Tet Offensive Redux?
In January 1968, during the lunar new year (or “Tet”) holiday, North Vietnamese and communist Viet Cong forces launched a coordinated attack against a number of targets in South Vietnam. The U.S. and South Vietnamese militaries sustained heavy losses before finally repelling the communist assault.
The North Vietnamese had hoped that the offensive would trigger a popular uprising, leading to the collapse of the South Vietnamese government, and forcing the United States to negotiate a peace agreement or perhaps even to withdraw.
The strikes on the major cities of Saigon and Hue had a strong psychological impact as far as the game of expectations was concerned. They demonstrated that the North Vietnamese were not as weak as the Administration of then President Lyndon Johnson had claimed; after all, they managed to breach the outer walls of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon
While the initial attacks stunned the allies, causing them to lose control of several cities temporarily, they quickly recovered, countered the attacks, and inflicted major casualties on the North Vietnamese, regained all of the lost territory, and prevented them for achieving their goal of stirring a popular insurrection. The bottom line was that the offensive proved a military defeat for North Vietnam.
But that was not the way things were seen in the United States where the television images of the Viet Kong forces penetrating the American Embassy in Saigon shocked the American public who had believed that North Vietnamese were being defeated and certainly incapable of launching such a successful military operation.
The Tet Offensive played an important role in weakening U.S. public support for the war in Vietnam after Americans concluded that a US victory in Vietnam was not imminent.
Those public sentiments had a major impact on the decisions made by President Johnson. While military leaders insisted that the U.S. was in a position to defeat the North and called for launching a U.S.-South Vietnam offensive. Johnson and his aides ended up pursuing a strategy of “de-escalation,” ending the bombing of North Vietnam, setting limits on U.S. troops in South Vietnam, and agreeing to open peace talks with North Vietnam, before announcing that he would not seek a second term as president. An American military victory was transformed into a diplomatic and political defeat.
In the same way Tet Offensive in 1968 impacted the American public and elites, the Hamas attack on Israel on October last year, during which 1,200 Israelis were killed and another 250 taken hostage, stunned the Israeli people and their leaders. In both cases, the political and military leaders had pledged that that kind of an assault was inconceivable. The expectations of invulnerability that the elites had created were not fulfilled.
But after the initial shock, not unlike the American and South Vietnamese forces in 1968, the Israelis and their military went on the offensive, launched an intense three-week campaign of air strikes, followed by a mass ground invasion initially targeting north Gaza, and operating across the Palestinian territory from Gaza City in the north to Khan Younis in the south.
The bottom line is that Hamas has been knocked off balance and is now in retreat. More than 10,000 Hamas members are believed to have been killed and thousands more wounded or captured.
Indeed, according to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) around 18 of Hamas 24 battalions have been destroyed, and the remaining forces are weak and not in a position to control Gaza and its population.
According to press reports, the Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, has lost communication with his forces. And unlike the Viet Cong leaders in 1968 who were able to flee into North Vietnam, Sinwar and his lieutenants are being hunted by the Israelis who are demanding that they surrender or be killed.
Israel has inflicted a major military blow to Hamas as well as to the Palestinians in Gaza who had elected and supported the terrorist movement and its October 7th attack.
Against this backdrop, and the failure to negotiate a cease-fire or a deal to release the hostages with Hamas, Israel is now ready to squeeze Hamas further in a move that could allow it to declare a political victory in the war.
The Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now ready to launch a massive invasion of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city and the last holdout of Hamas, a move that enjoys wide support among the majority of Israelis.
Imagine the U.S. and South Vietnamese following the Tet Offensive by pursuing a military strategy of defeating North Vietnam in 1968.
But like in 1968, the television images, this time of civilian casualties in Gaza, have helped energize those on the political left who seem to be intent of helping, the Viet Cong then, Hamas now, and in the process eroding the support for the good guys, in this case, Israel, and turn a military victory into a political defeat.