Osama,Jihad, Saddam, Noriega, SAVAK, Pinochet,Contra,USA

All the described elements are fighting and have fought conventionally (and yes, guerilla war is conventional, according the US miltiary... for Pete's sake - even the teutonic barabarians from across the Rhine fought the Romans using the root tactics that Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Afghans, and the Contras have used and are using)...

I patently disagree that American military tactics are hopeless against Islamic militants if we embrace a measure of conventional strategy - including not arming our future enemies. Are you even serious in your last response? I, mean, c'mon! You think that Al Qaeda and the Taliban don't fight conventional war, too? Why is it that the vast majority of allied deaths in the mountain war raging in Afghanistan have occurred in convential campaigns, and not from suicide bombings, IED's, and terrorist attacks? Our military leaders have said that those "terrorists" we've been fighting are well versed in modern military theory (some of which we've taught them), and their fighters are as well-equipped as American soldiers; in major battles, they fight as we fight. The terrorist leaders fund this type of fighting, as well as terrorism. Terrorism is something different... nor is it not the only threat we face. It's not even the single-most significant threat we face; the threat facing us is a combined threat of terrorism (including the use of WMD's), conventional force, and financial networks. Attacking these three, interrelated threats (according the chairman of the joint chiefs, as well as Senator John Warner), involves a multi-pronged strategy of electronic war, financial war, conventional war, and terrorism prevention.

To throw up you hands and say "this war is a war against an unseen enemy, so you can't fight conventionally, and we, essentially, haven't discovered the best tactic yet," is just to rhetorically gloss over the arguments of others. The U.S. military has been fighting as Senator Warner has noted since 2002. Incidentally, there have been no terrorist attacks in the U.S., and Al-Qaeda's infrastructure is collapsing. The Iraq factor can be blamed on one person - Geroge W. Bush. If it wasn't for Iraq, we'd be winning even more handedly against terrorists who fight in more than one, stealthy way.

Let's not oversimplify a complex problem for rhetorical gain. It's irresponsible in the real world, and a simplistic tactic in argument.