Chicago Sun-Times
July 29, 2003
A Tet Moment For U.S. In Iraq
By John O'Sullivan
'Remember the Tet Offensive" is the mantra I've been repeating to myself as gloomy media accounts of the deepening U.S quagmire in Iraq crowded the airwaves and news pages. For the benefit of those who remember Tet only fitfully or not at all, it was the 1968 uprising by the communist Vietcong across Vietnam that brought guerrilla warfare to the gates of the U.S. Embassy. It was a dramatic escalation of the war, but it was also a severe defeat for the Vietcong.
South Vietnam's population failed to rally to the Vietcong's standard; the Vietcong carried out mass murders of the civilian population in the areas it briefly occupied, and many of the Vietcong's strongest units were destroyed in battle by the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces.
After Tet, the Vietcong had no chance of winning on their own. The North Vietnamese army carried them to victory in a purely conventional invasion seven years later. Tet was also ample justification for U.S. intervention on both humanitarian and strategic grounds.
But that is not how Tet was presented by the U.S. media at the time. As the late Peter Braestrup demonstrated in his magisterial study, Big Story, the mainstream media depicted Tet as a defeat for the United States and the beginning of an endless quagmire for American forces. That became the conventional wisdom of the media and political elites. As a result, the North Vietnamese eventually triumphed on the only battlefield where the United States could be defeated--the American home front.
Fast forward to the present. Here is a typical mainstream media summary, from Time magazine of the situation in Iraq: ". . . military men and women under siege, a casualty count that exceeds the toll of the first Gulf War, anti-Americanism in a land where they had been told our forces would be greeted like heroes, costs reaching a billion dollars a week and going up, some troops homesick and disillusioned, their spouses and parents having no idea when they will see their loved ones again--and no end in sight . . . ."
Time's picture is false because it is a selection of negatives with none of the positive signs of Iraqi recovery included. Yet recent signs of revived order and economic recovery are real and impressive: the south and north of Iraq are already stable; food distribution is working well; oil production is now higher than 1 million barrels a day; schools are open nationwide; town councils are functioning in most major cities; Iraqis are joining the new civil defense organization; and, of course, Udai and Qusai Hussein are no longer planning the murder of U.S. soldiers.
Even if the media were to present a balanced picture of Iraq, however, a problem would remain. A jumble of contradictory facts is confusing rather than informative. Which are the relevant and important facts? What will determine whether Iraq turns out to be a quagmire or the beginnings of stability throughout the Middle East? Here are three tests:
1. Do the Iraqis want the Americans and British to stay? The relative absence of terrorist attacks on allied forces in northern and southern Iraq suggests that the local people there are satisfied with the status quo. But what about the alleged center of resistance in Baghdad? A British YouGov poll taken there two weeks ago needs to be interpreted skeptically. But it suggests that most people in Baghdad favored the war, prefer some kind of democracy to the authoritarian alternatives, think that their lives will likely get better as a result of Saddam Hussein's ouster, and don't want him back at any price. Only 5 percent want the return of Saddam, and only 6 percent want rule by mullahs.
2. How formidable is the resistance? It seems to consist of two groups, remnants of Saddam's Baath party and non-Iraqi Islamist terrorists drawn to the country by the opportunity to fight the United States. Neither group is very popular with Iraqis--their joint popularity seems to peak at 11 percent in the YouGov poll--and both groups are vulnerable to betrayal. Their weapons are (a) money to hire terrorists and (b) the fear of the Iraqi people that the Baath Party will one day return and punish those who cooperate with the United States. Their money is a dwindling asset. So convincing the Iraqis that America will stay until the Baath Party is eradicated and a stable democratic polity established is therefore the key to defeating the resistance--which in the meantime is murdering roughly one American soldier a day.
3. Will the American people think this cost worth paying? That may depend on how they visualize the gains. Compare the Malayan "Emergency" that lasted from 1948 to 1960. In that struggle with communist guerrillas, the British lost more than 900 soldiers. What they gained was a stable independent democratic Malaya (later Malaysia) that was a strong Western ally in the Cold War and is one of the most successful free enterprise economies in Asia. Doubtless that was cold comfort to 900 families in Britain who lost a son 50 years ago. But the gains for Malaysians--and for a safer, freer, more prosperous world--were substantial. Will American families think the establishment of a stable democratic Iraq and a wider Middle East peace under American auspices worth risking the lives of their own sons in a faraway land?
In other words, we are at a moment like the Tet offensive. This time we had better make sure that, whatever decision we make, it is based on understanding the reality of the conflict.
July 29, 2003
A Tet Moment For U.S. In Iraq
By John O'Sullivan
'Remember the Tet Offensive" is the mantra I've been repeating to myself as gloomy media accounts of the deepening U.S quagmire in Iraq crowded the airwaves and news pages. For the benefit of those who remember Tet only fitfully or not at all, it was the 1968 uprising by the communist Vietcong across Vietnam that brought guerrilla warfare to the gates of the U.S. Embassy. It was a dramatic escalation of the war, but it was also a severe defeat for the Vietcong.
South Vietnam's population failed to rally to the Vietcong's standard; the Vietcong carried out mass murders of the civilian population in the areas it briefly occupied, and many of the Vietcong's strongest units were destroyed in battle by the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces.
After Tet, the Vietcong had no chance of winning on their own. The North Vietnamese army carried them to victory in a purely conventional invasion seven years later. Tet was also ample justification for U.S. intervention on both humanitarian and strategic grounds.
But that is not how Tet was presented by the U.S. media at the time. As the late Peter Braestrup demonstrated in his magisterial study, Big Story, the mainstream media depicted Tet as a defeat for the United States and the beginning of an endless quagmire for American forces. That became the conventional wisdom of the media and political elites. As a result, the North Vietnamese eventually triumphed on the only battlefield where the United States could be defeated--the American home front.
Fast forward to the present. Here is a typical mainstream media summary, from Time magazine of the situation in Iraq: ". . . military men and women under siege, a casualty count that exceeds the toll of the first Gulf War, anti-Americanism in a land where they had been told our forces would be greeted like heroes, costs reaching a billion dollars a week and going up, some troops homesick and disillusioned, their spouses and parents having no idea when they will see their loved ones again--and no end in sight . . . ."
Time's picture is false because it is a selection of negatives with none of the positive signs of Iraqi recovery included. Yet recent signs of revived order and economic recovery are real and impressive: the south and north of Iraq are already stable; food distribution is working well; oil production is now higher than 1 million barrels a day; schools are open nationwide; town councils are functioning in most major cities; Iraqis are joining the new civil defense organization; and, of course, Udai and Qusai Hussein are no longer planning the murder of U.S. soldiers.
Even if the media were to present a balanced picture of Iraq, however, a problem would remain. A jumble of contradictory facts is confusing rather than informative. Which are the relevant and important facts? What will determine whether Iraq turns out to be a quagmire or the beginnings of stability throughout the Middle East? Here are three tests:
1. Do the Iraqis want the Americans and British to stay? The relative absence of terrorist attacks on allied forces in northern and southern Iraq suggests that the local people there are satisfied with the status quo. But what about the alleged center of resistance in Baghdad? A British YouGov poll taken there two weeks ago needs to be interpreted skeptically. But it suggests that most people in Baghdad favored the war, prefer some kind of democracy to the authoritarian alternatives, think that their lives will likely get better as a result of Saddam Hussein's ouster, and don't want him back at any price. Only 5 percent want the return of Saddam, and only 6 percent want rule by mullahs.
2. How formidable is the resistance? It seems to consist of two groups, remnants of Saddam's Baath party and non-Iraqi Islamist terrorists drawn to the country by the opportunity to fight the United States. Neither group is very popular with Iraqis--their joint popularity seems to peak at 11 percent in the YouGov poll--and both groups are vulnerable to betrayal. Their weapons are (a) money to hire terrorists and (b) the fear of the Iraqi people that the Baath Party will one day return and punish those who cooperate with the United States. Their money is a dwindling asset. So convincing the Iraqis that America will stay until the Baath Party is eradicated and a stable democratic polity established is therefore the key to defeating the resistance--which in the meantime is murdering roughly one American soldier a day.
3. Will the American people think this cost worth paying? That may depend on how they visualize the gains. Compare the Malayan "Emergency" that lasted from 1948 to 1960. In that struggle with communist guerrillas, the British lost more than 900 soldiers. What they gained was a stable independent democratic Malaya (later Malaysia) that was a strong Western ally in the Cold War and is one of the most successful free enterprise economies in Asia. Doubtless that was cold comfort to 900 families in Britain who lost a son 50 years ago. But the gains for Malaysians--and for a safer, freer, more prosperous world--were substantial. Will American families think the establishment of a stable democratic Iraq and a wider Middle East peace under American auspices worth risking the lives of their own sons in a faraway land?
In other words, we are at a moment like the Tet offensive. This time we had better make sure that, whatever decision we make, it is based on understanding the reality of the conflict.