You've been Tetted!

Forgive the flippant title, but recent events in Spain have put me in mind of the idiotic MTV show Punk'd where pseudo-celebrities are victimized by practical jokes and then made fun of when they overreact. In this case, however, nations are the wide-eyed victims and Islamic fundamentalist terrorists are the merry pranksters. Though they may live in caves and have a medieval outlook on life, Al Quaeda is savvy enough to learn from history, and in this instance they have looked to the best teachers on how to make fools of the governments of western nations, the Vietnamese.

Most readers may have forgotten all about the Tet Offensive, but back in the Spring of 1968 during the height of the US presidential campaign, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong decided they didn't like the war escalation policies of Lyndon Johnson, so they launched a massive offensive on Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. They expended more military resources than they could afford, took enormous casualties, but they managed to capture 39 out of 44 provincial capitals in South Vietnam and made it look - at least for a week or two - as if the US was on the verge of losing the Vietnam war. All that terriotry was taken back in short order and tactically the NVA and the VC were in a worse position than they had been before the Tet Offensive, but it was an enormous political victory. It made Johnson look like he was failing in the war, and gave a huge boost to democrat candidates challenging him in the primary. So much so that Johnson eventually dropped out of the election rather than face a humiliating defeat. The Vietnamese were politically sharp and knew how fickle American voters could be, so they struck at our soft underbelly, our fear of defeat and embarassment, and through violence tthey changed the course of an American election. Al Quada leaders are no dummies . Many of them were educated in western universities. And what one terroristic regime can do another can duplicate, and so they have done this week in Spain with absolutely brilliance. With the explosion of a few bombs and the loss of a few hundred lives the terrorists managed to topple the moderate, pro-US government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and bring about the victory of Socialist Party candidate Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero who appears eager to appease the terrorists in any way he can. .

Have no doubt this was a clear victory won by terrorism over the lives of the free people of Spain. Aznar was ahead by a significant margin in the polls and had substantial support from the public, including support for his participation in the efforts to pacify and rebuild Iraq. Spain was America's staunchest ally in this effort, and no doubt that is why they were targeted. As soon as the bombs went off in the Madrid subway all of that began to change. The heretofore brave Spanish people encountered the direct effects of terrorism on a large scale for the first time, and they broke and ran to the arms of socialist demagogues who offered to let them trade some of their freedom for an illusion of safety by bending over backwards to appease the terrorists. Once the election was over Zapatero's first actions were to declare that he was going to withdraw from the coalition in Iraq, striking exactly the blow against America the terrorists wanted. Spain, like France and Germany lost its backbone and in the face of threats decided it was easier to let themselves be ruled by terrorists and their allies than to make hard decisions, risk lives and do the right thing. For them the price of freedom was too high.

This stunning terrorist victory carries with it some frightening implications. Now that Al Quaeda knows that Tetting the weaker coalition nations will work, there's nothing to stop them from trying this tactic again and again. It's election season here in America. John Kerry's campaign seems to offer every incentive to the terrorists to use this tactic against the United States. A well timed blow against the US in the early fall could do the Tet trick again, scaring the voters into devaluing their liberty the way the Spanish did and voting in Kerry and the appeasers, giving the terrorists another victory and effectively putting the US under their thumb through their willing socialist surrogates in the democratic party. .

It's a sobering scenario, but one which I have some hope might backfire. Remember, while the Tet Offensive itself was a short-term political victory, not everyone in America fell for it, and the result of nominating a weak democrat candidate was a Republican victory in the general election. With a Tet strategy there's always the possibility of a backlash, that it will get the people of the target country so pissed off that they grow a backbone and strike out for revenge. This is more likely to happen in countries which have been tested this way in the past. A country like Poland which has already gone through its share of hardship and oppression is unlikely to let terrorists drive it back into a state of subjugation. We can hope that with the lesson of Tet so many years ago and the more recent events of 9/11 the US has also learned the lesson that appeasing the terrorists is never worth the sacrifice, so that when they strike against us our response will be to strike back twice as hard, not to take the Spannish route and and turn to those who are so willing to take away our sovereignty and pay us back with a false sense of security.