November 2, 2003 - I have been studying the exploits of Confederate Captain Jesse C. McNeill who, with his father, led McNeill's Partisan Rangers. From the summer of 1862 until May 8th 1865 McNeill's Rangers terrorized the upper Potomac line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a major supply line from the west for the Federal forces operating in the Virginia theatre. Always working behind Union lines the Rangers pinned down a Union Corps detailed to guard the railroad. Never numbering more than 100 men and supplying themselves with captured materiel taken from Union trains the Rangers were never captured or defeated. Their major exploit came on the night of February 22, 1865 when Jesse led 65 Rangers into the heart of the 8000 man Union garrison at Cumberland, Maryland; kidnapped Union Generals Benjamin F. Kelley and George A. Crook from their beds; and carried them back to old Virginia - all without firing a shot.

McNeill's Rangers were successful because they were irregulars, operating out of their homes and sheltered between attacks by their friends and families. Their raid and run tactics hit the Union forces hard, inflicted casualties far out of proportion to their numbers; and provided the southern armies with food and supplies that helped keep Lee's Army in the field. It was nearly a month after the surrender at Appomattox that the Rangers finally voted to surrender and even then they negotiated a deal permitting them to keep the new goods they had captured from the Federals. They went west to new lives with money in their pockets. Jesse became a prominent farmer in Central Illinois.

The capture and looting of the US supply train in northern Iraq reminded me of Jesse and his Rangers as did the raid on the Al Rashid Hotel. The nature of guerilla war has not changed in 140 years. Overwhelming in numbers and technologically superior to the irregulars opposing it the US Army is still unable to corner its foes to use its weapons effectively against them. Shock and Awe simply hasn't worked against the Iraqi partisans any more than it worked against the Partisans along the Potomac . Finding the enemy is like trying to isolate one drop of water in the ocean and fighting him is like throwing stones at the advancing tide. So long as the American occupation remains isolated by culture; separated by language; and seen by the Iraqi population - even those who see the same kind of future that we claim to envision for the nation - as occupiers of today and not partners in tomorrow, then we will continue to bleed from a thousand cuts.

Only when the Iraqi people are admitted as full partners in the building of their nation and the reconstruction of their sovereignty will the guerillas be defeated and then not by us, but by the Iraqi people themselves. Until then the US dominated reconstruction effort will seem just as dominated by carpetbaggers as was the occupation of the post-Appomattox South.