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.