Petraeus: At Least Two Years Too Late

As noted here, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said yesterday that the recent wave of suicide bombings in that country are an attempt by insurgents to "grab the headlines" in an effort to create a "mini-Tet."

Petraeus is, of course, referring to the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. And while it is nice for someone in our command to make a reference to a war that more closely approximates the disaster in Iraq than any other military engagement in this country's history (as opposed to, say, the Revolutionary War by President Brainless), this is yet another historical misrepresentation.

As the Wikipedia article notes, the majority of this country supported the war in Southeast Asia at the time of Tet, and the battle was actually a decisive military victory for coalition forces led by this country fighting the North Vietnamese. However, it became a propaganda victory for the opposition in part because they managed to strike so close to our headquarters in Saigon, when it was believed prior to the attack that that was impossible.

In the case of Iraq, though (as noted here), support for the war had already dropped to comparable "Tet" levels in the case of Vietnam in January 2005, as noted by John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University.

How could we have ever stood a chance to achieve anything approximating "victory" in Iraq when our "leadership" failed to understand our own history?