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For each good sign, there can still be found another, less hopeful indicator. The imponderables that have always bedeviled the U.S. in Viet Nam are still imponderables. As a result, every assessment of the war is self-contradictory. Still, after more than seven years of coping with Communist guerrillas, with the Oriental maze of Saigon politics, and with an endless pacification effort, the U.S. has finally reached at least some firm ground. That is not to say that the war is about to be won. No one, in fact, even talks about "winning" it any longer. "Winning," of course, has always had a special meaning in Viet Nam: not outright conquest of North Viet Nam, but merely wearing the Communist armies down until they could no longer wage any effective resistance. From its top commanders on down, the U.S. is firmly convinced that even this kind of military victory—given the current level of U.S. troop investment and any reasonable time limit—is unattainable. But things are perhaps going somewhat better for the allied cause than ever before—or than most outsiders realize.
Progress on the battlefield can be properly understood only in the context of last year's Tet offensive, when the Communists unleashed some 200,000 assault troops against major cities and towns across South Viet Nam. Like most periods of genuine trauma, Tet produced effects that lasted long after the healing process had begun. Within two months, Lyndon Johnson ordered a partial bombing halt, opened the way to peace talks and promised not to campaign for his own reelection. Shortly thereafter, he appointed General Creighton Abrams the new commander in chief in Viet Nam and began to give top priority to making the ARVN an armed force of self-sufficiency. The U.S. was clearly looking harder than ever before for an honorable end to the war, and Saigon finally realized, as Ellsworth Bunker puts it, "that the American commitment was not open-ended." The galvanism of Tet, in short, was to destroy many U.S. illusions, put limits on the U.S. commitment, and necessarily hasten South Viet Nam's plans for going on its own.
For the Communists, Tet had proved expensive. During a few weeks of heavy fighting, they lost some 36,000 troops killed—about one-sixth of their entire forces. But they had also won a clear-cut psychological victory, demonstrating their ability to attack almost anywhere in Viet Nam at will and shattering all the optimistic assessments of war in the minds of the U.S. public. Moved by both pain and pride, Communist leaders had to decide whether to follow up the strike or retrench. They chose to remain on the offensive—at first in a continued effort to take the beleaguered Marine outpost at Khe Sanh, and later in two further general offensives against towns and cities. Beginning in September, Communist troops retreated in large numbers to their sanctuaries deep in jungle areas. Their motivation is still a matter of some guesswork. September and October were a period of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations leading to the full bombing halt "agreement" of October 31, and the Communists may have withdrawn as their concession in the Paris bargaining.
Abrams' New Tactics