Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Under this sort of analysis, the Tet Offensive was a rousing success for us.
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The Tet Offensive was indeed a rousing, staggering -- near complete military triumph for U.S. forces. It essentially shredded the indigenous-to-South-Vietnam Viet Cong forces --(which some suspect was precisely what the NVA and the North Vietnamese leadership had planned).
It was ultimately devastating to the U.S. war effort, however, because of the impact of the news coverage on the American populace and, I think, in large part because the large-scale surprise attack seemed to so flatly contradict the constant statements from the Johnson administration and the military regarding the progress of the war and the capabilities of the enemy.
The Belmont Club's analysis seems to assume that the Iraqi resistance is attempting to fight a campaign which will defeat the Coalition militarily -- instead of just causing support to erode and the U.S. to withdraw or to disengage too soon. Ty is probably noting that assumption. The U.S. war effort will succeed only if they're able to push through and essentially defeat the resistance before the administration decides to go away and/or before the vast majority of the Iraqis turn against the occupation. I think that is likely to happen here -- because hopefully the admin. won't go away, and because we do seem to be making progress, and because the public does not presently have an unrealistically rosy picture of the situation in Iraq. (i.e. no bubble to burst, as with Tet).
The Belmont Club mocks the recent resistance activities. But it is worthy of note that the Iraqis had good enough intelligence to nearly simultaneously carry out those four assassinations of allied personnel, and enough organization and discipline to field a force of 100+ (mostly uniformed), mount a coordinated ambush, regroup and continue to fight even after taking very serious casualties. Yes -- we kicked their ass -- 0 killed to 54 killed. Yet, a the risk of sparking further flames -- I'll note that this has turned out to be a very different resistance than believed in May-July of this year.
[edited to say: "Oops, should have read ahead. Sorry."]
S_A_M
