No Tet, Not Yet

It becomes pretty obvious why comparisons of recent escalated violence in Iraq to the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam fall short. Here’s what the Press Secretary Tony Snow said to a reporter from CNN yesterday: “Well, your network has shown pictures of snipers hitting Americans, which was used as a propaganda tool.” Back when the networks were more respected than they are today, the free press could get away with something like this. So influential was the Mainstream Media in the days of Vietnam, Walter Cronkite could express the War as a failure, and then cause an American president to lose all hope in his goal to keep a nation from falling to the despotic communists. Now, the Press has so often abused its freedoms, proving themselves anti-American and even treasonous in the eyes of most citizens, their blundering attempts to instigate another Battle of Tet, in which the US wins the battle but loses the war, falls far short. Thankfully now there is the internet blogs and conservative leaning Fox News to give a more balanced interpretation of the Iraqi Conflict, over the one-sided liberal Media viewpoint. A more relevant view, if comparisons must be made, would be the Battle of the Bulge of December 1944. There America, thinking the war nearly won, was struck with a vicious German counterattack from the Ardennes Forest. The only forces General Eisenhower had in place to blunt the attack was a few weak and worn-out divisions who thought they would get a much-needed rest. Instead of panicking, Ike saw this new attack as an opportunity to deliver a blow to Hitler which he would never recover from. This proved to be the case, and when the Allies renewed the offensive in 1945, the Germans had little resistance left in them. Though over 19,000 US troops died in the campaign, the Bulge is considered one of our greatest military victories. It’s all a matter of perspective, and I will choose the President’s view that we are winning in Iraq over the defeatist Democrats and the gloom and doom Press any day.