This Time We Win: A word from James Robbins
27th September 2010
The 1968 Tet Offensive is remembered as a surprise attack by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces on symbolic targets in South Vietnam that turned American public opinion against the war and drove President Lyndon Johnson to the bargaining table. It is heralded as the turning point in the Vietnam War that ultimately led to the American withdrawal and victory of the communist forces.
For over forty years the myth of Tet has inspired America’s adversaries as a model for achieving low-cost strategic victories, and has provided American commentators with a shorthand means of conjuring the specter of inevitable U.S. defeat. Whenever terrorists or insurgents lash out in dramatic fashion, regardless of how swiftly they are crushed, the Tet analogy is sure to follow. Whether it was the fighting in Fallujah, scattered Taliban attacks in Kabul, or Wikileaks’ publication of 91,000 classified documents on the Afghan War, the American pundits’ Tet reflex hands the enemy a roadmap to a low-cost route to victory.
Tet provides a ready story line to journalists and terrorists alike; but the problem is that it is not true.
September 27th, 2010 at 11:29
A retired Army colonel loaned me Sheehan’s “A Bright and Shining Lie”. He was a young lieutenant during the ‘advisor’ days of the war (under John Paul Vann) and served several tours during it. It was especially interesting reading his copy because in many places he annotated it. A long and detailed – and terrific – account of what happens when idiots who don’t understand their enemies, their allies, or their own troops are allowed to run a war. McNamara was sure that he was much smarter than anyone actually dealing with the Vietnamese. (Why does that sound familiar?)
The LSM seems hell-bent on tying the current military conflict to the Vietnam war. They will eventually use it to excuse Obama’s wasted presidency. (e.g., “..He would have be magnificent if the spectre of Afghanistan hadn’t dragged down the economy…”) What they should be focused on is how the Obama Administration is creating the same situation by dealing with the people involved as if they could just change roles by altering the words in the movie script. They see the world as they think it should be, instead of the the way it is. Count them among the folks who thought the movie, “Avatar” was ‘real’.