I would find this a lot more compelling if there was more than logical speculation about the current political moment. That said, the article does raise one important point: that the decline in attacks is a window that diplomatic efforst need to maximize upon. It seems to me that the surge performed and is preforming as well as anyone could have realistically hoped. This article is basically a warning that, if there isn't diplmatic improvement before another Iraq's Tet knocks out whatever wind is in Iraq gov's sails, its going to make it a lot harder, if not impossible, to open a window like this again.

I think the most imporantant thing to remember about Tet is that was a military defeat for the VC but a socio-political victory. Everything I've read says the Phoenix Program worked as it was designed to in Tet and "neutralized" a lot of the otherwise clandestine political cadres that surfaced during the attacks. The Provinisional Reconnassaince Units especially peformed remarkably well and earned their (in)famous rep as the best irregular force/the coldest mercs on the US advised side. As far as I understand, Tet finally persauded Theiu to sign on to Phoenix in earnest and actually make the GVN's Phung Hong a parallel structure to the CIA/MACV's Phoenix Program.

When the Tet attacks finally died down, there wasn't much VC activity becuase they rebuilding their ranks and structure that military defeat in Tet had decimated. In this climate, the GVN, through Phung Hong and especially the Special Branch Police, started, much to the displeasure of many US advisors, to target the loyal non-communist opposition, the Dai Viets, Viet Nam Dinh-Thu Duc, and the all rest. I think pursuing a dirty war against sects instead of reaching a political settlement prevented the emergence of a truly independent South Vietnam. Is this happening in Iraq?

I've seen pundits, military academics, and civilian academics argue for CORDs and/or Phoenix type arrangement to be set up in Iraq on the premise that those institutional arranagements and policies won the "intelligence war" or the small war and it was the NVA that finally won the war, not the VC.

Altogether, I think all this underscores the necessicity of a really concerted diplomatic effort in Iraq right now. Phoenix defeated the insurgency in Vietnam but couldn't win the socio-political war. I think the same goes holds true for the French in Algeria and if there isn't political progress in Iraq soon we might soon say the same about the US in Iraq.