During our fight against the British, we mainly used gorilla warfare. We did not engage the British through normal protocal of war for those days (i.e., we did not line up on opposite sides of a field and continue firing until nobody was left standing on one side). Essentially, we ambushed the British along their marches.
That's a bit of a fallacy that I learned in grade school which still persists and is promulgated by the movie "The Patriot" and others. It is true that we did use guerrilla tactics against lobsterbacks but the war was mainly won by the Continental Army using European linear-style tactics. Which means toe to toe and slugging it out.
We did aquit ourselves well in earlier battles using those tactics but the numbers and supplies were against us. Our army suffered much because of the way it was first set-up in the beginning.
Later, after a hard winter at Valley Forge did we cohese into a confident and well-trained force to deal with the Brits. and for all the French haters out there, if it weren't for the frogs we'd be speaking English today. They pulled our bacon outta the fire...
Washington lead troops across the Delaware on Christmas day and attacked the British the very next morning. I guess that is fine, since it wasn't actually Christmas day. The American militia was seriously struggling at that point though.
What is the point? The Hessians (mis-named due to the majority of German mecenaries coming from the region of hesse-cassel) were much feared by the "rebels" and the Jaegers gave no quarter to the Americans on the field of battle. What if it was Christmas Day? Would that be wrong?
I'm sure you don't mean it like this but I'm going to reword your sentence to say the Continental Army was in a state of despair and depression over its lack of success against the British up to that point.
My simple point is that there really is no right or wrong during war. War is ugly, and it sucks that it is sometimes necessary, but that is life.
If there is no right or wrong, then why are you putting the blame on the US for what they felt needed to be done along with the Brits in WWII?
Whine about Dresden to my great-uncle who flew in a B-17 over Germany and I'm sure you'll get an earful at the very least. It's real easy to sit here and complain about what happened when we didn't live thru it. I have no problems with dropping the bomb. And when the Japs refused to negotiate we gave them another go-round. Many, many more lives would have been lost if an invasion of the home islands had taken place.
What you need to look at is the position that a military is put in. In World War II, Japan was facing a serious shortage of food, metal, and gas. They were waging war in China, Laos, and Vietnam to secure food. Their negotiations with us were for the delivery of military grade metal and military grade gasoline and those negotiations began honestly. Now, if you were about to attack a country like the US, would you honestly break off all negotiations and announce that you are going to bomb Pearl Harbor. I think not. If you say yes, you would be a pretty arrogant person to do so.
They did it to themselves. The military-industrial complex put themselves into that position.
We didn't force them into it.
The Japs were sneaky bastards who talked out of both sides of their mouth and knew we were the key to world conquest for them.
The US was arrogant when Pearl Harbor happened. We never thought the Japanese could get torpedos in the harbor because it was too shallow. We never thought that airplanes could do much harm to a battleship fleet.
Would you post a link that says "we" were arrogant and Pearl Harbor happened because of it?
Now we could talk about the dirty deeds done to the american indian thru the centuries and then arrogance would be a big part of the equation. But that's not what this discussion is about.
Same with 9/11. We never thought they could actually take down the World Trade Center. We never thought that they could hijack our planes. We just didn't view the terrorists as much of a threat.
As far as I am concerned, the muslim hatred of the US is due to the US backing of Israel which has been taking place for 50+ years.
They hate the unbeliever. Period.
The muslims have all kinds of excuses as to why we are the great satan. They need to get over their victim mentality and get on with life. Israel is just another excuse in a long line of excuses... Some say they have a long memory and hold grudges> Hmmm, maybe they are the ones who need to brush up on civility and and how to live alongside peoples who have different views than their own. The antagonism between muslims and non-muslims goes back thousands of years.
I don't think we would take it too kindly if Mexico were backed by Russia and Mexico was taking land away from us. Granted, that would never happen, so it is rather tough for Americans to understand the muslim plight. They have almost no means to fight Israel, especially since Israel has nukes and the muslims do not. Let me ask this, why did we okay nukes for Israel but not for the muslims? Why is it okay for Israel to have them but not Iran?
Fabs, are you feeling ok? 
Are you calling the PLO freedom fighters? Like CNN does?
Did you really mean to ask why we haven't ok'd nukes for unstable individuals or dictatorships? That's like issuing carry permits for patients from a nearby state hospital to carry firearms...
Now, their killing civilians on purpose, and beheading civilians on purpose, puts them in a completely different league than Yamamoto. Yamamoto struck military targets in an attempt to win a war. We think of him as a bad person because of all the American lives he killed in Pearl Harbor, but that is warfare. Yeah, life would suck if Hitler wasn't stopped, but Yamamoto is no Hitler. Yamamoto did not kill civilians because of the color of their eyes.
Ok, Yamamoto has a dive bomber heading right for me and my last thoughts are only happy thoughts about how much of a nice guy he is, he's just doing his job, he didn't mean it. Boooooom, there goes Skinny, just a lump of charred manbeef... Yep, good 'ol Yamamoto yuck, yuck, yuck. No thoughts would enter my utopian mindset about how much of a bastard he is, or that he needs killin' because he's furthering a war machine that is raping and pillaging its way across Asia, nah, not me...
Here's a link to see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
As far as the "terrorist" tactics are concerned, I would have no issue with their rode side bomb and suicide bomber tactics if they were aimed at military targets, but I don't think that is always the case. I also don't blame them for using those tactics against Israel.
Once again, are you feeling ok?
They just do not have anything to fight with that can compete with the US or Israel. It would be liek aliens invading Earth and us having to fight any way we can to survive.
That is about the only way I can put this into perspective for us high and mighty Americans that have the best technology possible nowadays.
Fabs, I'm glad I don't have as big of a guilt complex as you do. It sounds like you are saying that Americans are the bad guys because we have technology?
Let me ask this question, would the world be better off if our foreign policy had not left our shores starting in WWI? Think long and hard before you answer.
Okay, time to wash the cars.
Got mine washed, cleaned the interior and helped contribute to the decline of the environment by applying black magic to my tires.
If I have missed something, well these loooong posts are sometimes hard to keep up with. 