 Planning in Hanoi for a winter @-@ spring offensive during 1968 had begun in early 1967 and continued until early the following year . According to American sources , there has been an extreme reluctance among Vietnamese historians to discuss the decision @-@ making process that led to the General Offensive General Uprising , even decades after the event . In official Vietnamese literature , the decision to launch the Tet Offensive was usually presented as the result of a perceived U.S. failure to win the war quickly , the failure of the American bombing campaign against North Vietnam , and the anti @-@ war sentiment that pervaded the population of the U.S. The decision to launch the general offensive , however , was much more complicated . 
