Matt takes David Brooks to task for overemphasizing the lessons that might be learned by guerrilla groups from the war in Iraq.
Brooks:
If the Iraqi insurgents defeat the U.S. then every bad guy on earth will study and learn their techniques. The people now running for president will find themselves in bigger heaps of trouble than the current one now is — trouble that this presidential campaign hasn’t even dealt with.
Matt suggests this is nothing new, and that we've in fact known this for decades, if not centuries. He's right. Go back and look at the US involvement in the Philippines in the early 20th century, for example. Or better yet, go back and look at the history of our own revolution. It wasn't just the battles of Lexington and Concord that looked like an insurgency; the battle of Kings Mountain, the campaign led by Francis Marion, and to a lesser extent, even the tactics of Nathanael Greene all confounded the British precisely because they were so unconventional. In a way, our very existence as a nation is a testament to the idea that insurgencies can and usually do defeat even the most powerful nation on earth.
I can understand if most Americans don't know this part of their own history. That's unfortunate, but it is probably also unavoidable. But David Brooks? Really?
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