Tet lives on - forty years later

It is not often you can pinpoint the decline of a great empire. For the US January 30, 1968, 40 years ago, is a worthy contender.

That night and the next morning the Tet offensive began. National Liberation Front forces rose up across South Vietnam and took parts of Saigon, the capital of the US puppet regime. They remained in control for a few days and even briefly held the US Embassy compound.

Their major military success was in Vietnam's third largest city, Hue. The Vietcong held the city for almost a month. They also held Cholon, the mainly Chinese area of Saigon for a few weeks, until the US military in its gentle caring way destroyed the suburb and its thousands of civilian inhabitants.

During the Tet offensive a US major said of Dentre that it "was necessary to destroy the town to save it".

One of the aims of the Tet offensive was to show the American public that the US could not win the war. The NLF succeeded.

The Tet offensive exposed the lies of the US leadership about Vietnam. In March of that year US President Lyndon Johnson decided not to run for president. He knew then that the war was unwinnable.

Tet had shown the US population the strength and commitment of the liberation forces and the support they had among the Vietnamese people. This bolstered the US and global anti-war movement. In 1968 for the first time a majority of Americans opposed the war. Mass demonstrations across the world called for an end to US intervention.

1968 was a year of tumult and rebellion across the world. There were black uprisings in US cities; workers were on the verge of taking power in France in May; open rebellion broke out among soldiers in Vietnam (especially blacks); and cops battled with anti-war protestors on the streets of Chicago during the Democratic Party's 1968 convention.

There was a sense among a sizeable minority that ordinary working people could change the world for the better.

This cry for change found an echo in the US elections in 1968 when presidential candidate Richard Nixon hinted he had a secret plan to end the war.

Once elected Nixon increased the bombing. He attacked neutral Cambodia. Anti-war protests across the US and the world became massive and militant.

About two million Vietnamese died in the War. More than 50,000 US troops came home in body bags. The US dropped more bombs on Vietnam than the number dropped during World War II.

It all failed. It took seven years from the Tet uprising, but the combination of rebellion in the West, rebellion in the US army, and the struggle of the nationalists in Vietnam saw the National Liberation Front capture Saigon in April 1975.

The defeat of US imperialism in Vietnam was a step forwards for humanity, not because the new rulers of Vietnam were in any way socialist, or whatever nonsense they proclaimed, but because the imperialist beast lay in its lair for a decade, unable to venture outside to attack other countries.

The legacy of Vietnam continues.

The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were aimed at convincing possible imperialist competitors like China and Europe and any uppity non co-operative regimes like Iran that, although US economic power was declining, the US ruling elite was prepared to use military force to retain its number one position in the world.

Yet even now, the beast moves slowly from its old war wounds. The US ruling class only dared contribute about 165,000 troops to Iraq (and that includes the increased numbers from the failed surge strategy). It feared military defeat. It feared enlivening the anti-war movement if a large number of body bags began to flow back to the US. (The current leadership learned one lesson from Vietnam - they have controlled the media tightly so that even the images of the dead are censored.)

Afghanistan is another Vietnam. It took ten years for the Afghanis to drive the Russians out. They will do the same to the Americans. The Taliban again has popular support thanks to the brutality of the US occupation. What makes the Bush think he can successfully prop up a regime whose remit is to parts of Kabul at best? Again, the US is frightened to commit more troops, fearing both escalating the resistance and provoking a backlash at home. Tet lives.

And what is Australia's role? Moving troops from the safety of Iraq to the more perilous situation in Afghanistan is madness. We should be in neither country.

The “HowRuddistas” want to continue to be the imperialist power in "our" region. Strategically for the Rudd imperialists this means the continuation of the US Alliance, enabling Australia to operate in the South Pacific and South-East Asia under the protection of America. For this reason Rudd will sacrifice a few thousand troops to Afghanistan.

A defeat for the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan will, like Vietnam, be a step forward for humanity. For the US there will be more and more Tets, not just politically but, as Iraq and Afghanistan show, militarily as well.