As I look around the world, to places I have been and to other countries where I would not set foot, there seems to be a love/hate relationship no matter the current government. Allied or not, each wants something from us, either our finanical aid or bits and pieces of our culture which they of some kind of value to their society. Imitation is said to be the greatest form of flattery, Japan realized after World War II that the only way to beat us was at our own game and they did a pretty good job in automotive section and in electronics. Japan has barrowed many different areas of the United States culture, imbraced them and shaped them to a mixture of both. The Philippines is much the same and the people model much of their lives after Western ideals.

We may now be a super-power with a large and highly advanced military we also have an economy that is the strongest in all the world but, it was not always this way. Two hundred-forty years ago we were a small fledgeling country under the rule of a super-power, who we believed to be treating us unfairly (as many countries do now feel about us). During the time of the War for Independence, there were 'rules' for engagement between two armies, the armies would march in lines shoulder to shoulder and the other combatants would meet upon a feild somewhere before any shooting took place. The early Colonial Army was out manned and out gunned during much of the early years of the war, and it was they who invented gorilla warfare with the British Troups. The civilized warfare of those days  became a mode of fighting to be exploited by the weaker armies of the colonies and we were looked at as 'terrorists'.

There are places in the Middle East who have understood our history well, and have learned much from our early years as they have from the Vietnam War. Terrorism is an effective means of fighting with smaller numbers of fighters and with less sophisticated weapons at their disposal  then those they are fighting against. During our  revolution we fought and died believing our own death would mean freedom for our nation and for the next generation to come, and today many factions in the Middle East feel the same way.  Imitation is not so flattering when used in the face of todays warfare and we have become too civilized in the ways we fight wars when 'winning' is not the real objective. We are now policemen and not a fighting force determined to win at all costs.

We must change the way we look at war and terrorism. In Korea we fought to a stalemate, in Veitnam we just plain lost, and now here we are in the Middle East unwilling to take the correct steps to win and if we do not win there we will fight this war over and over...first with an attack on our own soil followed by waging war around the world. The only way I can see us putting a stop to this kind of warfare is, "An eye for an eye", in other words we need to adopt the forms of fighting which won us may wars and forget the honor of war. The goal insight  must to win. No other outcome must matter, if not this war of ideals will be fought street by street in the United States, all that is needed is to relearn the things that we invented and use them as others are using them against us now.