The Tet Offensive In The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a war between North and South Vietnam, and was in response to the Cold War. The United States entered the war after the Gulf Tonkin attack. The U.S. would fail to accomplish their goal of stopping the spread of communism to Vietnam. The United States also sent many troops overseas to fight and lost public support.

The U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War began with the Gulf of Tonkin attack. The Maddox destroyer reported torpedo fire from Vietnamese boats in Gulf of Tonkin on August 7, 1964. They then reported fire again two days later, but these reports were later speculated to be false. These attacks, however, gave the President Lyndon Johnson a reason to charge North Vietnam with “open aggression on the high seas.” Congress

approved Johnson’s request to take precautions against any further attack by entering the war. The war was not widely supported, and it was thought that Johnson deceived Congress into expanding the war by lying about the torpedo fire. The United States was now in the war.
The United States and the Soviet Union, at this time, were in the Cold War. The Cold War was a period of tension between the two countries over the type of government that was best. The Soviet Union was in favor of communism, and the United States was in favor of democracy. In Vietnam, the country was split into North and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was communist, and South Vietnam was against communism. The United States was so afraid of communism that they wanted to get involved and help fight it, so the United States stepped in and helped South Vietnam.
In response to the Maddox attacks, Johnson authorized air bombing in North Vietnam.

The Vietnam War was a way for the United States and the Soviet Union to go to war with each other indirectly in order to prevent nuclear war. The United States actually fought in the Vietnam war, but the Soviet Union did not. They provided funds and weapons to North Vietnam. The U.S. troops in Vietnam went from 900 to 11,000 from 1960 to 1962, and as the number of Viet Cong troops increased, so did the number of U.S. troops. The Tet Offensive was a series of attacks against South Vietnam. On the day of the Vietnamese new year, North Vietnam attacked 36 major towns and cities in South Vietnam. There were tremendous losses on both sides. This attack showed either faction that the war would not end easily. After this attack, the United States started pulling troops out of Vietnam. In early 1973, there was a ceasefire arranged after peace talks. On March 29, 1973, all of the U.S. troops had been evacuated from Vietnam. A few months after the ceasefire had been declared, fighting between North and South Vietnam started again. Two years later, The Northern Vietnamese invaded Saigon and the South Vietnamese surrendered, and Vietnam was then a communist

country.
The absent narrative is that there were people that did not agree with the war and people that protested it. There were more and more protests every time there were more troops being sent to Vietnam. The American people did not see the point of going to war. After the Tet Offensive U.S. public opinion against the war hit the ultimate low, and then troops started to be taken out. On May 4, 1970, there was a protest at Kent State University, and the National Guard fired into the crowd, killing four students, and there were another nine that were wounded. This incident caused hundreds of other protests across the nation for the entire month of May.
The Vietnam War was entered by the U.S. on a speculated lie, and thousands of people lost their lives as a result. The war was to combat communism, but it ultimately failed. The public did not approve of the war, and people lost their lives protesting. “No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now,” Richard Nixon.