Battle Of Khe Sanh Essay

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The Battle of Khe Sanh was a military siege during the hottest year of the Vietnam war, 1968. General William C. Westmoreland’s decision to protect the small airstrip at Khe Sanh was met with controversy. After the siege, both the Americans and the North Vietnamese claimed victory for different reasons. Khe Sanh’s effect will eventually bring about American withdrawal of Vietnam. The Khe Sanh combat base was located in the northernmost section of South Vietnam close to the Laotian border. The Khe Sanh region had equal importance to the Northern Vietnamese. A road was constructed in 1959 to connect North and South Vietnam. The Ho Chi Minh trail was effectively used as a way to organize the transfer of weapons and other supplies to South …show more content…

Many military officials voiced their strong opinion about the battle. General Lewis W. Walt stated that Khe Sanh was the most important battle of the war. President Johnson was grateful of the American efforts to protect the combat base. “By pinning down and by decimating two North Vietnamese divisions, the few thousand Marines and their gallant South Vietnamese allies prevented those divisions from entering other major battles such as Hue and Quang Tri.” Sir Robert Thompson, a British military analyst, had a different perspective about the battle of Khe Sanh. “The search-and-destroy strategy, combined with a fixation on the infiltration routes, dispersed American forces all over the…Vietnamese map. The doors were left wide open for the Tet Offensive.” The public’s perception of Khe Sanh tended to agree with Thompson’s views about the battle. Walter Cronkite echoed this message in regards to the Vietnam War to millions of CBS viewers. “To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a

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