How much like Apaches are Pashtuns?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rex Brynen
...from the point of view of most aboriginal populations, the "Indian Wars" were all about brutal foreign (white) conquest, forced displacement, and even a little ethnic cleansing of the local population.
I doubt doubt there are operational and strategic lessons to be learned, but lets be a little careful about understanding it as a COIN model ;)
http://www.nps.gov/archive/foda/Fort...ret%20Peak.jpg
Anybody remember this guy?
Bleeding Kansas 1854-1858; America's "Small" Civil War
Understanding Bleeding Kansas and the underlying conditions that brought it about in the mid 1850s can be instructive for a clear understanding of Iraq today.
American political leaders in the Compromise of 1850 believed that they had staved off a complete sectional breakdown, and thought that that compromise might produce existential cooperation between the north and south. A few years later when Stephen Douglas crafted the Kansas/Nebraska Act he was hoping to do the same. The idea that if you can just get the western lands organized into territories and then into states that economic and social development that would come about would further the "hard-wiring" between the north and south and bring the two close together.
Yet both of these compromises did not solve the underlying political and social problem of the day: slavery and more specifically in the 1850s what to do with slavery in the territories, or white freedom versus black freedom. Douglas's Kansas/Nebraska Act of 1854, although designed to compromise, brought about a small civil war between southern proponents of slavery in the territories and northern proponents of the territories being completely free of slave labor. The end result was a violent confrontation in Kansas from about 1855 to 1858 over whether or not slaves should be allowed into Kansas. The underlying political problem of the day, as a prelude to the American Civil War, was fought through violence and death on the rolling hills of east Kansas. Ultimately the issue of slavery in America would be decided not by compromise but by the American Civil War.
In Iraq today there is much talk of how the recent lowering of violence is allowing American commanders along with the Iraqi government to re-hard-wire the social environment in Iraq thus setting the stage for political reconciliation. However, another way to view Iraq, with Bleeding Kansas providing historical insight, is that since the fundamental political and social problems have not been resolved what we are really doing is hardening the sides in the Iraq Civil War and not softening them; just like Stephen Douglas thought he was doing in 1854.