Now here's an interesting article from the WaPo.

It describes an Iraqi father who kills his son, because he's collaborating with the Americans. He has the support of many in his town.

I'm not sure what the purpose of this article is, but if it's to tell us how hopeless the situation is over there, and that we should just throw in the towel, and get back on track, figuring out why they hate us, and just try to understand them, let's put things in a little perspective.

I mean, it's not like we have no experience with guerrilla wars, or civil wars here. The notion of brother against brother, or father against son, is not exactly a foreign concept to an American, unless that American is utterly innocent of his or her American history.

Has anyone ever heard of William Quantrill, or Jesse James, or Cole Younger?

They were the prototypical terrorists, fighting for their "cause." There was a reason that, in the years running up to the War Between The States, that the word "Kansas" was often prefixed by the adjective "Bloody." Some of the most brutal fighting in the war (albeit not major battles) was in Missouri, and after the war, yes, months and years after the surrender at Appomattox, guerrillas (aka "The James Gang") in Missouri fought on, and atrociously. If we're to take the reporting of the press at face value, we should, of course, conclude that the situation in Iraq is hopeless, and that we will never pacify the region, any more than we could hope that Missouri is now a tranquil state, no longer with people literally at each others' throats.

Well, I feel a new parody of modern reporting coming on, casting back all the way to almost a hundred forty years ago, perhaps even from the St. Louis Dispatch, which existed even then, but I'm tired. Perhaps, having provided some hints, someone else can take up the cudgel...

[Update on Friday afternoon]

Well, it's not exactly what I had in mind, but Victor Davis Hanson's column today is about Lincoln's quagmire.

Journalism 101:
News by definition is bad, if it bleeds it leads.

U.S. out of Missouri!

An interesting example of a Confederate leader who rejected post-war guerrilla resistance was Nathan Bedford Forrest, although we was exactly the sort that Sherman predicted would need to be killed to end the war. Forrest described those who would continue to fight for a lost cause as insane.

Forrest did found the Ku Klux Klan, which (at least initially) framed itself almost as much in opposition to the Northern authorities of the Reconstruction era as in opposition to free blacks. It's not only the ones who pick open guerilla warfare that you need to watch out for...

Forrest also disavowed the Klan later, for much the same reason -- so I understand -- that he eschewed guerrilla warfare.

Oh, please, oh please, oh please, Rand, YOU write it! (pleasepleaseplease) No one can do it as well.

We're willing to wait a few days until you're rested. :-)

pleasepleaseplease (with sugar and cream on it)

The way that I read the article was that the situation in Iraq can be very subtle. The "informer" that was executed by his own family had also been an informer for the Sadaam regime. The payback was not only for the supposedly innocent vitims of the American raid, but also for years of inform for the Baath Party. The difference is that now the villagers felt that they could act without retaliation.

Just FYI for those interested in Quantrill --

William Quantrell/Quantrill's gravesite is still somewhat a mystery.

See http://www.aristotle.net/~russjohn/crock.html

You nailed it, Rand. There were *thousands* of score-settling homicides in Missouri in the first year after the official end of the war. I've often thought that the best response to the "quagmire" meme would be a fake news story about the quagmire in my neck of the woods, circa 1866. I'd write it myself, but I'm just checking in from the road (Alliance, NE, where I've just seen Carhenge -- look it up!).

Personally, I would have considered the the burning of Osceola MO By Jim Lane and the Kansas Redlegs as the provocative terrorist act of the War Between the States. If somebody burned your house and raped and killed your wife, you might have turned out like the fictional Josey Wales, representative of many of Quantrells men, too.

Guerrilla war is NOT what we are fighting. Any more than thats what is happening in S. Korea, and soldiers and marines are STILL dying there every year. Guerilla war assumes an effective and well led force, we are seeing the last gasps of an ousted regime.

When Mr. Bush announced an end, he announced an end to MAJOR MILITARY ACTION, not an end to all military action. The major guerilla action is being carried out in the U.S. press, whose corps of diligent combatants continue to find ANY bad news coming out of the middle east. All the while trying to convince the American public how misguided our actions are in Iraq.

Should the father have killed his son, probably not. But if you push the issue too far, look out for the consequences. The son went too far in the opinion of the towns people. Lawlessness is nothing new in Iraq, it has just filtered down from the top rung, all the way to the bottom rung of Iraqi society.

Saddam used to kill anyone he felt was a threat, could this be what the people of Iraq learned from that?