Russ Douthat tries out new Iraq War analogies

And he settles on settles on the 1899-1902 Filipino insurgency.

But, the analogy is weak in several ways. The Huks didn’t have IEDs or AK-47s. They probably did have a more unified population than Iraq’s various rebels do. They had no connections to an outside insurgency. They weren’t religiously based. And, the US was more unified on putting them down, even while using concentration camps, fake cease-fires and other things.

Except for those few errors, Douthat is right, of course.