of...

MIKE DOWNS: We didn't know exactly where the enemy was and which direction he...

JIM COOLICAN: We were under fire - under heavy fire.

TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE⁵: Howard Prince and Mike Downs and Jim Coolican were all young American officers caught up in the fight of their lives. They were in the city of Hue⁶, the old imperial capital north of Saigon. It was the bloodiest⁷ battle of the Tet Offensive and also the entire war. And it all took American officials completely by surprise, says author Mark Bowden.

MARK BOWDEN: You had the incredibly rose-colored reports coming from General William Westmoreland - who was the American commander in Vietnam - assuring the American people that the end was near, that the enemy was really only capable of small kind of ambushes⁹ in the far reaches of the country.

BOWMAN: But then came Tet. Enemy troops breached¹⁰ the U.S. embassy grounds in Saigon.

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UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Viet Cong snipers and suicide commandos were holed up inside the embassy compound.

BOWMAN: Back in Washington, Lyndon Johnson called his defense¹¹ secretary, Robert McNamara, and asked for an explanation.

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LYNDON JOHNSON: What was your evaluation¹²?

ROBERT MCNAMARA: I think it shows two things, Mr. President - first, that they have more power than some credit them with. I don't think it's a last gasp¹³ action. They will remain a substantial force.

BOWMAN: A substantial force. But just six weeks earlier, a top White House official told New York Times reporter Gene⁸ Roberts the war was already over. Roberts was heading off to Vietnam, so National Security Adviser¹⁴ Walt Rostow gave him a tip. It was a new U.S. agricultural program Roberts recall being told.

GENE ROBERTS: Which would double the rice yields in Vietnam and would win the peace now that Americans had won the war.

BOWMAN: Far from winning, the Americans were barely holding on to Hue. Gene Roberts saw terrified refugees, wounded Marines and heavy gunfire. His first story said the Marines controlled just two blocks. Reinforcements were needed, not just troops but artillery¹⁶. That was slow in coming. Jim Coolican, the Marine¹⁵ captain, said his own military superiors didn't understand how desperate they were. The Americans were badly outnumbered.

COOLICAN: And the reaction we've got - and I'm paraphrasing¹⁷ now - but the reaction we got was that we were overreacting. This isn't that bad.

BOWMAN: More reporters showed up at Hue, including some from NBC. The pictures showed a terrifying scene.

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UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: What's the hardest part of it?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Not knowing where they are. That's the worst thing. Riding around, they're running in sewers¹⁸, in the gutters¹⁹ - anywhere, could be anywhere - just hope you stay alive from day to day.

BOWMAN: Still, General Westmoreland downplayed the situation, telling reporters the real enemy objective was a large and remote Marine base at Khe Sanh.

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WILLIAM WESTMORELAND: In my opinion, this is diversionary to his main effort, which he had planned to take place in Quang Tri Province from Laos toward Khe Sanh and across the demilitarized zone.

BOWMAN: But Howard Prince, the young Army officer fighting at Hue, said Westmoreland headed backwards²⁰. Khe Sanh was the diversion.

PRINCE: Westmoreland and his staff, the people who were advising him, became fixated on Khe Sanh to the point where they simply were not capable of entertaining other information.

BOWMAN: Others were willing to entertain the importance of the Tet Offensive. Among them was Walter Cronkite, the CBS anchor who arrived in Hue and quickly realized he'd been deceived by his official sources back in Washington. What Cronkite saw on the ground led him to say it was time for the U.S. to end the war.

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WALTER CRONKITE: The only rational way out then will be to negotiate not as victims but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.

BOWMAN: Johnson is said to have told an aide - if I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America. And maybe more than that. Bowden says Tet spurred not just a lack of trust about Vietnam policy but a more general disregard for government officials that continues to this day.

BOWDEN: On the heels of Hue, on the heels of Tet then came the Pentagon Papers, came the Watergate break-in - you know, a series of kind of catastrophic events in terms of the public's perception of its own leaders.

BOWMAN: A month after the Tet Offensive, Johnson went on TV and said he would press for peace, stop the bombing in North Vietnam. Then he dropped his own bombshell.

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JOHNSON: I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination²¹ of my party for another term as your president.

BOWMAN: Howard Prince watched it from his hospital bed in Texas recovering from wounds he suffered at Hue.

PRINCE: I was ready to throw a bedpan at the television set because, to me, what that was was an admission of defeat and the denial of the sacrifice that all those young men have made and that I had made.

BOWMAN: The Tet Offensive was an American military victory, says Prince. And Johnson should've taken the fight to North Vietnam, gone after the enemy safe havens²² in Laos and Cambodia.

PRINCE: We're doing the same thing today with the Taliban in Afghanistan. We're allowing you to run over into the borderlands in Pakistan and do the same thing.

BOWMAN: Bowden agrees that even today there are military parallels to what he wrote in his recent book, "Hue 1968."

BOWDEN: We often find ourselves mired²³ in situations where we don't have the cultural understanding. We don't have the historical understanding. We can't gain the support of the people, whether it's in Iraq or Afghanistan. And it stems from a kind of an arrogance²⁴ and a general ignorance.

BOWMAN: For his part, Mark Downs, another young Marine officer, will only say he and his men did their best. This week, Downs will remember those from Fox Company who were killed or wounded.

DOWNS: The killed were - I think, he was a PFC, Stanley Murdock, D.I. Collins, a corpsman by the name of Gooslin (ph). Doc Gooslin had been in the Army...

BOWMAN: Their names are carefully written in a small notebook he carried during those days a half century ago. Tom Bowman, NPR News, Washington.

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