Here is an excellent post from Belmont Club, with some edits:
Intensity of commitment has long been a decisive component of historical military strategy. It is possible to defeat a superior enemy if you can ‘outcommit’ him: take things to a level where he is afraid to follow. Napoleon did not anticipate that the Russians would burn Moscow rather than let him have it. Napoleon was defeated. Late in the Second World War the Japanese adopted the method of suicide attack, which became famous as the kamikaze (the Japanese still lost, but only because the US was many times more powerful and had the Atomic Bomb to boot). If the match were nearly equal things would have been much harder. Clausewitz observed that war is an act of force to compel the enemy to do its opponent’s will. In that equation, it is not just the quality of the force, but the quality of the will that matters. In politics, to a lesser extent, things are much the same.
If conservatives now realize that their political enemies are not simply out to win an election cycle but to effectively destroy them, the only surprising thing is that they were surprised.
Civility in political life can only be sustained when everyone owes their basic allegiance to the larger nation and subordinates their partisan identity to it. Whether that cornerstone still stands or has been replaced by other and more fundamental loyalties — to ideology, race or class — is something to be discovered. While there may be some doubt about what Barack Obama’s intentions may be, should he win the Presidency, there’s little doubt that for people like Ayers, Dohrn, Wright and Farrakhan, a victory in 2008 won’t be seen as “their turn”, but as their Destiny.
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