You want the perfect analogy to what we are doing in Iraq ?
How about this letter from William Pitt to the House of Lords on November 18th, 1777.
It's entitled An English Plea For Peace With The American Colonies;
"My Lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation, where we cannot act with success, nor suffer with honour, calls upon us to remonstrate in the strongest and loudest language of truth, to rescue the ear of Majesty from the delusions which surround it. You cannot, I venture to say, you CANNOT conquer America.
What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much.
You may swell every expense, and strain every effort, still more extravagantly; accumulate every assistance you can beg or borrow; traffic and barter with every pitiful German Prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country: your efforts are forever vain and impotent - doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and of plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty!
If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms! - Never! Never! Never!"
And the Iraqis will never lay down their arms for that very same reason.
"Sordid sons of rapine and of plunder" - an apt description of Bush&Co, nez pas?
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