It is an old axiom of philosophy that you have to get the questions right first. If you don't ask the right questions, then the answers won't matter.

Right now, after the United States has launched a full-scale war against Iraq, it is also, with almost no media debate or attention, getting involved in what at first glance appears to be a far smaller, even peripheral brush-fire war against Islamic rebel group Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines. But the failure to ask the correct questions about how this war should be defined suggests that US entanglement in it will be far greater, longer and messier than Pentagon strategists anticipate.

In what increasingly appears to be Washington's war against everyone, everywhere, 3,000 US troops are in the Philippines confronting Abu Sayyaf. Abu Sayyaf is supposed to have about 200 fighters; an American victory would seem to be assured.

But here is where we are likely to find that war is changing. When the US Army was fighting Philippine insurgents 100 years ago, the Philippine forces tried to fight stand-up battles, copying the Western way of war. Not surprisingly, they lost.

I suspect Abu Sayyaf will address the problem differently, in a way that reflects non-Western approaches to war. If they do, we are likely to see a conflict that unfolds along the same general lines as the war in Afghanistan – which isn't going well.

According to some reports, the US has been forced out of five forts on the Afghan-Pakistan border; we have admitted the loss of one.

What will happen? When the Americans appear, Abu Sayyaf will disappear. They will not engage, but simply blend back into the civilian population. The American way of war, which is Second Generation warfare, is based on putting fire on targets. Abu Sayyaf will respond by making itself untargetable.

Second, Abu Sayyaf will wait knowing that the Americans will eventually go home. Meanwhile, it will watch our forces to determine their patterns of operation.

Second Generation warfare tactics are formulistic; they follow set patterns – which really means our Second Generation military confuses tactics with techniques. That makes US troop movements predictable - the same thing that led to their humiliation in Somalia less than a decade ago.

Once Abu Sayyaf has determined American patterns, it will take advantage of them. It will not offer the US the stand-up battle it wants; it will still try to remain untargetable.

And the US will begin taking casualties: an ambush, a grenade tossed into a humvee, a land mine.

The US will not lose, but neither will it win. And as the conflict continues, Abu Sayyaf will take advantage of the greatest recruiting tool it was ever had: American presence on their land.

The US will gradually become bullies as they fight a weak enemy with attack helicopters, jet aircraft with smart bombs – the whole panoply of US firepower - and still don't win.

What if we get lucky and take out the leadership of Abu Sayyaf? New leaders and different organizations will take up the fight. In the Philippines as elsewhere, the spread of Fourth Generation warfare means more and more people are transferring their primary loyalty away from the state to other entities and causes.

If America is going to send in Marines or Special Forces against all Fourth Generation forces it can find, it will find itself fighting against everyone, everywhere.

Washington fails to see the danger of this because it defines the problem as merely "terrorism".

What we are really facing is the greatest change in warfare since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 gave the United States the monopoly on war it is now losing.

Remember, if you don't get the question right, your answer doesn't matter. Have the planners at the US Department of Defense asked themselves the most important questions of all? If they did not, then all the reassuring answers in the world won't matter.William S. Lind is director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation. Courtesy of United Press International.