That very nice sounding but it's a terrible analogy.
The people we were fighting in the Revolutionary, and civil war for example were very much like each other, basically civilized, educated for the day, but had basic differences about being independent, who was going to be in charge or in control. Was it brutal, yes, but it was very different. Both side to some extent could generally reason, and both sides did not consist of murdering, blood thirsty fanatics.
These people in the Mid East are not like either side in the civil war, or those of England that did not want us to be independent.
We are dealing with fanatically religious, medieval minds, right from the middle ages. These people walk into a restaurants full of innocent families and blow themselves and everyone up. And they do this routinely. Their battle plan is to just kill as many people as possible, innocent lives mean nothing to them. That's why they are called terrorist.
And it's true that the bad guys in Iraq (and elsewhere in the middle east) seem to be very bad. But there were a lot of atrocities in our Revolutionary War also -- it wasn't tea and crumpets. There were plenty of examples of civilians (even women and children) killed or tortured to death in horrible ways. So let's not pat ourselves on the back too much.
I meant to suggest to the good people in Iraq that this is not the time to despair, but rather to take heart and beat the bad guys. It's a good lesson for them. And maybe more importantly, it's a lesson for us -- a lesson we should keep in mind about evil and optimism.