Does the United States have more to fear from the Islamist rebels currently battling our troops in Iraq-or from the liberal press here at home? In an analysis headlined "A Mini-Tet Offensive in Iraq," Arnaud de Borchgrave of UPI wrote April 6, "Iraq will only be another Vietnam if the home front collapses, as it did following the Tet offensive."
"Tet was an unmitigated military disaster for Hanoi and its Vietcong troops in South Vietnam," wrote de Borchgrave. "Yet that was not the way it was reported in U.S. and other media around the world. It was television's first war. And some 50 million Americans at home saw the carnage of dead bodies in the rubble, and dazed Americans running around." Bui Tin, a member of the general staff of the North Vietnamese army, de Borchgrave recalled, said that the United States failed in Vietnam "because of its democracy. Through dissent and protest, it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win."
