Word: giap
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...Giap's precise intention in launching the general offensive remains to be learned. As always in Communist military doctrine, Giap doubtless considered the political effect at least as important as the outcome on the battlefield. "Guerrilla activities and large-scale combat coordinate with each other, help each other and encourage each other to develop," Giap said in a speech last September. "At the same time, they closely coordinate with the political struggle to score great victories in both military and political fields, thus leading the resistance toward final victory...
...convinced that Khe Sanh cannot only be held, but that Giap will suffer crushing losses in manpower if he tries to take it. Giap's alternatives to a direct attack are either to pull back and miss his chance or to sit in the hills with his mortars and artillery and try to bleed Khe Sanh to death in daily barrages. At week's end Khe Sanh took minor shelling while the two sides waited and carefully watched each other. The U.S., slightly apprehensive, was ready for an attack?and even hopeful that Giap would strike. As for Giap...
...Impression of Stalemate. There was no doubt about who was the strategist behind the Communists' desperate thrust: North Viet Nam's Defense Minister General Vo Nguyen Giap, the charismatic victor over the French at Dienbienphu in 1954 and creator of the North Vietnamese army. In its surprise, its boldness, the sweep of its planning and its split-second orchestration, the general offensive bore all the unmistakable marks of Giap's genius. All the evidence indicated, in fact, that probably for the first time since the war against the French, Giap was personally directing the entire campaign in South Viet...
...Some of Giap's political aims were evident: to embarrass the U.S. and undercut the authority of the South Vietnamese government, to frighten urban South Vietnamese and undermine pacification in the countryside, to give the impression to the U.S. public that the war is in a stalemate. Some U.S. officials also see the offensive as a prelude to North Viet Nam's coming to the conference table, aimed at enhancing Hanoi's hand in negotiations...
...both General Westmoreland and President Johnson interpreted Giap's attacks primarily in hard military terms: as a specific effort to draw U.S. troops away from the U.S. Marine base of Khe Sanh, where Giap has assembled some 40,000 men for what could be the largest single battle of the entire war. Not all of Westmoreland's and Johnson's subordinates agree. The dissenters suspect Giap of intending just the opposite?of having created the threat to Khe Sanh as a diversion designed to draw U.S. forces away from cities and towns and thus give him a foothold...