Page 10 - The Viet-Cong Tet_Offensive_1968

string of unhappy days. Instead of the notions of independence, liberty
and happiness they were prornised in the c on stitution,N orth Vietnarn
has grown rnore and rnore dependent on Russia and China. The North
Vietnarnese people have been forced to work as slaves, and the
20,000,000 sons and daughters of the Dragon have gone frorn one pre-

dic arnent to anothe r .
Not content with only irnposing their will on those of
the North, the Hanoi authorities have tried to irnpose their inhurnan
regirne on the rernaining free Vietnarnese living below the seventeenth
parallel. And, Ioyal to their notion of peoplers war, they have consis-
tently sought the irnpLernentation of the set of strategy and tactics
that have proven effective in other such conflicts.
Frorn the sabotage of bridges and roads to rnake their
presence felt to the reduction of the people to a state of total passi-
veness through discrirninate or indiscrirninate terror, the Cornrnunists
have not refrained frorn anything, including rnost savage deeds, to
foster their objective s,
Within the frarnework of this Intr oduc tionrr , we cannot,
rr
of course, give a detailed analysis of the strategy and tactics of the
enerny and their inhurnan character. It is sirnply our intention to
ask you to read this book on their I'General Offensivert (1968) fu11y so
a6 to get an idea of their real intentions. trVe are sure you will agree
with us whether the Cornrnunists really seek a revolution in the inte-
re6t6 of the people or not.

In obvious conternpt for the sacredness of the New Year
holidays, evident disregard of their own prornises to cease fire for
seven days, and in cornplete scorn for the .lr'elfare of the citizen,the
cornrnunists suddenly launched an unprecedented large - scale off ensive
that sowed death and destruction on a scale that even the Vietnarnese
have not known after Z0 yeats of war.

But these can be said to be nothing as cornpared to what
they asked the people to do during these attacks, In Saigon, in Hue,
and in rnany other provincial cities, the Cornrnunists resorted to the
rnost incredible barbarous rnethods to force the people to rrrise uprr'
And they also proved incornparable in killing off the seeds of opposi-
tion : the people of Saigon were witness to the rnurder of hundreds of
farnilies and the people of Hue rnade to see the burial of thousands of
per6ona still alive.

-I0-