The season of reruns
Austin Bay predicts a 40th anniversary rerun of the Tet Offensive in Iraq next year:
Reflecting on Tet in a 1989 interview with CBS News’ Morley Safer, NVA commander General Vo Nguyen Giap said: “The war was fought on many fronts. At that time the most important one was American public opinion.” He added: “Military power is not the decisive factor in war. Human beings! Human beings are the decisive factor.” (See Howard Langer’s “The Vietnam War: An Encyclopedia of Quotations.”)
Giap knew attacking U.S. public opinion was a classic anti-U.S. ploy. In 1864, politically shattering Abraham Lincoln was a key Confederate goal. The Confederates launched limited offensives (Early’s attack on Washington) and bitterly resisted Union attacks, particularly in Virginia where Ulysses S. Grant’s limited success was achieved at an enormous cost in casualties. The Confederates’ political message: “We remain militarily powerful. The Abolitionist Party will never defeat us. Lincoln is a mad man, a dictator, a gangling fool from hinterland Illinois whose war aims are delusional.” That message dovetailed (pun intended) with the campaign message of Copperhead Democrats like Ohio’s Clement Vallandigham. (The Copperheads were the “peace wing” of the Democratic Party.) In reality the Confederacy was an impoverished wreck split by Union armies. Its only hope was the psychological erosion of Union will.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and his ilk, arguably our era’s Vallandighams, have already declared Iraq lost. Last week Reid hedged his defeatist rhetoric. However, al Qaeda and Saddamist plotters are betting a deadly spasm of bombs and subsequent media magnification will give Reid a reason “to clip his hedge.”
Their “ultimate Iraqi Tet” would feature simultaneous terror strikes in every major Iraqi city. These simultaneous strikes would inflict hideous civilian casualties with the goal of discrediting Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s and General David Petraeus’ assessments that Iraqi internal security has improved. The terrorists would reduce Iraqi government buildings to rubble. Striking the Green Zone would be the media coup de grace, intentionally echoing North Vietnam’s assault on the U.S. embassy in Saigon. Al Qaeda terrorists would also attack Shia shrines. Kidnapping or assassinating of senior Iraqi leaders would be another objective.
We have discussed previously the Tet Offensive of 1968 and the subsequent declaration of American stalemate or defeat by Walter Cronkite of CBS News. If there is a rerun of Tet in Iraq next year, who will play the role of Cronkite in 2008?
December 28th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
It doesn’t take much to make this sort of prediction. You don’t have to be Lawrence to know that the way insurgents beat a “surge” is to lie low, rearm, recruit, plan, and watch who betrays them.
Then, when the occupiers announce victory, wham!
December 29th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Factoring in recent reports that a significant portion of AQ in Iraq has fled to Afganistan, this war’s Tet may be scheduled for Tora Bora and/or west Pakistan, where natural terrain provides better cover than an Iraqi population angered by AQ murderous tactics.
March 31st, 2008 at 11:17 pm
History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes?
Instapundit has links about the fighting with Sadr. This one, in particular, suggests that the Sadristas are losing badly–and the US media are reporting as they did in 1968.
Here and here, Wretchard discusses the Iraqi dynamics of the situation (and is unready to declare a winner and loser). The Iraqi dynamics differ fundamentally from 1968 Vietnam’s…but the bottom-line local outcome had little to do with the significance of Tet.