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I beg to differ, sir. Iraq like Reconstruction?

In the American South, unlike Iraq, there was already a history of free, consensual government. What the War of Northern Aggression was ultimately fought for (despite the propaganda about slavery)was the continuation of that ideal. Should a people,and by extension, a state, that finds itself no longer part of a happy federation have the right to leave it? The answer, truthfully, was YES. This was discussed at length at the Hartford Convention, and resulted in the "All powers not specifically assigned to the Federal Government, etc, etc" language in the Constitution.

Southerners fought for their freedom against a tyrannical regime (as they saw it) the same way New Englanders had 90 years before. The basis for both conflicts was the idea that the governed had a say in how they were governed.

Reconstruction had nothing to do with reestablishing this long tradition of self-determination; it was a policy aimed at reabsorbing the south into the Union up until the point that any talk of leaving it again was laughable, while leaving the idea of self-determination intact.It was the Victor lording it over the Vanquished and leaving his stamp upon a conquered people.

Iraq is nothing of the sort. Iraqis have no history of self-determination. They have nothing resembling Western-style democratic processes. They are tethered, physically and morally, to a system that has raised the strongman and the mullah to respected, unassailable, positions. We are not reabsorbing our own here, we are laying the foundations for "the other" to become "us". It's a totally different operation.

And the unfortunate part of it all is that the author is correct: we cannot instruct them on how to become "us" until we beat the snot out of them and show them the error of their ways. This is not a political or economic war, sir, it is a war of civilizations --- their worldview versus our worldview. Unlike Southerners though, the Islamonazis have not set out with the idea of having separate states based mutual respect and common ideals (as many secessionists did), they just want the rest of us dead. Even the most die-hard secessionist never wanted every Yankee dead.

Wombat,

You make several excellent points, but I must defend the central thesis of my response to the article: The enemy command structure has been vanquished and its armies defeated, so the "formal" combat phase of the war is over. We are now in the (exceptionally unpleasant) reconstruction phase. This is quite difficult for a number of reasons, including the lack of democratic traditions or history you pointed out. However, many defeated nations have continued to have resistance movements, often supported by outsiders (as the French did in WWII). Some of these were successful, some were not.

Again, I wholeheartedly agree that there are vast differences between Iraq in 2004 and the defeated former Confederate States of America in 1866, but my point is that the current situation is more akin to 1866 than 1863.

Deo Vindice!