A Will to Win

I've been amazed at some of the first-person sources we've heard recently as Andrew and I study the American Revolution. I had learned in school that the Americans used guerilla warfare tactics against the British, and this played a significant role in winning the war. The accounts, from both the Brits and the colonists, are shockingly similar to today's American complaints about the terrorists we are fighting.

During the Revolution, the Americans would not fight according to the generally-accepted rules of warfare. The Americans would use women and children as spies and couriers. The British thought it was dishonorable to attack civilians, so the American soldiers blended in and looked like civilians. The Americans used the Brits' sense of fair play against them. The Americans had the will to win, no matter what it took, including doing things that might have seemed like "cheating" in the war.

You'd almost be tempted to think that the audiobook was trying to make some point about the similarities between the American militiamen from 230 years ago and the Muslim terrorists today. But it's not likely; this series was produced in the late 1980s.

Whether we agree with the American military strategies during the Revolution, whether we agree with the jihadists' military strategies today, there is at least one thing they have in common -- the will to win.

Cal Thomas wrote Tuesday about America's desire to "play nice" in the war today. We refuse to be politically incorrect. Our leaders punish anything they perceive (or imagine) to be bigotry. We want to preserve freedom so much that we let those who wish to destroy us use their freedom to undermine our safety.

And what is the result? While they want to stamp us out, wipe us off the face of the map, we don't have the same perspective. We want to be nice, we want to get along with them, and we really would prefer that people don't get hurt in this war. We don't even want to hurt feelings of people who are giving indications that they might be the enemy.

Unless one side changes its perspective to match the other's, there's really only one outcome possible.

For the sake of the soldiers who are out there, protecting their country, their families, their way of life, their freedom --and ours-- America's leaders really need to decide that it's more important for our soldiers to win than it is for all of us to be nice.