Warning: Possible thread hijacking post.
That is an interesting, albeit erroneous, take on history.
Someone obviously forgot to tell the Vietcong operating against the 1st Australian Task Force in Phuoc Tuy Province that the insurgency was over after the Tet Offensive. The province was not really 'pacified' (such as it was) until the early '70s, and that was not for the want of trying. The casualty statistics for both sides speak for themselves. As for NVA action - the defeat of an NVA Regiment at the Battle of Long Tan a few years earlier would appear to have curbed their enthusiasm for 'conventional' operations in the Province. The records available here in Australia (particularly from the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam [AATTV] which operated over the entire country) suggest that the insurgency remained equally as virulent in other provinces, long after Tet .
I would also note that there were quite a few years (including the period of American withdrawal) between Tet and the North's adoption of 'conventional' mech warfare to defeat the south. It is both glib and inaccurate to present Tet and the later defeat of the south as a natural, linear progression.
I suspect that part of the problem for US forces in Vietnam was the fiction that the insurgency was over post Tet, thus justifying the 'real' war that many US Commanders really were actually inclined and mentally equipped to fight.
My concluding point. Lets be very careful about generalisations. There are more than enough of them being generated about the current war by oped columnists, polemical writers and 'expert' reporters and bloggers. Ultimately they have the effect of providing intellectual obscuration rather than insight.
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