The Hamas incursion into Israel has garnered much media news and commentary, yet there is an event in history many decades ago that may not be a perfect comparison, but does have a striking similarity,
Tet.
The Hamas attack seemed to come out of nowhere and to those of us alive and listening to the news back in the day, Tet, as it began, similarly arose out of nowhere to surprise all too many.
Networks, talking heads, military analysts have not mentioned the comparison of two big surprises. Maybe the analogy is all too flawed, but that no one even mentioned if only to debunk it is surprising.
The website War on The Rocks published The Importance of the Vietnam War's Tet Offensive by Gregory Daddis on January 29, 2018, which is about 50 years after The North's big gambit.
It is worth a read and presents the well reasoned author's thoughts.
During Tet, the PAVN and VC infiltrated, surprised and fought against the US forces. It was quite the shock as all too many in government were seeing progress in our effort.
Many aver Tet, a tactical defeat for the enemy, led to enough of the public to stop support for the war leading to eventual withdrawal.
Don't know, but remembering listening in my dorm with others as LBJ announced that he would not seek reelection and was calling on the North Vietnamese to meet for negotiations.
So even if it was not the NVA plan, it kinda worked.
The Hamas plan seems also to have been quite the tactical success, but what next?
Do they have the Plan B as to how to maximize resistance and hold out for as long as possible and work towards bringing Hezbollah in? Will there be an estrangement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, thus taking a possible pact off the table?
Who knows?
It would not seem that Hamas, having planned so meticulously the attack have no idea what is going to happen next.
It is not certain that Israel knows where it is all going.
According to a NYT article, Israeli Military Says It’s ‘in Formation’ to Strike Gaza City reported on antiwar.com. Is planning going on? Are they taking time to figure out something while carpet bombing?
For those who love carnage and death and destruction, the end game is a ways off.
As we are not qualified to speculate where the Gaza game is ending, we won't.
I just remember, when I was in the army, asking a sergeant in my section who had fought during Tet whether they had been able to take out all the NVA or had they escaped. His reaction was to laugh. That was around 1972.
Oh well, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Because they invaded their neighbor. Israel is not across the globe. You don’t have to be a genius to see this is a stupid comparison.