I’m watching yet another movie about Jesse James- and this one is better than the Brad Pitt vehicle The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford . The one I’m watching tonight is The Long Riders. And it occurs to me while watching this movie that we haven’t learned anything from our own American history. The James Brothers were insurgents not unlike the insurgents we’re now fighting in Iraq. In both cases, we won the war but lost the peace. Jesse James is looked upon as some kinda hero- hell, The Assassination makes him out to be as holy as Jesus, for Christ’s sake. But they were on the losing side, let’s not forget. They were Southern patriots, or at least that’s how they saw themselves. Just because Robert E. Lee surrendered, they weren’t about to give up the cause- and they were transformed into heroes. Just because Saddam Hussein is dead and his sons killed, that doesn’t mean the fighting is over. Quite the opposite, in fact. The more insurgents we kill, the more Muslim heroes we make. Anyone that’s watched any TV about the war shows us barging into houses and rousting people- not unlike what the Yankees did to Southerners after the Civil War. That’s why the James gang was able to hang on- because they’d captured the hearts of the local population. Have we captured the hearts of the Iraqis? For that matter, did we capture the hearts of the Vietnamese? The only question that remains in the Iraq war is the same one that ultimately remained in the Vietnam war- how the hell we get out.