Stardate 20030317.1627

(Captain's log): In response to my comment about a "Tet moment", Gerald writes:

As someone who was there, Tet '68 was a bloody defeat for the NVA and the government of North Vietnam. It was in no way a defeat for US forces; in fact, a large set-piece battle was exactly what our generals were hoping for. True, it was a bloody battle, but it left the North Vietnamese capable of little more than harassment for the next four years.

In late March, 1972, the NVA tried it again, presumably on the idea that with most US ground troops out of South Vietnam, a major assault would succeed. It didn't. I was there for that one too. The battle extended into the summer of 1972, but US airpower was sufficient for ARVN troops to stop and throw back the NVA. Again, it was a bloody affair on both sides. We lost more aircrews from March through the December '72 bombing of Hanoi than we had in, literally, several years.

The NVA would have launched their assault earlier in '72 had it not been for the actions of Gen. John Lavelle. He commanded US forces throughout Southeast Asia at that time. A series of air raids against the growing military build up in the North Vietnam panhandle likely set back the NVA timetable for an attack on South Vietnam. Nixon fired him for his efforts.

In the end, South Vietnam was lost because we never did shut off the resupply of North Vietnam. The USSR and the PRC were funneling supplies into North Vietnam as quickly as we could destroy them. When Congress cut off military support for South Vietnam the end game was set in motion.

The Tet Offensive in 1968 was the classic example of how you can lose a battle and win a war. Everything Gerald says about the military effects of Tet are true; from a straight military analysis Tet was a disastrous battle for the North. Every gain that the NV's made in Tet was retaken within about a month, and the NVA was badly hurt while the Viet Cong essentially ceased to exist as a coherent force.

But Tet also represents a perfect demonstration of Clausewitz, because the Tet offensive was never about winning a military victory. The Tet offensive won the war for the North Vietnamese; it was a military disaster but a political triumph. Chairman Ho lost badly in Viet Nam, but won in the United States, and that was more important. Tet was the turning point in the war; after Tet it was only a matter of time.

Before Tet, President Johnson was campaigning for reelection, and the war was a major political issue. That was the day of "light at the end of the tunnel"; Johnson tried to claim that we'd "turned the corner", and that the worst of the fighting was over, and that the war would be won soon. He claimed that his strategy for the war was a success, and campaigned on a platform of continuing to victory.

The Tet Offensive came out of nowhere, and surprised both Johnson and the American people. Suddenly the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were attacking. The ferocity of fighting was terrible. Hue fell. There were huge casualties.

As Gerald points out, we eventually took back everything that had been lost, and it actually turned into a massive military defeat because the NVA and Viet Cong couldn't maintain battle at that level. But by the time we'd done that, the political situation in the US had already changed permanently. Johnson decided to withdraw his candidacy; his VP Hubert Humphrey ran instead. The Republicans fielded Nixon as their candidate, and where Humphrey still tried to run on a platform of trying to win, Nixon's motto was "peace with honor". And that meant that the US stopped trying to win and began looking for an exit strategy. The Paris Peace Talks began soon after Nixon's election, and stalled for years because Ho knew time was on his side. Military operations actually got more intense, for quite a while. But in the US, peace demonstrations started to become larger; before the election you had the riots in Chicago outside the Democratic Convention; you had Kent State. After the election the anti-war movement became more and more influential. And more and more voters began to question what we were even doing in Viet Nam.

Tet changed everything. What it actually (failed to) accomplished militarily in Viet Nam pales into insignificance compared to what it accomplished diplomatically and politically. Gerald correctly evaluates the local reasons why we ultimately lost; but the reason why all those things happened was because of the fundamental political effects in the US brought about by the Tet offensive.

With respect to a hypothetical attack by Iraq against our forces during the buildup in December and January, it equally would have been a military disaster for Iraq. If they'd launched a ground attack, they'd ultimately have gotten slaughtered; we had enough air power even then to do that, and since 1991 there's been at least a mech-infantry brigade in Kuwait more or less ready to fight if need be. But they would have had sufficient preponderance of power to be able to reach our ground forces and to actually hurt them. If, in December, Saddam has sent three divisions of the Republican Guard to the Kuwaiti border, I don't think it would have been politically possible for us to bomb them before they arrived, and if they'd then gone into a full attack there's no way we could have avoided losing heavy casualties even if we ultimately won the battle.

Equally, if they had launched