Now's Not The Time To Get Clean For Gene

JAMES H. Willbanks is the director of the military history department at the United States Army Command and General Staff College. His New York Times article on the Surge in Iraq, in political comparison to the Tet Offensive of 1968, is a generally worthwhile analysis but - as history - it misstates or conveniently ignores the actual nature of the US political discussion of war in 2008. "... American military actions today can be informed by one general lesson from the Tet offensive, and that is the importance of not putting the best face on a military situation for political reasons." But the far larger lesson to be learned from Tet is to avoid putting the worst face on a military situation for political reasons. That's because the eagerness of some to indulge in the latter practice is what invites - and eventually rewards - precisely such forays in the first place. A modernised Eugene McCarthyism is the danger, in other words, not Westmorelandism from Iraq.