At What Point is it the Tet Offensive
ArchPundit
The Tet Offensive was a military defeat for the North Vietnamese, but a victory in getting across the point that a long war of attrition was going to continue for as long as one could imagine.
With a full civil war on the verge in Iraq and everyone besides Fox News understanding the current situation is dire, one important point is being left out.
When South Vietnam was overrun, there was no fear it would be a failed state. The Soviet Union provided it with resources and ensured it was largely a functioning state—to the point it was able to invade Cambodia.
One thought in Iraq is that we can leave and just let the situation sort itself out, but the very real problem now that we are stuck in a war that shouldn’t have happened, and more importantly , when it did happen, the Administration created new levels of FUBAR, is that leaving may well mean Iraq turns into a failed state and a potential staging ground for terrorism and all sorts of pesky situations involving Iraqi neighborhs including Iran and Turkey which both might make land grabs if the Iraqi state was never to effectively be established.
The consequences to American security are far greater than in Vietnam. There leaving meant we simply worked to contain further expansion of the Soviet Bloc by using Thailand and other allies.
In this case, Iraq could fall completely apart and be divided up by neighbors or it could become a staging area for Al Qaeda. At the same time, there appears to be no effective means bring Iraq under control.
So what do you do? I have no idea at this point. After screwing up the initial security arrangements and continuing with delusional strategies based on delusional thinking it is increasingly clear that there are no effective means to stop the spiral of violence in Iraq. Setting benchmarks for withdrawal won’t seem to work given the chaos on the ground virtually guarantees that any benchmarks won’t be met and if they can’t be met, there is no real exit strategy.