Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Jihadists using lessons of Tet

From The Australian, OPINION October 21, 2006, by Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor ....

TO think intelligently about Iraq right now, it is necessary to understand that absolutely everything in the world today, including politics here in Australia, is distorted by the US mid-term congressional elections on November 7.

This is what President George W.Bush meant when he agreed with Thomas Friedman of The New York Times that the present spike in violence in Iraq may be analogous to the Tet offensive in Vietnam in 1968. The Tet offensive was all about the brilliant use of extravagant violence by America's and Australia's enemies to change US policy by changing US politics.
The Tet offensive came in 1968. It was a joint effort by the North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong to strike all across South Vietnam, which was supported by the US. Tet was a military catastrophe for the communists but a decisive political and psychological victory. For more than three weeks the communists took control of the ancient city of Hue. Thousands of innocent civilians - clergymen, nuns, Buddhists, civil administrators, teachers, anyone thought to be unsympathetic to the communists - were rounded up and killed.

This slaughter never gave the slightest pause to the peace movement in the West, which was campaigning for a communist victory in Vietnam. But Tet was a military disaster for the communists. The Viet Cong was crippled. South Vietnam was eventually invaded in 1975 in an entirely conventional military operation by the North Vietnamese army.

Tet was the first of the television victories over battlefield realities. Tet's scope and savagery shocked Americans and demoralised a large portion of the US governing elite. Although US tactics improved greatly after 1968, while US force numbers were drawn down and the South Vietnamese army became an effective fighting force, Congress ultimately decided that it was against any further resistance to the Indochinese communists, including Cambodia's Pol Pot. It refused to fund the war and cut off all aid to South Vietnam, with the inevitable results.

All Vietnam analogies are suspect, but you can see what Bush was driving at. The global jihadists have a very sophisticated sense of Western politics, especially US politics. It is indeed a central point of jihadist ideology that the US is weak and cannot stand sustained casualties. It's clear the jihadists want the November 7 elections to develop an unstoppable momentum against Bush so that the mood for the US to withdraw from Iraq becomes irresistible. And they want the US to withdraw in defeat and humiliation. There can be little doubt that John Howard is right to say that this would be a massive boost for terrorists worldwide. Similarly, it is hard to believe that this is what Kim Beazley really wants.

On the other hand, it is clear that US tactics in Iraq have not worked.
Strategically, the US was right to intervene in Iraq. Operationally, it has made grievous mistakes: not establishing a provisional Iraqi government straight after the invasion, not sending in enough troops to secure order and deliver services, disbanding the Iraqi army, sacking too many civil servants because they had associations with the Baath party, and never sorting out the differences between the great US agencies of government, the Pentagon with its uniformed and civilian wings, the State Department, the CIA and so on.

The US public is growing frustrated with Iraq not because they cannot bear casualties in a good cause, but because they have been repeatedly told things will get better, only to find them getting worse. They doubt whether there is a coherent and effective plan. They will endanger their soldiers for a good cause, but not for a folly. The interaction of the enemy with domestic politics is a danger for a democracy, as the Tet offensive showed. Yet at a broader level, the fact that US leaders - and Australian leaders - need to take public opinion with them to some extent in matters of war is a good thing. It is part of the genius of democracy, a system with checks and balances leads to course corrections that are more likely than not to produce effective policy.
The Bush administration will be driven to course corrections in Iraq because of the realities in Iraq as well as the realities of the mid-term congressional elections.

But these interactions are extremely complex and anyone who confidently tells you what will happen is selling snake oil. It is possible that anti-Bush Democrats will utterly rout the Republicans and this will lead to a repudiation of Bush's position in Iraq. But even then, Bush will not be completely without power. He can sack Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, express general humility, appoint a bipartisan figure like former Democrat Joe Lieberman, and pledge a new policy in Iraq.

The new policy might look a lot like the old policy: trying to set up a new Iraqi government. It's very unlikely Bush will simply disengage from Iraq. Apart from anything else, US strategic interests are too great. By this I mean interests in Iraq, in the broader Middle East and in US credibility. In one sense Bush has to remain engaged in Iraq until the end of his term, then Iraq becomes his successor's problem. The US will want to draw down the number of its troops in Iraq, but it cannot abandon Iraq.

The way the US goes about drawing down is critical. As others have said, jihadists will be inspired much more by a US defeat than by a US victory. Any new president, as much as Bush, will want to avoid creating a vacuum in Iraq, and to protect US interests and credibility.
There are two ways Bush will likely have a difficult last two years. The Democrats, if they control Congress, will criminalise politics, launching endless investigations into everything the Bush administration has done. The Valerie Plame case shows even when nothing wrong has been done, the process of guerilla litigation can paralyse an administration.

Finally, because Bush's vice-president is not running for president, no domestic actor in US politics has much to fear in the future from antagonising the administration. On the other hand, if in the face of all this the Republicans somehow retain control of Congress, Bush will be re-energised. We can but watch and wait.

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