I find the Bush Administration's glum characterization of the insurgency's similarity to the Tet Offensive of 1968 rather odd. First, that they would suggest something so out of character - that things have ramped up to the point where a president would compare the conditions on the ground to the action that ultimately propelled us out of Vietnam.

Second, I don't find the comparison all that apt. Tet was a major blowout, with a period of relative quiet at the end of 1967 shattered by attacks from the Mekong to the DMZ. Positions were overrun, the U.S. embassy in Saigon was overrun, and the Marines spent three weeks retaking the Citadel in Hue. The result of the fighting - 4000 dead, 16000 wounded on the U.S. side, with probably ten times that number of Viet Cong and NVA dead and wounded. This Ramadan Offensive, if you want to call it that, is mostly an acceleration of the action that has been happening all along.

The big difference, as I see it, has little to do with the strategic comparison with Tet. I am hearing about major shifts occuring in Iraqi political and social life - the declaration of independent Islamic confederations of provinces, a Shi'a one in the east and a Sunni one in the west, major movements of refugees from one to the other, and of course a steadily increasing spiral of killing.

Is that it? Would the U.S. government rather talk about strategic reversals on the battlefield than the complete shift of a rotten-to-the-core political situation? At least a tactical problem is retrievable with the right amount of firepower - but if Iraqis have walked away from us, then it's over and we might as well go home.

I would also note that the Tet Offensive was only considered bad in the United States because of that Communist bastard Walter Cronkite.

Who by the way?

Can go to Hell.

But yes, the action in Iraq can hardly be considered anything near what was happening in Vietnam. But when did Bush say this?

But yes, the action in Iraq can hardly be considered anything near what was happening in Vietnam. But when did Bush say this?

See http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/18/bush-tet/

Tony Snow also commented on it - http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/world/middleeast/20bushcnd.html?hp&ex=1161316800&en=a44f2defe976eab5&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Cronkite had just returned from Vietnam when he aired his opinion piece in February 1968 (http://www.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/Cronkite_1968.html) - I don't believe that he was saying anything that the American public couldn't see for themselves on TV every night. He said it was a stalemate, and it was. The U.S. kicked ass during Tet, but kicking ass wasn't enough. The U.S. was up against an enemy that would indefinitely accept kill ratios of ten to one while receiving endless supplies from China and the Soviets. The only way to win was either to kill every last person capable of holding a gun, or invade the North and seal the borders to stop the flow of arms and supplies. Neither thing was going to happen. Stalemate and a negotiated settlement was the best anyone could hope for, but South Vietnam was too politically weak to hold on to the peace and so the whole thing was a waste.

I don't think Cronkite was a communist - I think he called it like he saw it. His willingness to go in with the 101st airborne in Holland in WW2 and the reporting he did there demonstrated his courage and his pro-American attitude.

The historians identify Tet as an attempt by the North to foment a popular insurgency and to generate significant propaganda in the United States press. It certainly destroyed Johnson's reelection hopes. The situation in Iraq is certainly different - the U.S. is not up against the equivalent of the NVA and the Viet Cong - there would have to be Iranian army units operating alongside something like the Mehdi Army. Even if this were so (and some believe that Iranian and Syrian irregulars are fighting the Americans) I think that the utter pittilessness of the sectarian killing kind of blurs the lines. In Vietnam most of the civilians were just trying to stay the fuck out of the way. In Iraq they are targets.