The truth about the Tet offensive

Well, Tet is in the news again now, since Bush gave that interview. You've seen plenty of spin on this one, and you'll see plenty more. So let me point you to some scholarly counter-spin, courtesy of Peter Braestrup.

Excerpts:

The Tet offensive of 1968 must surely be regarded as one of history's chameleon campaigns. When the North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops assaulted targets throughout the Republic of Vietnam at the end of January 1968, they expected to trigger an uprising of the South Vietnamese people against their government. Despite some spectacular early successes, the attacks failed. The South Vietnamese did not embrace the cause; thousands of sappers, assault troops, and cadres met their deaths before overwhelming allied counterattacks; and the insurgent infrastructure was so decimated at the end of the fighting that no large enemy offensives could be mounted for four years...

Misconception: The offensive was a victory for Hanoi. The press corps, it is now clear, was stunned by the initial Tet attacks, many of which occurred in Saigon. When the allies met some initial reverses, the press reacted by emphasizing the enemy's successes. As the weeks wore on and military intelligence clearly indicated defeat for the insurgents, the press still interpreted the offensive as a "psychological victory" for the Vietcong/ North Vietnamese Army, who "held the initiative," "decide who lives and who dies... which planes land and which ones don't," who were unconcerned with losses, and could "take and hold any area they chose." There was little objective analysis of the many enemy failures or of the severe toll that allied counterblows exacted from the enemy...

Misconception: The characteristic American response was to destroy city districts and villages with overwhelming, indiscriminate firepower... Some reports from Saigon indicated the city was a giant scarred battleground; from the air, however, reporters could see that 95 percent of the city was relatively unharmed...

The effects of these errors of fact and interpretation in the United States were pronounced. The impact appeared less in opinion polls than in the minds of Washington policy-makers. Because the press had ignored earlier cautions expressed by military leaders, the public was "jolted into gloom and foreboding," and a "credibility gap" emerged. In Congress and the bureaucracy, criticism became vocal, reflecting the "disaster" themes portrayed in the press and on TV. The embattled President announced the bombing halt and withdrew from the Presidential campaign.

How could the press err so greatly in its Tet coverage with such impact on the nation? There is no simple answer to the question. Braestrup dismisses the idea that newsmen as a group were ideologically opposed to the war. Rather, the Tet coverage represents the institutional defects or flaws in the gathering, interpretation, and dissemination of news in Vietnam and the United States at the time of the offensive...

SUMMING up the impact of the press, Braestrup argues that the Tet reporting was an extreme case of crisis-journalism. The result was a "portrait of defeat" for the allies because "the special circumstances of Tet impacted to a rare degree on modern American journalism's special susceptibilities and limitations." Braestrup's final chapter is a discussion of how the susceptibilities and limitations are unchanged, with a warning that a similar crisis could repeat the errors of Tet.

I say:

The mainstream media are no more reliable now than they were then. If anything, they've gotten worse. But here's two things that have changed since then: people are less liable to believe what they see on the evening news, and people have alternatives on the Web.

Also, Bush is no Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was a classic bully type who backed down in the end. He jabbed his finger in faces, he blustered, he bluffed, and when Cronkite turned on him, he caved. Bill Clinton is much the same in the clinch, including the finger jabbing. (We saw that when he got Queeged on Fox.) Bush has a very different style, and he doesn't cave to his critics.

I see every modern war as Groundhog Day. We'll keep fighting the Korean War over and over again, at different times and in different places, until we get it right. The key to getting it right? Following through. I think our current president has the stomach to follow through. I can't say the same for most of his critics.

And no talk about trying to prevent a larger war. It can't be done, at least not via containment, diplomacy and "police actions." The next world war has been pending for about 60 years now. Every world war is the unfinished business of the one before it. The sooner you deal with it, the less nasty it will be. The more you try to avoid it, the worse it is when it comes. Neville Chamberlain never grasped that. Truman came close to grasping it, but he couldn't bring himself to make that final leap of logic. MacArthur feared it, and dreamed of banning war, but then he came to his senses.

The coming world war has been delayed far too long. Consequently, it will be very, very bad when it comes. It will probably be nuclear. Pacifism won't prevent it. Diplomacy won't prevent it. Containment and limited war alone won't prevent it. Our best bet for avoiding world war is to cut off aid and trade to the anti-democratic regimes of the world, and let them implode. That's how we won the Cold War - barely. We can greatly improve the chances if we just follow through on whatever Groundhog Day wars arise. It might work, it might not. But nothing else has a chance.

And whatever happens, we can't count on mainstream news to watch our backs.


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