Viet Cong Importance

When assessing the importance of the Viet Cong (VC) in the Communist victory, one cannot look past the unity, discipline and effective organisation in the vanguard of the VC forces. The Viet Cong were made up of volunteer servicemen who traveled to South Vietnam as Autumn Cadres - ready to exploit the coming political harvest. The central purpose of the Viet Cong campaigns was to polarise the population, to divide it irrevocably from the GVN, and to mobilise it for service and sacrifice in support of the Revolution. The importance of the Viet Cong lies in their contribution to the Indochina conflict, and can be assessed through a social, political and military context.

The role of the VC in a sociopolitical context is of a significant importance in the Communist victory in the Second Indochina War. The VC forces were most numerous in rural South Vietnam, especially in Strategic Hamlet-run villages. Once the VC established a strong presence
The initial goal of Tet was to destroy the morale of the United States and GVN by proving that the communist threat did not only exist in the countryside, but in urban areas also. The VC forces attacked the US embassy in Saigon, surprising the Americans and forcing them into a conventional war. This proved costly for the Viet Cong as there were serious casualties and loss of manpower one third (38,000) of the VC fighting force were either killed or wounded. Due to the loss of numbers, the North Vietnamese had to infiltrate the ranks of the Viet Cong. Moreover, the VC lost local knowledge of the South Vietnamese terrain, which inhibited the abilities of the new forces from the North. Paradoxically, although the U.S. saw Tet as a military victory, the American home front did not. Television effectively brought the brutality of the war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America not on the battlefields of Vietnam (Marshall