George Will Surveys The Scene
Writing in the Washington Post, Will has this to say:
Almost three years after the invasion, it is still not certain whether, or in what sense, Iraq is a nation. And after two elections and a referendum on its constitution, Iraq barely has a government. A defining attribute of a government is that it has a monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence. That attribute is incompatible with the existence of private militias of the sort that maraud in Iraq.
Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, writing in the Wall Street Journal, reports that Shiite militias “have broken up coed picnics, executed barbers [for the sin of shaving beards] and liquor store owners, instituted their own courts, and posted religious guards in front of girls’ schools to ensure Iranian-style dress.” Iraq’s other indispensable man, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, says that unless the government can protect religious sites, “the believers will.”
When violence surges, if U.S. forces take the lead in suppressing it they delay the day when Iraqi forces will be competent. If U.S. forces hold back, they are blamed by an Iraqi population that is being infantilized by displacing all responsibilities onto the American occupation.
Again, it comes down to the militias…they must be faced, sooner rather than later, for if they are strong now, they will only get stronger if unmolested…
The old naysayers cite this as empirical evidence of the theory that participatory government is incompatible with Iraq (and the broader Muslim world) due to cultural and/or intrinsic reasons.
I say they simply have not yet learned and accepted the basic fact of “government BY the people and FOR the people” inherent in the democratic system.
“Almost three years after the invasion, it is still not certain whether, or in what sense, Iraq is a nation.”
If there was a quote that said we would be done in three years I missed it. It seemed going in that the earliest projection was 5 years, but closer to 10 years.
If there was a quote that said we would be there for 5-10 years, I missed it.
We were told we would be greeted with flowers. We were told, by Rumsfeld and Mitch Daniels, that the total cost of the war and recosntruction effort would be $50-$60 billion (most of which would be paid by other countries).
In just 3 years, we’ve spent 7 times that amount (and the current costs are running at over $7 billion/month). There’s no way anyone could have expected a 5-10 year effort would cost only $50-60 biliion.
Which leave only two possible logical conclusions …
Of course, a realistic assessment of the post-invasion prospects would have predicted exactly the chaos and bloodshed that did, in fact, ensue. I’d be surprised, however, if you can find anyone in the Adminstration who, pre-war, was willing to state this publicly. Or, indeed, any evidence that they were prepared, in the slightest, for what ensued.
But, then, the President assured us that no one could have predicted that the levees in New Orleans might be breached either.
Actaully the footage I saw, immediately post-Saddam was consistent with the greeted with ‘flowers’ scenario.
The Shia and the Kurds were extremely grateful. 80% of the population. We are fighting with less than 1% of the population, even now.
Some small fact checking:
You are delusional in your presentment of the cost-
http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182
244 billion. You just said this war is costing between 350-420 billion. No need for you to examine what is reality, as it may cause your head to explode.
You just lied or were deluded into believing a larger number because it is convenient. Where’s your credibility.
I wish you luck on actually citing Rummy with an actual quote, but if you believe it, it must be true.
Katrina:
Blanco is at 32% approval, from 56% pre Katrina. Bush is at 47% for LA-56% support in 04.
Let’s figure out who gets the blame. And isn’t there a law suit about the levees being built improperly? Might help you explain why the levee broke…I’m sorry Bush didn’t inspect the Levees before the hurricane.
Interesting that the world is not going to help with Iraq. The message sent is: we’d rather teach an enemy(the Bush admin) than help a friend(the future Iraq). The refusal of more foreign assistance is more of a defining moment about the world than you could find anywhere else.
Find that Rummy quote, and you can redeem yourself.
Care to explain how you arrived at that 1% figure?
Delusion loves company. Me and Nobel-Prize winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz are both out of our minds.
But if you prefer “5 times that amount” to “7 times that amount”, I’ll let you have the lower figure.
The Rumsfeld estimate that the total cost of the war would be $50 billion, to be shared among our allies? With pleasure.
(I’d present more links, but I’m gonna blow my 3 free links in this comment. I think you know how to use Google as well as I …)
I guess you don’t follow the news…
“But, then, the President assured us that no one could have predicted that the levees in New Orleans might be breached either.”
Wrong, and the city’s own paper disproves the allegations made yesterday:
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/washington/index.ssf?/base/news-1/114119685117810.xml
“Of course, a realistic assessment…”
Now please enlighten us as to whom among the previous administration gave us a realistic assessment of the following activites:
Our intervention in Somalia (under UN auspices, always a sure recipe for disaster);
The bombings of our embassies in Africa (of which we were given ample warning from Bin Laden);
The Bosnian/Serbian war (genocide was committed for over a year before our intervention);
The bombing of the warship Cole;
Our failure to take Bin Laden off Yemen’s hands when they offered him to us.
You’ve done a fine Monday morning quarterbacking routine on everything in your post – but you can’t seem to acknowledge that intelligence estimates are just that, guesses at best, and while it may be plausibly argued that Rumsfeld and the rest have been wrong on any number of things (troop levels being my big pet peeve here), military actions are always fraught with peril, and the chances of things going awry quite high, no matter the level of accuracy in planning and pre – intelligence activites.
The article in NOLA does not disprove the allegations which arose from the AP video. The allegations are that Bush spoke falsely when he told ABC News that nobody had expected the levees to fail, while the video clearly shows how he and others were warned that this was a very real possibility.
Nixon had a reasonable level of support during Watergate until the existence of the tapes was revealed, and then it was all over. My guess is that the video of Bush assuring the governors that the Federal government was prepared will do the same thing for Bush.
The reflexive attack on Bill Clinton (Clinton didn’t get everything right, so Bush’s ineptitude is excused) is also false. We were not told that soldiers in Somalia would be greeted with flowers, or that the military action would be a “slam dunk.” Nor were we told “mission accomplished” when the mission was barely into the second inning. Clinton was responsible for ending the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia: NATO and the Europeans dithered for over a year, until Clinton forced the issue. And I wouldn’t bring up the embassies or the Cole: George Bush was given ample warning that Al Qaeda was planning an attack on US soil in the summer of 2001, and did nothing.
Nobody expects intelligence or the predictions based on intelligence to be completely accurate. However, the misuse of intelligence in the march to war in Iraq, as well as the inability to plan for or manage the occupation, are so great that any comparison with Somalia or Bosnia is risible.
So, you think this piece of video of the government comparing notes pre-Katrina is Bush’s Watergate, peter? Share some of that stuff you’re smoking…
Clinton was dragged into Bosnia by the Republican – dominated congress, along with a Republican Sec. of Defense (Cohen of Maine). Don’t rewrite history on that one – even Clinton acknowledged as much in his interminable mangnum opus a few years ago. The congressional delegation of Republicans sponsored a bill in the House that called for our direct intervention in Bosnia, which finally forced Clinton to act, less he be embarassed on the world stage. BTW, no one in NATO makes a move without our tacit approval, period. We provide over 90% of the military and operational capability of NATO, so you can do the math here.
As for Bush receiving warnings – given that he reportedly got over a thousand red flags on that one, what did you expect him to do to specifically prevent the attack, given all the points of entry and possible scenarios that were outlined? Please enlighten us on that score, should be quite entertaining.
And yes, I will bring up the embassy bombings, because Billy – Boy did absolutely nothing in response, and he also did absolutely nothing in response to the disaster in Somalia. And shall we talk about the warnings Clinton received prior to the first bombings of the World Trade center, back in the early 90’s? And please tell me why your hero basically stiffed the Yemenis on taking OBL off their hands – can’t wait for that one either.
I don’t blame Clinton for many of these unfortunate incidents, because bad stuff happens all the time, despite prior warnings and intelligence operatives and the like. But if you’re going to lay all the blame on Bush here, then you cannot have it both ways – what’s good for the goose is good for the gander (and also illogical and hypocritical to boot).
I don’t think that Katrina is Bush’s Watergate – there is a big difference between ineptitude and criminal malfeasance – but the similarity between the tapes and the video is that both are visceral symbols which are easy to understand. It’s like when the Wizard of Oz says to ignore the man behind the curtain: the magic is gone and things are seen in a very different light. This may turn out to be the Humpty Dumpty phase of the Bush administration, when the pieces can’t be put together again.
In a way, I almost feel sorry for Bush. He is probably right on the ports issue, as in my opinion the value from cultivating relationships with (somewhat) moderate Arab regimes outweighs the (probably) low risk of signing the contract. However, nuance always loses to bumper stickers, and for the first time in his administration, Bush is forced to use a difficult argument against a simplistic one. (“The UAE had more to do with 9/11 than Iraq did”, or “We wouldn’t let an Arab country manage our nuclear facilities, would we?” etc.)
The juxtaposition of the video, the ABC News interview, and the scenes of devastation from New Orleans are too much to overcome. It makes intuitive sense to too many people, and no amount of nuance or spin can overcome it. In that sense, it is similar to the Watergate tapes, which forced Nixon to plead in a press conference that he wasn’t a crook. However, after building a career by reducing his opponents to caricature – McCain was mentally unstable, Kerry was an elitist and effete flip-flopper – there is a poetic justice to see Bush caricatured as being an uninterested and uninformed observer instead of a leader.
Well, now, I’ll let you have your soapbox on your opinion of Bush – but if you don’t think John Kerry is an elitist – my God, man, then who is?…
Cohen may have been a Republican, but he was part of the Clinton administration (unlike the current administration, which has no Democrats in key positions). So your argument is that because a Republican in Clinton’s cabinet was an advocate for intervention that Clinton had nothing to do with it?
And when as Commander in Chief, Clinton sent troops into battle, if it were not for Republicans in Congress, nothing would have happened?
I don’t know if Bush received a thousand red flags, but I know that he received an intelligence estimate in the summer of 2001 with the headline that Bin Laden was planning an attack on American soil. I don’t hold him responsible for failing to prevent the attack (although had 9/11 occurred under a Gore Presidency, I shudder to think of how many ways the GOP would use it as a device to paint the Democrats as weak on national defense). However, doing nothing is not an acceptable response. Establishing a terrorism czar, getting the FBI or CIA to infiltrate Al Qaeda, alerting local officials throughout the country to the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack, or making a public speech alerting Americans to possible danger and asking them to be on the lookout would all be reasonable things to do. Instead, he cleared brush in Crawford.
As for Somalia: as you may recall, the troops were originally deployed by the Bush administration, so Clinton inherited what was probably an unwinnable situation.
As for the embassies and capturing OBL: knowing what we know now, Clinton could be faulted for not acting more aggressively. However, OBL was an obscure figure at the time, although these events catapulted him to prominence. By the time Bush assumed office in 2001, OBL rose from obscurity to public enemy number one. Hence a warning that an attack was imminent on American soil – something which has far greater weight than isolated attacks overseas – should have been received with far more urgency than it was. It was wrong for Clinton not to have done something when the Yemenis offered, which allowed OBL to escape to Afghanistan. However, for Bush to allow OBL to escape at Tora Bora was not only wrong, it was inexcusable.
I do think Kerry is an elitist — but for Bush (graduate of Andover, Yale, Harvard Business School, and in the third generation of American political leadership) to have his surrogates dismiss Kerry as elitist is ludicrous –
Alright, sorry, I have to interject again – Osama bin Laden was NOT an obscure figure at the time you guys are discussing – he was recognized as, to use the cliche, a clear and present danger – otherwise, what would we even be discussing?
Was he as prominent as after 9/11? Of course not – but Clinton knew full well that al Qaeda was one of the biggest threats facing America…I’m not blaming him so much as saying let’s not rewrite history to suit our partisan preferences…
Maybe obscure is too strong a word, but I doubt that any of us had heard of bin Ladin at that time — certainly I hadn’t –
Back to Jacque:
1% of 25,000,000 is 250,000. I did rather overstate the size of the opposition, but figured I better stick with round numbers. We are probably fighting 1/3 of 1% of the population.
Best irony?
You obsess over the Bush admin misrepresenting/lying about the cost, and then you proceed to do so yourself. This is where the left loses all credibility with independents. You’d do much better to argue the cost of US soldiers lives than the financial cost of the war.
Rummy’s quote? Could very aptly apply to actual military expenditures,- the 244 billion is including congressional appropriations towards everything not spent on the military.
Interesting that 250 billion is 2% of our yearly gdp. Maybe we have been fighting this thing on the cheap.
…”if it were not for Republicans in Congress, nothing would have happened?”
That is 100% correct, and Clinton himself has stated many times that if he didn’t have the GOP congress at his back on that decision, he wouldn’t have committed to action – no way, no how. He talked, talked, talked about it ad nauseum to the European leaders, but did absolutely nothing actionable until the congrees finally forced things to a head. Look up the timeline on the events prior to action – indisputable evidence on that score. I do give him credit for finally acting on the matter, but let’s not give him a spine on military matters that he never possessed.
OBL was cleary implicated in the terrorist bombings of our embassies in Africa, and also the bombing of the Cole. This is why the Yemenis captured him and offered to give him up to us – they knew full well the extent of his activities in Yemen up to that point, and that he was intending to launch future attacks on other American targets in the 3rd world.
OBL was an “obscure figure at the time?” Sure – and Abu Abbas was just a petty thief when Hussein offered him shelter and aid when we were trying to hunt him down.
Still waiting to hear your eloquent defense of Clinton’s failure to act on repeated warnings prior to the first bombing attacks on the WTC (as recounted in the book “Heart of a Soldier,” by James Stewart)…
One more thing, about Stiglitz:
In the Boston Globe he gives the statement:
“‘There are 16,000 people with serious injuries,” Stiglitz said.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2006/01/08/economists_say_cost_of_war_could_top_2_trillion/?page=2
Actually there are 7777 injuries in which the soldiers could not report back for duty. Over 9,000 after being injured returned to active duty.
http://icasualties.org/oif/
Not often that I get a chance to correct a Nobel prize winner, and you think with all the work he did on his projections…
Oh well, when the dems are throwing roses at your feet…
No, I was challenging your assertion that “It seemed going in that the earliest projection was 5 years, but closer to 10 years.” The Adminstration was projecting nothing of the kind.
Indeed, if that was what they were proposing: invade Iraq, topple Saddam, spend a trillion dollars, tie up our troops for years fighting a counter-insurgency campaign, and … in a decade or so, Iraq will emerge from the chaos as a stable, peaceful democracy, then even you would have called them dangerously unhinged.
Given his age and his health, in a decade, Saddam would have been gone in any case. There are many more effective ways we could have tried to ensure that what emerged post-Saddam was a democratic Iraq. If you have a long enough time-horizon, many things are possible.
No, the Administration believed that an Iraqi democracy could be established quickly and cheaply, through military action. And that’s what they repeatedly asserted (along with counterfactual claims about “aluminum tubes”, “yellow cake” and ties between al Qaeda and Saddam, but I disgress…).
You are right that the assertions (by Rumsfeld, by Wolfowitz, by Mitch Daniels, by …) that the postwar reconstruction would be quick, cheap and largely self-financing (from Iraq’s oil revenues) were wildly off the mark. Anyone with any sense knew that post-invasion Iraq would look more like the former Yugoslavia than like Switzerland. The best case scenario (as I repeated in one of my early comments on Mark’s blog) was that Iraq would emerge as a Shiite-dominated theocracy, closely allied with Iran. The worst case scenario was a full-blown civil war.
In the past few weeks, we’ve been teetering closer to the latter than the former.
Let me just step in, Jacques, and say one thing – of course, Saddam would have died eventually – but from what we know of his sons, I don’t think democracy would have been on the table…
The admin was walking a tight-rope.
To openly asert that we will be there for 5-10 years, pre-war is to say to Iraq, we are coming and we are never going to leave.
They were cagey in their predictions but the conservative estimate was 5-10 years. I can dig for the quotes to support, but better that you point to where someone with rank in the WH said it was going to be over in almost no time.
That is why they have been able to avoid the whole ‘timeline’ for withdrawal. If Murtha had a chance to quote some administration guy, predicting a short deployment, he could have hammered the point home when he called for a timetable with statements like:
“You said it would take x amount of years, and we are past that.”
Going in, I was under the impression that we would have some sort of support basing presnet in Iraq for over a decade. No one in the admin sought to dispel that.
I knew the oil argument was bogus from the start. It was also a bogus argument to say it was a war for oil/occupation.
Peak production is about 20 billion a year. Even a conservative estimate of 200 billion would mean we would have to steal all the oil for 10 years.
I do anticipate reconstruction continuuing for the next 20 years and I sincerely doubt that the US will be the source. Thus the Iraqi oil will pay for the reconstruction, (the reconstruction that we don’t do ourselves). this is in strking contrast to Afghanistan, for which they have no source of revenue that could bring them into the 19th century.
I think the gravest error in judgment was expecting support from Germany or France. It is incredibly strange that they have avoided any dealings with Iraq. If there was a great error made, it was believing that the world would take action and support the reconstruction. Very much a quid pro quo for Kosovo.
Those days are over. The trend of rise in isolationism of modern countries, (due significantly to monetary shortfalls as well as social misgivings) is a sad reality,that Wolfowitz and Rummy failed to see.
It’s why the US troop numbers were kept low, and that has proven to be a grave mistake for the short term, but will become a hidden blessing. It puts a lot more pressure on the Iraqi govt to get up and running, as oppsed to sitting back and letting peacekeepers take the hits.
Factor into your best case scenario-
7 million Kurds go it alone, with all the oil fields of the north, we base out of there. They love us.
Your shiite theocracy theory exposes your naivette about the general population of Iran. Iran features one of the most advanced and educated people in the region. That they are oppressed by their clerics is even more apparent than Iraq’s case.
Iraq is more likely to bring about a liberalization of Iran, than Iran will be able to annex the Shia in Iraq. The leader of the Shiite’s happens to be in Iraq-they are going to dictate to Sistani?
“Given his age and his health, in a decade, Saddam would have been gone in any case.”
hmmm…didn’t he have two sons? Word has it that they were chips of the old dictatorial block. Maybe you miseed it, but Kim Jong-Il is the son of a former leader…but then the theory then was probably-”he won’t be as bad as his father”.
worth a read…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il-sung
this guy died and things got better?
another father son combo-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Doc
Apparently you don’t have any clue about where Iraq would be despite history’s examples.
If you got a case where a son was a reformer, let’s hear it.
If Saddam died in power there were two options-civil war involving the entire region, or the succession by his sons.
You don’t think that, given a decade of work with Iraqi opposition groups, and other pressures we could have brought to bear, we could have tipped the outcome of the post-Saddam era?
That’s exactly our policy with respect to a post-Castro Cuba. Do you think that policy is similarly doomed to failure?
Cuba is much more like Afghanistan than Iraq. They have no income. They are uneducated and disease ridden. The best defense we have against cuba, is keeping fidel alive.
Cuba was relevant when the USSR was trying to stage nukes off it. Once the soviets fell, it was of passing concern.
Cuba was once important, but has little more importance now than penguins in Antarctica.
Decades of work? When Saddam killed the Shia who were staging their uprising in 94(?) that was the end.
The CIA had no assets in the country. Period. Clinton shelved our intel services, choosing not to fund them.
We cannot afford to reconstruct Cuba, otherwise we would be throwing money down a hole.
Sorry for the 94 reference..it occurred under Bush Sr so must have been 92.
Please do. I shall be very interested (quoting Larry Lindsey, however, doesn’t count!)
Try Paul Wolfowitz in his testimony before the House Committee on Appropriations Hearing on a Supplemental War Regulation, 3/27/03.
I’ll happily supply more examples, when you come up with yours.
The oil argument, the nuclear weapons argument, the links with al Qaeda argument, …
I’m not naive about Iran at all. The mullahs there will not last another decade in power. It would be ironic, indeed, if Iran transitioned to a stable secular democracy before the situation in Iraq settled down.
In the meantime, however, the Iranian regime has the ability to engage in much mischief (including acquiring nuclear weapons). And we have made them considerably stronger, by removing Saddam and helping to bring about a Shiite client state in Iraq. (Assuming that my “best-case scenario” plays out).
As to your examples of father-son tyrant teams, Baby Doc (to pick one) would not have lasted 15 years in power, if the US had thrown its weight behind the opposition. As it was, they were …umh … lukewarm to Aristide.
Exactly the same thing can be said of North Korea and Haiti.
Whether a post-Saddam Iraq would have been any riper for transitioning to democracy (even with concerted US efforts in support of the opposition) is certainly debatable. But so what? There are plenty of other authoritarian regimes in the region. If your criterion was: I want an Arab country that can, in a decade’s time, be turned into a functioning democracy, you had a lot of options with better chances of success (at lower cost) than invading Iraq.
Let’s go the “Mission Accomplished” speech. ( I note that Bush never said that phrase…actually he said:
“We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We are bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We are pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes.”
Something about finding WMDS’s, cough, cough…
“We are helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people. The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. And then we will leave — and we will leave behind a free Iraq.”
Believe me, if some admin official gave a short timeline for the invasion and reconstruction, no democrat has found it. Ask murtha.
NK has a nuke, according to the CIA…but then if they had one, they would have tested it for all to see, basically they are developing nukes.
Haiti is a joke.
I point out that no one made mention of a timeline, and your response was a reference with no quotes to a hearing…
Sorry if it passes my memory maybe you can point me there.
“And we have made them considerably stronger, by removing Saddam and helping to bring about a Shiite client state in Iraq.”
Client state? I don’t get it, please expand.
“If your criterion was: I want an Arab country that can, in a decade’s time, be turned into a functioning democracy, you had a lot of options with better chances of success (at lower cost) than invading Iraq.”
Actually that was my exact criterion.
What other country would you have suggested?
Some quotes for you to chew on:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/03/27/MN291438.DTL
The article may help you in your beliefs, but it also represents the most thorough list of duration quotes. NB-there is never any reference to time, and there were two topics being discussed-the removal and defeat of Saddam, and the post War reconstruction-don’t mix the confidence of taking down saddam with the actual reconstruction post Saddam.
As previously requested:
“where is the smoking gun quote about post War Iraq being easy?”
Jacques, I don’t think we could have prevented control in Iraq from going to the Hussein boys, that’s correct…at least not without military action…as to Cuba – well, Castro doesn’t have two sadistic children lined up behind him…
Money quotes?
General Myers: it will be “a short, short conflict” against an Iraqi force that was “much weaker” than it was in the 1991 Gulf War
Dick Cheney, on NBC’s Meet the Press: “I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months.” He predicted that regular Iraqi soldiers would not “put up such a struggle” and that even “significant elements of the Republican Guard . . . are likely to step aside.”
Ken Adelman: “a cakewalk.” George Tenet: “lam-dunk. ” Mission Accomplished.
sorry, slam dunk
Were the statements about the war or the occcupation?
They are two sepereate events.
Unless you’d like to include the Marshall plan as part of WWII, most historians don’t, but if you are desperate-have at it.
The defeat of the Iraqi army did not mean the end of the war – we’ve lost roughly two thousand soldiers since then, with thousands more wounded. Most peoples’ idea of a “short, short conflict” isn’t three years.
Cheney’s prediction about being greeted as liberators is clearly about the occupation.
Not to mention that our troops weren’t being bombed and shot at during the Marshall Plan.
There actually was an insurgency in post-war Germany…
Here’s a link on the German insurgency (they were called ‘Werewolves’):
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2005/rubin082005.htm
Interesting, thanks — I never knew that — although the implication in the article (that the Iraqi and German occupations are somehow similar) is belied later in the article:
“The truth was that Werwolf attacks were largely ineffectual. Typical operations included pouring sand into the gas tanks of allied vehicles, poisoning food and water, petty vandalism and stringing decapitation wires across the roads. The latter was terrifying, but not incredibly effective. While individual operations were reported as late as 1947, by several months after the Nazi surrender on May 7 1945, Werwolf was rendered largely impotent.”
True, I make no claim for equivalency – however, if they had the capacity to make IEDs that the current insurgency has, they might not have been reduced to the petty acts described…
The Werewolves were a functioning unit for a few years – I believe they finally petered out at the end of the decade – ‘48 or ‘49.
There were also bands of raiders from the Confederate side during the Civil War that did not unilaterally disarm after the offical hostilities had ended. Many were in action during the Reconstruction period, and fled south to Mexico when Federal troops tried to capture them.