by Alan Wolfe

Tom Friedman said it first, National Public Radio repeated it, and now I hear it everywhere. The recent upsurge in violence associated with the insurgency in Iraq is the Tet Offensive all over again. Tet, we are told, was a military defeat for the North Vietnamese but a psychological victory. Our enemies knew they could not win on the battlefield and decided to change American public opinion instead. This analysis is nonsense on stilts. There is no "military" theatre over here and "psychological" campaign over there. If insurgents convince Americans to withdraw their troops, they win the only military skirmish that matters. The notion that we "won" the Tet offensive is designed to keep alive the dangerous illusion that Americans never lose wars. In fact, we lost Vietnam and we are clearly on the cusp of losing Iraq. We could not win in either case because the people we were fighting against were able to mobilize more overall resources on behalf of their cause than we were on behalf of ours. Clauswitz would have understood. Tom Friedman does not.