A SENSE OF ASIA
Spinning it like a Tet: Iraq, Vietnam, elections
See the Sol Sanders Archive
By Sol Sanders
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
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Thursday, October 26, 2006
One of the most important characteristics of war in general, but particularly what used to be called guerrilla, is at a given moment it is not easy to determine who is winning and how far away victory/defeat may be.
Recall the horrendous WWII Battle of the Bulge involving some 1.2 million men, which took 81,000 American [19,000 U.S. dead] and 100,000 German casualties between December 16, 1944 and January 25, 1945. Adolph Hitler’s devilishly clever — if hopeless for the Nazi cause — surprise attack in what had been assumed was the impassable Ardennes forest in the worst winter in recent European history was the bloodiest battle of the war for the U.S. But it came less than six months before the final Nazi collapse
An otherwise insignificant defeat of Saigon's Army of the Republic of Vietnam armor on January 1 and 2, 1963, at Ap Bac in the Mekong Delta is a milestone in the Indochina struggle. The clash was attended by an imbedded group of young American [one New Zealand British] journalists. That proved critical. Reportage of the ARVN defeat inaugurated the campaign to bring down President Ngo Dinh Diem and a resultant period of chaos. But an Australian journalist, now a proved KGB agent, tells us at that very moment Hanoi believed it was losing the war and was considering withdrawing its forward headquarters from the Cambodian-Vietnam border.
As Henry Kissinger has recently acknowledged, while the Tet Offensive beginning January 30, 1968, wiped out their guerrilla forces in a cataclysmic defeat for Hanoi, it was considered at the time by the media and most American military as a brilliant Communist strategic victory. The Communists’ ability to penetrate cities [and onto the grounds of the U, S.. Embassy and to hold the Citadel in Hue for days] began an escalating erosion of American support for the war. That brought on the inexorable U.S. withdrawal, finally ending with the withdrawal of logistics support for the conventional army. Washington had built it successfully to resist Hanoi’s inferior conventional forces. The result: collapse of the Saigon regime in 1975.
Although the Malaysian government declared “The Emergency” over by fiat in 1960, an armed ethnic Chinese Communist nucleus fighting British Commonwealth Forces for 13 years retreated into southern Thailand [where a Moslem insurgency now blooms]. It lived on there for years. Malaysian independence, and perhaps more important, self-rule in Chinese-majority Singapore, weaned away local support which otherwise might have at any moment permitted the reignition of the conflict from the Thailand sanctuary.
Just as talking heads have been swaying back and forth on how forthcoming U.S. midterm elections would turn out, experts [and johnnys-come-lately who months ago didn’t know a Sunni from a Sh’ia] are pontificating on the Iraq war’s outcome. Visiting Senators and Congressmen have suddenly blossomed as Clausewitzards.
The probability is no one knows. And, unlike the elections, results will not come in at a definitive day or hour.
Extreme particularism is the nature of guerrillas. In Vietnam, regional differences, social problems, colonial hubris, dictated the constantly changing nature of the conflict. Sectarian and ethnic hatred, Sadam’s tyrannical heritage, tribal rivalries, porous desert borders, religious fanaticism, all play their role in Iraq.
But just as with the Communists’ peasant and intellectual supporters in Vietnam, the combination of Islamicist fanatics, sectarian extremists, and plain old fashioned criminals [Sadam released tens of thousands at the beginning of the war] have their international liaison. Especially that small but important percentage of fighters who plot suicide bombings, the most effective weapon in the violence, appear to be largely foreign For something like the same reasons – the geographic handicap [jungles there, deserts here], the fear of ”broadening the conflict”, and pressure from our allies –Washington has allowed Syria and Iran, just as Cambodia and Laos, to play roles. Diplomacy, just as in Vietnam, has failed to defuse this aspect of the conflict. Whether in the end, it would be possible to win without cauterizing those wounds remains to be seen.
That confusion is rampant – and, again, an indiscerptible part of war – is highlighted by the spin put on President Bush’s response to a question about New York Times columnist Friedman’s reference to Tet. Aha! Bush’s critics said, he acknowledged Iraq is indeed “Vietnam”, a quagmire, an impossible task, etc., etc. In fact, the reference was in apposition to the whole shower of I-told-you-sos. It was referring to the possibility current increased mayhem was a last gasp of a desperate and losing enemy – such as Tet, or the Battle of the Bulge – however vicious and bloody.
Not only “it’s not over until it’s over”, to quote Yogi. But unlike elections [except for Florida in 2000!], we may not know when the asymmetrical war the terrorists are waging against the U.S., the Coalition, and moderate domestic forces in Iraq as a part of their worldwide jihad against modernism finally ends.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net),
is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent
for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com and East-Asia-Intel.com.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
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