Guest Post by John Cole
The Drudge Report is flashing this headline from Breitbart:
“Bush draws Vietnam lesson for Iraq: don’t quit”
That isn’t the only thing Bush has learned from Viet Nam. As a life-long Republican, I can tell you that there is a not-insignificant portion of the GOP that is still convinced that Viet Nam could have been won, had we only stayed for a few more years and spent more of our blood and treasure. At any rate, Bush has learned from the Vietnam War- perceptions matter:
The Tet Offensive can be considered a military defeat for the Communist forces, as neither the Viet Cong nor the North Vietnamese army achieved their tactical goals. Furthermore, the operational cost of the offensive was dangerously high, with the Viet Cong essentially crippled by the huge losses inflicted by South Vietnamese and other Allied forces. Nevertheless, the Offensive is widely considered a turning point of the war in Vietnam, with the NLF and PAVN winning an enormous psychological and propaganda victory. Although US public opinion polls continued to show a majority supporting involvement in the war, this support continued to deteriorate and the nation became increasingly polarized over the war.[1] President Lyndon Johnson saw his popularity fall sharply after the Offensive, and he withdrew as a candidate for re-election in March of 1968. The Tet Offensive is frequently seen as an example of the value of media influence and popular opinion in the pursuit of military objectives.
And thus, the ham-fisted “Final Push” is born:
President George Bush has told senior advisers that the US and its allies must make “a last big push” to win the war in Iraq and that instead of beginning a troop withdrawal next year, he may increase US forces by up to 20,000 soldiers, according to sources familiar with the administration’s internal deliberations.
Mr Bush’s refusal to give ground, coming in the teeth of growing calls in the US and Britain for a radical rethink or a swift exit, is having a decisive impact on the policy review being conducted by the Iraq Study Group chaired by Bush family loyalist James Baker, the sources said.
It is, for all intents and purposes, the inverse Tet, an operation designed not to achieve any appreciable strategic or tactical victory on the ground in Iraq, but to neuter opposition to the disastrous war management at home. This ‘final push’ will achieve little- the country is already too embroiled in what is now a low grade civil war, and a two-week effort to secure Baghdad while the rest of the nation is blowing up is, at this point, futile (maybe we can go take Fallujah- again). However, the final push can (and probably will) put the Democrats and the Iraq Study Group on the defensive, and I see no reason to pretend that this latest Bush idea is little more than a cynical and transparent attempt to control the debate at home.
This administration has earned my cynicism- after all, you remember how we got here:
“From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”