While listening to NPR yesterday afternoon, I heard Sen. Joe Biden discussing the situation in Fallujah, Iraq. Though he is as leery of the Vietnam comparisons as anyone, he did draw one analogy that caught my attention.
The Tet Offensive of 1968 was really the turning point for how many Americans viewed the Vietnam War. Biden pointed out that, for the first time, Americans realized that we were not in control, and that the American government had no plan. Tet revealed that the American govenment's strategy was reactive, and there was no effective strategy in place to deal with a large-scale insurgency.
Tet also demonstrated graphically that any American effort to regain and maintain "control" in Vietnam was going to be both costly and bloody. American leaders either didn't grasp this concept, or just plain didn't care about the cost- because America wasn't about to lose, dammit.
Such is the current situation in Fallujah. Muqtada al-Sadr's fanatical band of ragtag militants is taking it to American troops that are, in general, poorly equipped and trained in the "art" of urban warfare. Anyone familiar with urban warfare will understand what a bloody affair it can be. It's as close to retail combat as the modern battlefield gets in this day and age. American military doctrine has strongly de-emphasized urban warfare over the years because planners recognized that Americans were not willing to bear the cost if it was to be tallied in the lives of their sons and daughters.
The events in Fallujah has taken the American military to a place where no one wants it to be- reacting and on it's heels. Retaking and "pacifying" Fallujah will be both bloody and costly. What makes things even worse is that Americans are now beginning to see in graphic terms that we are not in control in Iraq. Far from it. The odds that we ever will be are becoming more remote with each passing day.
Anyone who believes that history doesn't repeat itself simply isn't paying attention. I'm not going to argue that Iraq is George W. Bush's Vietnam- not yet, anyway. Nonetheless, I think one can reasonably argue that Fallujah is Bush's Tet Offensive. We didn't have a plan then, and we certainly don't appear to have one now. Who says history isn't cyclical?
