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October 19, 2006
George W. Bush's 'Tet Comparison' And The Media's Distorted Promotion Of It
Topics: Iraq
ABC News headlines their piece with, "Bush Accepts Iraq-Vietnam Comparison," and the Left has gone nuts with glee. However, simply looking at the facts of what the president said, the context within which he said it, and the facts of the situation in Iraq today juxtaposed to the facts of the Tet offensive, and we see that the Left is simply in love with anything that puts Iraq and Vietnam in the same breath, ignoring whether or not it relates to anything remotely related to reality. Fortunately, TigerHawk has gone to the trouble to help separate truth from wishfull thinking:
Here is what President Bush said:Stephanopoulos asked whether the president agreed with the opinion of columnist Tom Friedman, who wrote in The New York Times today that the situation in Iraq may be equivalent to the Tet offensive in Vietnam almost 40 years ago.
"He could be right," the president said, before adding, "There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we're heading into an election."Here's what Think Progress said he said:President Bush is right to finally admit that violence in Iraq has reached a tipping point, and that the U.S. is not winning the war as he has claimed.That is, of course, not what the President said. He merely agreed that there was an appropriate comparison to be made between the Tet offensive and the violence we are seeing in Iraq today. I agree. The question is, what was the lesson of Tet (the all-out offensive of the Viet Cong in early 1968, at the time of the "Tet" new year holiday in Vietnam)?At the time the media perceived and promoted the Tet offensive as a great victory for the enemy. In an age when the network anchors deployed truly awesome power, Walter Cronkite destroyed Lyndon Johnson's chances for re-election when he editorialized that we were "mired in stalement". President Johnson declared "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America," and withdrew from the 1968 presidential campaign.
Tet, however, was not a military disaster for the United States. Quite to the contrary, history has revealed that the Tet offensive was in fact a crushing defeat for the Viet Cong, and effectively required that the Communists conquer the South by invasion from the North, rather than by civil insurgency. The Viet Cong were only able to turn a military disaster into strategic victory by persuading the American media that the United States was mired in stalement. With the domestic political support for the war fading fast, the United States decided to withdraw from Indochina, even though it would take Nixon and Kissinger another four years to accomplish it.
TigerHawk continues by pointing out that the Tet Offensive is frequently seen as an example of the value of propaganda, media influence and popular opinion in the pursuit of military objectives. By "accepting" the analogy of the surge in violence in Iraq to the Tet offensive in Vietnam, President Bush is not "accepting" that "Iraq is an unwinnable struggle against a noble enemy, rather, he is saying that victory or defeat in Iraq will not be a function of the amount of violence that the enemy is able to do during any given period" - instead, it is a direct function of our "will to keep fighting notwithstanding that violence."
Yes indeed, "the President obviously knows more history than his interviewer," and our friends on the Left that remain so quick to applaud a defeat of their country have simply made "Much Ado About Nothing," and what they wished to hear - but in fact, they have "read into" what has been said, that which they wished to hear but was not said at all.
Is Iraq similar to Vietnam? Only in that victory or defeat rests on our will to win. America's enemy without - the Islamists, and America's enemies within - the Left and its supportive media, as was the case in Vietnam, recognize the value of propaganda, media influence, and popular opinion on our nation's willingness to fight and achieve our military objectives. In the case of Iraq and elsewhere in the War on Terror, it is not simply a question of fighting to win, rather, it is a matter of fighting to assure the continuence of Western civilization as we know it. The alternative to winning is not simply leaving Iraq, it is having the terrorists conduct their gruesome agenda on the streets of America. Unfortunately, there are Americans that have yet to understand that this.
In other coverage:
Chad at In The Bullpen says - "Either the crack team of journalists in numerous press agencies are simply spinning the comments, or they don't actually know about the Tet Offensive." Blue Crab Boulevard writes - "Tet was a disaster for the Viet Cong. It took the media and the American left to make it a victory. In that respect, Bush is exactly right. The media and the left are at it again in exactly the same fashion." Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette writes - "Over at the New York Times, Tom Friedman confirms the existence of al Qaeda's "Working Paper for a Media Invasion of America" first revealed here." Flopping Aces calls its post, "The Al-Qaeda Spin In Our MSM," and says "... either the left has a basic comprehension problem or they are trying to spin something which is not there."
Directly Related: NewsBusters has "Stephanopoulos Quizzes Bush About 'Surrender' Claim, Questioning of Dem Patriotism," and has the video, along with:
"Stephanopoulos then demanded: "Can you name a Democrat who wants to 'wave the white flag of surrender'?" Referring to Senator John Kerry, Bush replied: "I can name a Democrat who said there ought to be a date certain from which to withdraw from Iraq, whether or not we've achieved a victory or not-" An astounded Stephanopoulos asked: "That's surrender?" Bush countered: "Yeah it is, if you pull the troops out before the job is done." To which Stephanopoulos suggested a nefarious motive: "So you don't think that's questioning their patriotism when you say that?" Bush rejected the notion: "No, I know it's not questioning their patriotism. I think it's questioning their judgment."
Posted by Richard at October 19, 2006 8:24 AM
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