What Losing Means

Matt Yglesias has a great post about how it's impossible to separate military outcomes from policy outcomes, using Tet as an example:

The goal of the VC/NVA military campaign was to persuade the United States of America to stop backing the Republic of Vietnam regime in order to precipitate the collapse of the ROV government and unite the Vietnamese nation under the leadership of the Communist government in Hanoi.

The Tet Offensive did not, on its own, accomplish any of those things. It did, however, achieve major strides in that direction. It was, therefore, a success. It wasn't a "military" failure but a "political" success, it was just a success.

Read the whole thing. It's very nicely stated. And remember it the next time someone says the Iraq War (or the Afghan war for that matter) was a military success but a political failure. They were neither.