I have been thinking about the War on Terror and some manifest similarities between The US and England ca 1776. The gun, or more specifically the long gun and the rifle had been around for a long time before the American revolution but the art of warfare in Europe was saddly lagging behind the arms technologies. Europeans were still dressing up in their bright and distinguished uniforms, lining up in neat rows, affixing blades to their muskets and marching at each other as though hand to hand combat were the REAL goal after the perfunctory discharge of weapons. You know, up close and personal, in-your-face bloody warfare!! What fun! And when they came to the shores of American to quell those upstarts, THEY, the British, were the Super Power of the world. Their military power and economic might was everywhere. But something happened here that they were not expecting. The Americans didn't fight fair! It wasn't for a lack of trying. We just didn't have the materials, the men or even a strong central authority. Washington had been trained in the European mode but he was constantly having to improvise just to stay alive. He had to choose his battles carefully. He had to attack from concealment like, like those bloody savages on the frontier did. He had to fight and run away to fight again another day. Dash it all!! Those bloody Americans even targeted OFFICIERS! How barbaric!

Well today, its not King George's men in the Red Coats, its President George's men in the Red Coats. Here's what I mean. Today the US is the Super Power. We have troops all around the globe maintaining Pax Americana. We have economic might and political strength and prowess. Forget for a moment your views on whether you believe America's cause is just or not and continue in my comparison, if you will. Like the Europeans of 1776, we know how wars ought to be fought and like the men of King George we have learned the lessons of the new warfare. Our enemies have been force to adopt new tactics and strategies to deal with the technologies and political terrain. And like the British of old, WE find their tatics, etc. repugnent! Dashit all! THEY aren't fighting fair!

Here's what we don't get and here's why we are getting our butts kick even though we field the finest, most powerful army in the world. The enemy cannot hope to compete in OUR game so they changed the rules. Civilians, the weakest of society is now the new military target. Uncivilized! But it is what it is. No uniforms. Why paint a bull's eye on your body? No large groups that can be wiped out in one fell swoop. Not civilized but effective.

I didn't mention the political aspect. Divide and conquer, hearts and minds has been around for a long time but half of America doesn't get this. Half of us assume that the values we hold are sacrosanct, so basic that a quesiton doesn't even arise. To some, this seems arrogance or just plain stupidity. These Biblical truths have been suplanted by Hegelian, Darwinian and Marxist philosophies. Relativism has supplanted the deontological mandates of Christendom. And most Christians don't even know this (Shhhhh, don't wake them up and they'll never even know they're dead when it hits them!). Long live the dialectic! Well, the other half of this nation will go for just about anything, especially if it tweaks those know-it-all rightwingers. To be fair, there is a small but important minority group of people who really aren't paying much attention to either side and really hold no strong convictions one way or the other. This is the swing vote. Our enemies, not being stupid (for if they WERE stupid they would not have survived this long), play upon every divisive issue. They are glad to have the support of the Democratic Party, the RINOs and MugWumps. A thoroughly Liberal (read leftist) media also goes a long way to furthering their end. In OUR revolution, we stirred up opinion against the Crown in England, pled our cause to which many Brits agreed but our real coup was with France which was always looking for a way to tweak England's nose, as it were. Ben Franklin was our man! Hey, and today France is still a wild card! But she's not in the hand we're holding. Just some observations. If Bush had any military insight into this he might have done things differently ( I like to think!) but in all fairness 9/11 forced much onto him and a nation that was pretty clueless. It even caught the left of gaurd there for a few days and they were making sounds like solidarity and "My Nation" but thank Darwin, they soon saw the folly of that and began to line up against Bush. And I'll have to give you this, Bush isn't the brightest bulb that has ever been in the Lighthouse. But he has done a fair job with what he has and he has sought to defend this nation against its enemies.

As the English abhorred us for shooting from behind rocks and deliberately aiming at their officiers, it is abhorrent to me to target women and children, the innocent as to the terrorist but I'm beginning to believe that that is the only way we can "win" this war and to not win would be to invite the continuance of Islamic Terrorism until their goal, which is world wide dominance of Islam, is achieved. Just noodling through this mess. Please, like Jonathan Swift, I am NOT advocating the eating of children.