Post a Comment On: Internal Monologue

I'm sure someone has done this already (and I've done it using Machiavelli), but my last post made me think of what Sun Tzu's Art of War might tell our current bunch of strategically inept military leaders:

II. WAGING WAR
2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory
is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and
their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town,
you will exhaust your strength.

3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources
of the State will not be equal to the strain.

4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped,
your strength exhausted and your treasure spent,
other chieftains will spring up to take advantage
of your extremity. Then no man, however wise,
will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.
6. There is no instance of a country having benefited
from prolonged warfare.

7. It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted
with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand
the profitable way of carrying it on.


III. ATTACK BY STRATAGEM

1. Sun Tzu said: In the practical art of war, the best
thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact;
to shatter and destroy it is not so good.


IV. TACTICAL DISPOSITIONS

15. Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist
only seeks battle after the victory has been won,
whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights
and afterwards looks for victory.[Seems like the IDF
didn't pay much attention to this point in their recent
excursion into Lebanon.]


VI. WEAK POINTS AND STRONG

33. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his
opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called
a heaven-born captain.

My understanding is that this text is required reading at most military academies. But what use are educated officers and generals when Bush and Rumsfeld are at the helm?