American forces face an unnerving situation in today's Iraq. In cities like Fallujah and Najaf, local militias have risen up to challenge a 21st-century army they view as a foreign invader.
President Bush should understand that this is not something new. Local militiamen ready to die to protect their way of life and local leadership have their parallels in our own history.
The year? 1777. The place? Bennington, Vermont.
It was here in western New England, in the third year of the American Revolution, that an overwhelming British force, comprised of the best-fighting and best-equipped soldiers in the world, discovered firsthand the power of colonial militias armed with the zeal of local nationalism.
British General John Burgoyne, marching from Quebec, believed he could break the Revolution by cutting rebellious New England off from the more Loyalist mid-Atlantic colonies. He would accomplish this goal by driving his army of British and Germans down the Hudson River capturing all the forts along the way.
By July of 1777, the dashing British general seemed on the verge of success. He had proven his command of 10,000-plus men more than a match for the Continental Army that stood in his way.
But Burgoyne grew over-confident. Preparing himself for what he hoped to be a smashing victory at Albany, he sent a foraging party to Bennington for more horses. It looked like the perfect target. Told that the town had an adequate store of horses - and a fervent allegiance to England - Burgoyne detached a large party of German and British troops. Their mission was to bring back more pack animals but also to convince the local inhabitants to join the Loyalist cause - or at the very least come to fear the British army.
Sadly for Burgoyne (but luckily for the American Revolution) he had picked the wrong town. At Bennington, Burgoyne's German and British troops met a sizable militia led by John Stark, hero of both the French and Indian war and Bunker Hill. Stark's militia proved a formidable force. While reticent to provide forces to George Washington's command, New England state assemblies had called up these soldiers to defend the fledgling state of Vermont from plunder and occupation.
Under Stark's orders, these united militias formed a strong line of defense and defeated Burgoyne's party. When the invaders divided and hid behind lumber fortifications, Stark divided his men accordingly and attacked. It was partly a matter of tactics. Whereas the British army were taught to fire in volleys, the militiamen hid behind trees, taking targets before charging on foot.
The defeat at Bennington assaulted Burgoyne's morale and cost him a thousand men. The confident Burgoyne learned the power of local militia stoked by regional loyalty, experienced from previous battles and organized by a true leader, John Stark.
Two years earlier, Burgoyne would have dismissed the very possibility of a colonial militia defeating a disciplined European army. While granting that the rebels at Bunker Hill displayed a measure of bravery and skill, he had considered them nonetheless "rabble in arms." Bennington knocked that innate sense of superiority out of him, however, and taught the general a lesson in politics. While Burgoyne saw himself fighting for "the King and the constitution of Great Britain" and to free the colonies from rebel politicians and mobs, the militiamen at Bennington saw themselves as defending their colonies' way of life.
Is there a parallel between the insurgents of Fallujah and Najaf and the militias of New England?
An honest answer is that the situations in 1777 and 2004 are different in many particulars, beginning with the local insurgency. Unlike the colonial assemblies, Moqtada al-Sadr, the leader of rebellious Shi'a in Najaf and Karbala, owes his power not to organized local election but to his father's influence. It was from him, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, that the younger Sadr inherited a network of schools and hospitals, as well as a famous surname.
Sadr's armed base is not a conscripted militia like the majority of rebels at Bennington. Sadr's Mahdi Army enlists largely from Sadr City, the large, impoverished outskirt of Baghdad named after the cleric's father. Likewise, the Sunni resistance in Fallujah and Ramadi are no more similar to New England. In those cities, the Committee of Faith, practitioners of the Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam, leads attacks on American GIs and coalition troops. Loyalty and influence the Committee of Faith and Sadr may possess, but organized states they are not.
Furthermore, New England's resistance to Crown rule brought on the British invasion, whereas Sadr and the Committee of Faith's resistance to American rule are in reaction to the coalition's occupation of Iraq.
Their enemies are obviously different as well. Parliament's leadership and George III had no apparent interest in giving America independence, while presumably our president and his cabinet plan to grant Iraq full sovereignty after elections this January.
At the same time, similarities exist. Like the colonial assemblies, both Sadr's organization and the Committee of Faith predate the occupation, and they are not simply loyal remnants of Saddam's tyranny. They have an ideology founded on more than mob reaction, although it's one of a nationalistic Islamic sect rather than one of a democracy controlled by Christian, white males. They believe the American soldiers jeopardize their faith's authority, and they will kill and die rather than see that authority lose power.
Michael Matthews '05 is a history concentrator.
