Monday, August 01, 2005

Lessons from Tet

Well, here it is, as promised – my hubby’s first stab at blogging. For a little background on the hubster, he’s the son of a Vietnam War U.S. Army Special Forces vet (3 ½ tours – HOOOAAAHHH, Dad!), and a gung-ho partner in the "Soldier-Shopping" forays for my Soldiers’ Angels adoptees.

The Tet Offensive, which began on January 30th, 1968, was a turning point in the war in Vietnam. The offensive itself was a disaster for the Viet Cong and NVA. From the start, the coordination of the attack was thrown off by a calendar change five months earlier. That, coupled with a lack of expected civilian uprisings against the American and South Vietnamese forces, crippled the effectiveness of the attack. The nineteen-person force that attacked the embassy in Saigon, so widely publicized, actually never posed a real threat, and never breached anything but the outer wall, where they died. However, thanks to gross misrepresentation by the U.S. media, the American people, as well as President Johnson, believed Tet to be a major blow to the American ability to win the war. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

I’m a numbers man, and the numbers point out the absolute defeat of the attacking Tet Offensive forces better than anything:

The U.S., Korea, and Australia, combined, lost about 1,500 KIA, with about 7,800 wounded. The NVA and VC lost 45,000 KIA, with 60,000 wounded. 6,000 were captured.

In addition, many of their “secret cells” were ordered to rise up, and were eliminated.

That’s not how it played out in the U.S. media:

“…the mainstream U.S. media depicted Tet as a severe defeat for the United States and as the beginning of an endless quagmire for American forces. That became the conventional wisdom of both the media and political elites. And as a result, the North Vietnamese eventually triumphed on the only battlefield where the United States could be defeated — the American home front.” (John O’Sullivan, N.R. Online)

The resulting fallout from the press coverage provides important insight into the power of the media: it can effect the outcome of war.

And the U.S. media is doing the same thing today that it did back then. More and more they are selecting only the negative aspects of the present war to bombard us with.

Every time an American or Iraqi is wounded or killed, it is plastered all over the media, while counter-attacks and successes are underreported or completely ignored.

The media would have us believe that we are there solely with the support of Great Britain. In fact, at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, there were forty-nine coalition members. As of March, 2005, there were seventy-two. Twenty-five nations had troops in Iraq as of that date.

According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers:

* Average crude oil production is now 2.4 million barrels per day, up from 1.8 mb/d before the war.

* Iraq is now producing 50 percent of its crude oil requirements, up from zero before the war.

* Iraq’s national power grid is now producing 40 percent more electricity than before the war, and the power is better distributed. Most Iraqi citizens now have 16-18 hours of electricity per day, and the system is more stable, with very few blackouts. Corps and CPA goal is to have the power system producing at least 6,000 megawatts per day.

* Corps has built 600 kilometers of electrical transmission lines.

And according to the DoD…

“Under the Gulf Region Division’s supervision, more than 1,500 reconstruction projects are under way throughout Iraq, with another 650 already completed, Kosich said. Ultimately, the Army Corps of Engineers expects to oversee a projected 2,900 projects -- a “phenomenal increase” over late June, when contractors were “turning dirt” on just 200 projects, he said.
Projects range from large infrastructure projects -- power plants and wastewater and water treatment facilities, and oil projects, for example -- and small-scale projects such as street repairs, new or improved health clinics, schools, and police and fire stations….”

“… In Baghdad’s Al Ameen district, a new $2.7 million sewage and wastewater project replaces open trenches and malfunctioning lagoons and moves sanitary waste from the neighborhood...”

“… More than 170,000 Iraqis are employed in reconstruction jobs…”

These are just a few examples of the types of stories that the media could be covering, but isn’t. Once again, we’re at a point where the media is threatening to undermine the entirety of U.S. military efforts, and turn the American people against both the government and U.S. troops.

Vietnam veterans returning from the war were spit on and pelted with garbage and feces because people bought into the machinations of the liberal media. Today, that pervasive anti-Americanism is alive and well. The enemy is using the reports from our own media to bolster their efforts and morale. Put simply, all of the efforts of the coalition forces can be undermined by the regurgitated bullsh*t put out by the U.S. media if we let it happen. We need to keep the positive information in the public eye, and diligently support the efforts of the troops.

We need to prevent history from repeating itself.

-- Brian

posted by Pam @ 7:30 AM |

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