Another Tet?

Tet

Here we are nearly 40 years after Tet—and from the Left instead of Gen. Waste-more-land we have Gen. Betray Us. For the Wise Men under Dean Acheson reporting to LBJ, we have the Iraq Study Group. And in the midst of a surge, a President with low polls watches presendential candidates left and right taking shots at him, and many backing away from the war they almost all once supported.

By April 1968 it was impossible to explain that Tet had proven a horrendous enemy military defeat, as the North Vietnamese limped away after losing over 40,000 dead, and committing horrific atrocities in Hue. I say impossible—in light of the serial Herblock cartoons, the Cronkite CBS special announcing the impossibility of victory, the Eddie Adams photograph, the evocation of Khe sanh as the new Dien Bien Phu, and everyone from Art Buchwald to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., declaring that the Tet was either Custer at Little Big Horn or the surrounded French. In the same manner, the good news of the surge matters little. So we are back to 1968, and soon to 1973-4.

Democrats

All they had to do was copy John McCain: trash the previous policy, take credit for more troops, a new general, changes at the Pentagon, and then haggle over withdrawal dates. But by investing in US defeat and the need to evacuate now when surge signs are good, Democrats simply became indistinguishable from Moveon.org—and so have no control over a lunatic fringe defaming, in McCarthesque style, the most popular American general in years.

And this comes on top of bin Laden’s tape chastising Democrats (while taking up their talking points about corporate greed, global warming, and the mortgage crisis), for not doing more to help him out by calling off Bush.

Then there were the eerie Univision debates, where poor Bill Richards wanted them to be held in Spanish and pandered shamelessly to ethnic chauvinism. Apparently no one looked at the polls surrounding the recent immigration debate, or gauged the reaction of millions of Americans who watched such candidates fall all over each other to promote linguistic separatism and a backing away from the melting pot. Despite the scandals of Mark Foley, Larry Craig, Jack Abramoff et al. the Democrats may still find a way to lose.

The perfect storm


Five things accounted for the rise of al Qaeda

1. Afghanistan. The Afghans, with Western weapons and Gulf money, defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan. Of nearly 800,000 resistance fighters, there were rarely over 2,000 Arabs fighting at one time. But because of the Russian collapse, and Mullah Omar’s coddling of the multimillionaire loud bin Laden, al Qaeda was able to pose to Muslim youth as the saviors of Islam that had destroyed the Soviet Union. That Arabs had little to do with the Afghan victory, much less the collapse of the Soviet Union mattered little. From 1989 on bin Laden was enshrined as some mythical Saladin.

2. Islam and globalization. There were in the last 1400 years always wannabe Great Mahdis and zealots who declared jihad. But in this period of globalization and Western-inspired modernism, Islam, autocratic tyrannies in the Middle East, and the languishing Arab Street have all come together to recreate another Islamic wave of jihadism. Bin Laden’s ever expanding list of grievances, from Kyoto to mortgages, reveals that his hatred, born out inferiority, envy, and pride, is existential and elemental.

3. American appeasement. That sad tale from the Iranian hostage taking of 1979 to the attack on the USS Cole is now well known. But in the words of the terrorists themselves, the image of a static, impotent America was fixed, and with it the invitation to hit our assets at will without fear of retribution.

4. The Wall. Richard Clark, George Tenet, and Michael Scheuer may be loud critics, but prior to 9/11 no Americans had more opportunity to save us from known terrorists in the United States. Yet petty jealousies and turf battles ensured that the NSA, CIA, and FBI stayed on parallel, quite separate tracks, as these egomaniacs refused to share information that would have empowered all three agencies. Those walls are now hopefully, down, and with their fall, and the absence of the three above, we have been making good progress rounding up the terrorists among us.

5. Petroleum. Without petrodollars, there are no madrassas, no House of Saud cousins freelancing by pouring money to jihadists, no bought and paid for mullahs mouthing anti-Western drivel, and no chance to get weapons of mass destruction to kill us all.

Vietnam—circa 1973-4

I wrote the following for National Review Online following the President’s speech.

Everyone expected a September do/or die showdown over our presence in Iraq; but the good news from the surge and the absolutely insane, suicidal Democratic attacks against the best in our military have given the President another six months. He knows that the reprieve is limited—given the military’s manpower exhaustion and the public weariness over the human and material costs of staying.

So he wants to act fast of the heels of the successful statesmanship of Petraeus and Crocker, and take advantage of their window of opportunity.

He didn’t even mention Saddam by name; that war is over and won. What faces the United States now is a new war against radical Islam that continues to foment sectarian strife to destroy the young democracy and recreate another Afghan-like haven.

In response, the President offers a new American security commitment, like that once extended to Korea, that promises both Iraq and us long-term strategic stability arising from the tactical successes of the surge—and sweetened by future periodic American military withdrawals.

The policy sounds like Vietnamization, but this time backed by permanent American guarantees—supposedly by bipartisan consent—to evolve into something like South Korea rather than abandonment with helicopters on the Saigon embassy roof, and hundreds of thousands butchered and exiled.

Critics will say the speech is unnecessary given the stellar testimony of Petraeus and Crocker. They would have liked instead some explanation of what went wrong the last four years, and how those perceived mistakes were corrected to allow the present success. And by now most will be against whatever George Bush is for.

Perhaps. But all that matters now is whether critics have a better plan—get out now and downsize in the region? The answer is no.

Senator Reid’s response—training Iraqis, more diplomacy, steady withdrawals—didn’t sound much different from Bush’s plan. And that’s the opposition’s problem; there really is no alternative to the present course other than simple defeat and flight, one or other. The public may come to that defeatist position in time, but it is not there yet, and so neither for all their talk apparently are the Democrats.

Where are we? A frantic half-year race lies ahead to stabilize the country and curtail radically American losses. Soon the election cycle kicks in and there will have to be more accomplished than the present improvement to keep Republicans from bailing. We are on the cusp of 1973-4—a chance, after a long ordeal, to win at precisely the time the public is weary and the opposition most shrill.

So the country looks to Iraq and our maverick General Sherman outside Atlanta, where the battlefield, as it always does, will sort out the politics.