The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Forty years ago last week, the American public realized that the United States was not going to win the Vietnam war. Lulled by assurances that ÒprogressÓ was being made, Americans had patiently borne five years of growing military casualties in Vietnam, but the Tet offensive shattered their illusions. Could the same thing happen this year in Iraq? Paradoxically, the Tet offensive was a military disaster for the Viet Cong, the Communist rebels who had borne the brunt of the fighting in South Vietnam until then. They threw 45,000 of their most experienced soldiers into simultaneous attacks in more than a hundred cities and towns on January 31, 1968, believing that they could trigger a popular uprising against the Americans and their local collaborators. There was no national uprising in South Vietnam; the Communists had overestimated their support in the cities. After Tet, the Viet Cong was so weakened that the North Vietnamese regular army had to take over more and more of the fighting. It was a grave military defeat for the Communists Ð but it was a decisive political defeat for the U.S. 1968, like 2008, was an election year in the US, and Tet made it plain to American voters that, while the Vietnamese insurgents might not be able to drive the Americans out, they could go on fighting them indefinitely. By the end of March 1968, President Lyndon Johnson had abandoned his re-election campaign and offered to open negotiations with the North Vietnamese. When Richard Nixon won the presidency that November, he did so on a promise to withdraw American troops from Vietnam (although it took him five years to keep it). Many people in the West believed at the time that the wily Vietnamese Communists had foreseen all this, but they didnÕt. General Tran Do, one of the planners of Tet, later said: ÒIn all honesty, we didnÕt achieve our main objective, which was to spur uprisings throughout the South....As for making an impact in the United States, it had not been our intention Ð but it turned out to be a fortunate result.Ó Lesson The lesson of Tet is that Western troops fighting in ÒThird WorldÓ countries can win every battle with their superior technology, but they are terribly vulnerable on the political front. The insurgents donÕt have to win. They only have to show that they can go on fighting indefinitely, because the Western country involved always has the option of cutting its losses and bringing its troops home. The Iraqi insurgents are not really going to Òfollow us homeÓ (as President Bush occasionally argues), so sooner or later the option to withdraw will be exercised. Something like the Tet offensive, even if it fails militarily, can be a catalyst for that kind of shift in opinion on the occupying powerÕs home front. So who in Iraq might be tempted to try a ÒTetÓ offensive in this US election year? Not the Sunni Arabs who did most of the fighting against the US occupation in 2003-2007, for they have been drawn into anti-al-Qaeda, anti-Shia militias paid for by the US. They may turn on their paymasters again eventually, but not yet. Not the Shia religious parties that dominate the Iraqi government, either. They already have most of what they want, and they still need U.S. protection. Certainly not the Kurds, the one pro-American group in Iraq. But how about Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army, the largest militia in the country? Al-Sadr will go on being marginalized by the Shia establishment unless he can position himself as the patriot who defied the Americans while everybody else was playing along with them. His Mahdi army has observed a self-imposed cease-fire since last August, but he could break it at any time. If the Mahdi army launched an Iraqi version of the Tet offensive, it would be defeated as badly as the Viet Cong were, but military defeat can lead to political victory. The temptation is there, but al-Sadr wonÕt do it now. August or September, however, could be another matter entirely.
