Posted on 12/26/2007 4:13:14 AM PST by Kaslin
Sometime within the next six months or so, al Qaeda or Saddamist terrorists will attempt a Tet offensive.
No, Middle Eastern mass murderers don't celebrate the Vietnamese festival of Tet, but trust that America's enemies everywhere do celebrate and systematically seek to emulate the strategic political effects North Vietnam's 1968 attack obtained.
This spring marks the 40th anniversary of Hanoi's offensive (yes, 40 years, two generations). It will also mark the umpteenth time American enemies have attempted to win in the psychological and political clash of an American election what they cannot win on the battlefield.
In the course of Tet 1968, North Vietnamese, American and South Vietnamese forces all suffered tactical defeat and achieved tactical victories; that's usually the case in every military campaign. At the operational level, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) suffered a terrible defeat. As NVA regiments emerged from jungle-covered enclaves and massed for attack, they exposed themselves to the firepower of U.S. aircraft and artillery. The NVA units temporarily seized many cities at the cost of extremely heavy casualties.
However, Tet achieved the grand political ends North Vietnam sought. Tet was a strategic psychological attack launched in a presidential election year during a primary season featuring media-savvy "peace" candidates. "Peace" in this context must be italicized with determined irony; in the historical lens it requires an insistent blindness steeled by Stalinist mendacity to confuse the results of U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam (e.g., Cambodia's genocide) with any honest interpretation of peace.
Reflecting on Tet in a 1989 interview with CBS News' Morley Safer, NVA commander General Vo Nguyen Giap said: "The war was fought on many fronts. At that time the most important one was American public opinion." He added: "Military power is not the decisive factor in war. Human beings! Human beings are the decisive factor." (See Howard Langer's "The Vietnam War: An Encyclopedia of Quotations.")
Giap knew attacking U.S. public opinion was a classic anti-U.S. ploy. In 1864, politically shattering Abraham Lincoln was a key Confederate goal. The Confederates launched limited offensives (Early's attack on Washington) and bitterly resisted Union attacks, particularly in Virginia where Ulysses S. Grant's limited success was achieved at an enormous cost in casualties. The Confederates' political message: "We remain militarily powerful. The Abolitionist Party will never defeat us. Lincoln is a mad man, a dictator, a gangling fool from hinterland Illinois whose war aims are delusional." That message dovetailed (pun intended) with the campaign message of Copperhead Democrats like Ohio's Clement Vallandigham. (The Copperheads were the "peace wing" of the Democratic Party.) In reality the Confederacy was an impoverished wreck split by Union armies. Its only hope was the psychological erosion of Union will.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and his ilk, arguably our era's Vallandighams, have already declared Iraq lost. Last week Reid hedged his defeatist rhetoric. However, al Qaeda and Saddamist plotters are betting a deadly spasm of bombs and subsequent media magnification will give Reid a reason "to clip his hedge."
Their "ultimate Iraqi Tet" would feature simultaneous terror strikes in every major Iraqi city. These simultaneous strikes would inflict hideous civilian casualties with the goal of discrediting Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's and General David Petraeus' assessments that Iraqi internal security has improved. The terrorists would reduce Iraqi government buildings to rubble. Striking the Green Zone would be the media coup de grace, intentionally echoing North Vietnam's assault on the U.S. embassy in Saigon. Al Qaeda terrorists would also attack Shia shrines. Kidnapping or assassinating of senior Iraqi leaders would be another objective.
Actually executing a genuine Giap Tet-type offensive in Iraq, however, borders on fantasy. On a daily basis Iraq's assorted terrorist organizations and militia gangs want to cause such system-shaking, simultaneous carnage, but they don't because, well, they can't. A Giap Tet requires a level of coordination the terrorists have never exhibited because they simply don't have it. It requires internal Iraqi political support that the terror cadres and militias lack; fear is not a political program.
Still, the terrorists will attempt a series of terror spectaculars, and kill several hundred civilians in the process, because -- in the quadrennial turmoil of an American presidential contest -- sensational carnage that even momentarily seeds the perception of defeat is their only chance of victory.
Most of the victims of Islamic militancy are other Muslims. For this reason radicals eventually become unpopular among their own people and, hopefully, will run out of new recruits. If you think about it, the American invasion of Iraq was a clever exploitation of this phenomenon by forcing the Islamic radicals to fight in Iraq where they killed many Muslims, especially women and children, thus causing the Islamic radicals, such as al Qaeda, to lose their popularity among Muslims in general.
In the past, the West did not get involved in Islamic religious wars unless attacked as they were three times before over the last 1,500 years, and on September 11. Unfortunately, politically correct sensibilities make it even more difficult to confront Islamic radicalism head on. For example, fighting back is considered by Muslims and appeasers as culturally insensitive (i.e., a “war on Islam”), another ‘’Crusade’’ if you will, and many in the Western media have accepted this incredible interpretation of reality.
Some historians have pointed out that the medieval Crusades were a series of wars fought in response to Islamic violence against Christians, not as the opening act of aggression against Islam. In this respect the current war on terror is in the tradition of the Crusades.
There are many other ‘’Crusades’’ brewing around the world in all the places where Islam in the form of aggressive Islamic radicals is making unprovoked war on their Christian and Jewish neighbors. Politically correct academics and journalists enable the liberal news media to turn this reality inside out. But a close look at the violence in Africa, Asia and the Middle East shows a definite pattern of Islamic radicals persecuting those who do not agree with them, not the other way around.
Islamic terrorism makes most of the headlines but it is not the cause of many casualties as compared to many previous and current wars. Most of the related violence and deaths in the world is the result of many ‘’little wars’’ that get little media attention outside their region. While causalities from terrorism are currently about 5,000-10,000 dead a year worldwide, the dead and wounded from all the other ongoing wars actually comprise about 95 percent of all the casualties. Islamic terrorism seems to be larger because the terrorists threaten attacks every where and put much larger populations in fear.
The communist Democrats and their fifth column media pipe organs will be happy to assist any filthy terrorists in achieving their goals.
Delighted, in fact.
I think most if not all of America’s enemies around the world are keenly aware of the fifth column of Liberal “journalists” and politicians that are ever ready to work hand-in-hand with those enemies if the Libs stand to gain power by doing so. All you have to do is actually listen to what many of the Muzzie criminals say and you’ll see that their talking points are the Lib/MSM/Dem talking points too. They feed off of each other in a continuous cycle of public propaganda story arcs and events.
Manufacturing speeches and events tailor made for the American Libs to package and sell their political views is always a preferred favorite tactic because it saves the Libs from having to invent or manufacture it themselves (which they do constantly) and it helps them clean their fingerprints from the process and continue to pretend that they are not complicit in that process.
Liberalism + MSM = filth.
And they will learn, once again, as losing generals have learned through out recent history, that murdering civilians with bombs doesn't win wars.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Saudi Clergy Turn On Al Qaeda
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htterr/articles/20071220.aspx
...............While the Saudi government has been pressuring senior clerics to at least stop encouraging Saudis to support al Qaeda, the switch to being anti-al Qaeda appears to be a recognition that most Moslems have come to view the slaughter of so many Iraqis by terrorists as beyond the pale. In that respect, al Awdah is simply reflecting what most Moslems believe, and what he can no longer defend.
I remember the last Tet. Yeah, I know, I’m a geezer. But this time I won’t be a helpless 6th-Grader. This time I’m empowered. This time I and my pards have the power to inoculate or to immunize individuals in advance of any propaganda blitz by any of the organized persuaders who seek to gain by carrying the terrorist’s water.
Conditioning is a nonspecific means of eliminating potential vulnerabilities in the domestic audience before they can be exploited. This technique is preemptive in nature. Conditioning is very similar to a preventative action measure. This technique does not specifically address potential themes that the opponent may use in a propaganda program against the force, but seeks to remove or reduce potential vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.
We can rely on the MSM to start fitting in any incident that helps.
Only the news that fits.
Regards
Bonehead
ping
Al Qaeda in all its variants
Taliban in all its variants
DemocRATS in all its socialist variants
The Urinalists of the LameStreamMedia
This war would already be long over or Sept 11 might not have occurred were it not for the Left here in America.
Thanks for posting. This is a vitally important article from a keen observer, and military expert. We must prepare the American people for further operations against our national will to win. Time for us to get tough.
Hard for me to believe it’s been almost 40 years. Maybe it’s all the crap I see from our MSM.
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