ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explores Tet as a symbolic event, to describe varying interpretations of its military and political impact upon the Vietnam War, and to suggest its legacy for United States Government policy and practice with regard to armed intervention in the Third World. The Tet offensive was a decisive moment in the American involvement in the Vietnam War. For Noam Chomsky Tet is invoked, not for the event itself, but as a disclosure of American reliance on unrestrained violence in the aftermath of the surprise attack upon United State positions. The Battle of Algiers is an obvious one, as it shared with Tet the sense of the diehards, that the French political leadership misunderstood their own success. As well, during Tet the South Vietnamese military units generally fought well, better than expected, and the civilian population revealed no disposition to rise up and welcome the attackers as liberators.
