Talk:Tet Offensive/Archive 1

message: No one knows what PLAF means, and in any case it's a double-redirect. Viet Cong, yes. J. Parker Stone 00:10, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

message: I added LOTS to the article, but I think it's suffering from wandering off-topic.  Help?  Kaisershatner 17:52, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The topic isn't wandering, its all cogent.  Well written, well done.  You might want to bring the external HTML links up to the wikipedia standards of typography (which I forget, its available through links off the Editing Help pages).  Well done.  Fifelfoo 04:12, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Recent Edits

message: The first sentence seems to be contradicted by the second sentence in the following quote.  "The Tết Offensive resulted in a crushing operational defeat for the North Vietnamese, crippling the Viet Cong. The Tết Offensive is widely considered a turning point of the war in Vietnam, in which the NLF and PAVN won an enormous psychological and propaganda victory leading to the loss of popular support for the War in the United States and the eventual withdrawal of American troops." One sentence gives the reader the impression the Tet Offensive was a failure and then gives the impression it was a success in the second sentence.
You're quite correct. I've edited that paragraph to make it clearer. In fact, this contradiction is the fascinating thing about Tet. It was a crushing military defeat for the North, but also a huge psychological victory. KarlBunker 18:45, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Contradiction?

message: This article needs to be edited for NPOV; the reader comes away feeling that the author of this article believes that the United States was winning the Vietnam War and made a mistake in leaving.  This may be the belief, after the fact, of certain military analysts, but it is certainly not a consensus position.
"Few military authorities would any longer dispute that the vaunted Tet Offensive of 1968 was a significant military defeat for the North Vietnamese, or that well into the early '70s the military balance on the ground had shifted in favor of the Americans and South Vietnamese."  Peter R. Kann, former Vietnam war correspondant for the Wall Street Journal, in the WSJ 9/8/2005 p. A18.  Kaisershatner 17:43, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll follow that up.  Read the Vietnamese accounts of the operational and strategic function of Tet, they are highly critical of the assumptions and decisions which led to Tet occuring, as Tet was a great disadvantage.  Whether the RVN or the US were winning the war during this period... well, I'd say they weren't, they didn't have a conception of how the war could be won.  Nor did they ever really approach such a conception. Fifelfoo 22:49, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV

message: Terrific. Just a note to thank the poster for revealing the true story behind the infamous 'Adams Photo'. I just realized I spent the last 30 years believing the photo depicted the casual, summary execution of a suspected Viet Cong, carried out on the whim of a moment by a brutal thugghish ARVN General.  Which, I suspect, was the impression I was supposed to get, at least according to the books and documentaries I saw where that photo and news footage was played.  Not one of those books or documentaries pointed out the fact that the guy getting the bullet through his head was not only a Viet Cong, he was the leader of an assasination squad that had just murdered over 30 civilians.  I am now determined to research this further and see what other facts have been convieniently left out when it comes to other well know events about this particular war.  Manofaiki 08:37, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: WTF? The guy is clearly handcuffed, and not trying to escape or attack anyone. The General's actions were clearly murder, and unprofessional at best. If your accusations are true, the VC should have been handed to a court to be tried, not murdered by some drunken fool(Which is what R.F. McNamera called the general in the documentary The_Fog_of_War). And the pages on Nguyen_Ngoc_Loan and Nguyen_Van_Lem are inconsistent, as to whether the VC had in fact executed many people or not. Identity0 13:13, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

text: What the General did was perfectly legal. As Burkett says in his book Stolen Valour: 
"The shooting occured during the 1968 Tet Offensive. Thousands of Viet Cong cadre in civilain clothes had infiltrated the city of Saigon and the surrounding area.  A Viet Cong Leiutenant had executed a South Vietnamese police major and his entire family.  When he was captured by Loan's military troops, who policed Saigon, Loan used the VC's own gun to kill him.  The shocking image drew condemnation of Loan and America from around the world.  LOOK WHAT THE LEADERS OF THE AMERICAN ALLIES IN SOUTH VIETNAM DO FOR FUN.  
Adams later expressed regret that his photograph had been used to discredit both General Loan and America's participation in the Vietnam War. The city was under martial law. Loan, as the head of the Saigon police, was within his authority to order the execution of an enemy soldier in civilian clothes who had murdered a family.......
But similar executions have occured in other American wars.  During the Battle of the Bulge, a special hand-picked unit of English-speaking German soldiers was outfitted in American uniforms and inserted into the midst of American units still reeling from the ferocity of the German attack.  The German mission was to sow confusion and disorganization, changing road signs and giving improper instructions to American columns of vehicles.  They partially acheived their objective; the Americans did not know whom to trust.  Ultimately almost all of the German sabotuers were captured or killed.  General Eisenhower almost immediatley issued orders to have the dozen or so prisoners executed without the benefit of a trial.  On Christmas Eve, the Germans were blindfolded, trussed up to poles, and shot by firing squads.  General Eisenhower was completely within his authority to order the executions. So was Genreral Loan. The difference in the two situations  was the treatment by the press and the fact that Loan did not order someone else to perform the execution." 
When you are in a war zone, and you are fighting for one side, BUT you are not in uniform, or even worse, you are wearing the WRONG uniform, you are not a lawful combatant and no Geneva rules of warefare apply to you. You can't even be classified as a POW if they should decided to hold you since you aren't a recognized soldier under any flag.  For this reason, when General Loan and his militia are busy fighting HUNDREDS of VC who are dressed in civilian clothes all over their city and they catch one committing atrocities against civilians, he doesn't even qualify for POW status.  In many wars, just being caught out of uniform would get you summarily shot; now factor in targeting civilians while out of uniform.  24.240.220.115
This notion that context allows for summary execution is incorrect. The Geneva Conventions spell out the terms under which designated a combatant, whether regular or guerilla, can be dealt. The man Loan shot was neither operating under a false flag (wearing an ARVN uniform) nor was he an outside agitator (he was Vietnamese). The only way that your implicit argument that Convention Three, Article Four (regarding a fixed symbol) should obtain is if this conflict were considered "international". I reject that notion since the War primarily was an intranational conflict (a civil war) in which the United States, and some of its SEATO allies, intervened.   Therefore, Geneva Convention Three, Article Three, obtains in this instance. I won't even get into how the 1954 Geneva Conventions were ignored by the US and the RVN in the run-up to this conflict.
Furthermore, although some governments such as the current Bush Administration likes to claim that the unwritten law regarding particular "unlawful combatants" allows for license to do with them what one will, the lack of an international regulation regarding "grey area cases" does not mean that, as a result, individuals have license to act as they please. Loan's act, though arguably practical, was neither legal nor moral. Social theorist 23:04, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adams Photograph's True Story 

message: I'm about to add the "cleanup" tag to the article. There is no introduction paragraph; the article just dives into background material, using acronyms like NLF and PLAF without a wikilink or definition. I expect there are other elements of the article that could use attention; I found and fixed a couple of small ones in a quick skim. KarlBunker 01:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hm, I see now that the absence of an introduction I was complaining about above was just the handiwork of some industrious vandal. I tried to check for that possibility before I added the cleanup tag, but I missed it. The article could still use some improvement of course, but I don't see any glaring deficiency, so I'm going to remove the cleanup tag. KarlBunker 19:18, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  cleanup tag added 

message: Why is the main photo of USMC Captain Franklin P. Eller? He wasn't on the offensive, he was on the defensive. the main photo of this article should be of the vietcong. Kingturtle 05:47, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV photo