When war was not given a chance

Power Line:

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Reading Professor David Gelernter's "No more Vietnams" from the new issue of the Standard, I find Professor Gelernter quoting page 351 of Leebaert's book in connection with what Professor Gelernter deems "Lie #2" (of four) told about the Vietnam war:

The Vietnam war was unwinnable. We had no business sending our men to a war they were bound to lose. The Communist Vietcong launched their first major coordinated offensive in January 1968--the "Tet offensive." "Tet was a military disaster for Hanoi," writes the historian Derek Leebaert. "Intended to destroy South Vietnamese officialdom and spark a popular uprising, Tet ironically had more of an effect in turning South Vietnam's people against the North." But America had been fighting ineffectively. In May 1968, Creighton Abrams replaced William Westmoreland as supreme American commander in Vietnam and U.S. strategy snapped to, immediately. With Abrams in charge, the war "was being won on the ground," writes the historian Lewis Sorley, "even as it was being lost at the peace table and in the U.S. Congress." The British counterinsurgency expert Sir Robert Thompson commented on America's "Christmas bombing" campaign of 1972, which devastated the North: "You had won the war. It was over." American anti-warriors insisted on losing it anyway.

On this particular point -- the misreporting of the Tet offensive -- I argued in a column for the Standard last year that Iraq indeed resembled Vietnam: "The media quagmire." I think it's a subsidiary point that, if accurate, complements Professor Gelernter's argument. As for the status of our current efforts to defeat the enemy in Iraq, Michael Fumento's article from the new issue is must reading: "Back to Falluja."

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The real story of Tet is how the media turned a victory against the communist into a strategic defeat. The media is trying to do the same thing in Iraq. The real questionis whether they will have time to succeed before the victory against the terrorist is complete. Right now the Sunni insurgency is defeated and most Sunni's in Iraq want the US to stick around to protect them from the majority Shia and Kurds who they had brualized in the past. Jonah Goldberg has proposed a referendum in Iraq on whether the Iraqis want us to stay. I think the antiwar pukes would be disappointed at the results.