Posted by
JDComments on Thursday, December 07, 2006 5:33:34 PM
I can remember back in the 1980's when The Art of War by Sun Tzu was all the rage as people applied it to everything from business to courtship rituals, which is why I find it so ironic that today no seems to have read it. At least not those in our government who are supposed to be overseeing the war.
If you've never read it, the book is not very long and told as a series of sayings which distill the essence of battle. Without going into detail, the major points are that first you must know your enemy, and then you must keep him from knowing what you are doing. Sounds simple and yet the US seems not only to be willfully ignoring it, but purposely doing the opposite. SInce Sun Tzu has been hailed as a master of battle for hundreds of years, maybe we should consider what we are doing wrong.
FIrst, the "know your enemy " part. What can I say other than most people still have a hard time saying we are at war with IslamoFascists, let alone the truth , that we are actually engaged with Islam, not just some fringe sect distorting its "peaceful" beliefs. Sun Tzu would not know what to make of a people who are afraid to offend an enemy trying to kill them. If knowledge is power, we refuse to have a clue about who or what we are fighting, and that cannot lead to anything good.
Even more heinous is our attempt to wage war by committee, subject to democratic "transparency". Thus we have groups recommending timetables, and Congressman demanding withdrawals, and the MSM revealing the intricate details of our most secret intelligence programs. For Sun Tzu intelligence gathering was the sine qua non, the indispensable aspect of all wars which precedes actual battle, and can even make it irrelevant. Our attempts at intelligence gathering are treated like criminal conduct, scrutinized and held up to the light for all the world to evaluate and pass judgment on. It is a mockery which deprives us of one of our most valuable weapons. Sun Tzu is turning over in his grave.
As for the actual conduct of battle, he described all war as "deception". Stonewall Jackson said it was "to mystify, mislead and surprise" the enemy. Our politicians , statesmen and journalists on the other hand prefer the " I never heard a secret I could keep " style of clandestine operations, combined with a "more the merrier" command structure, resulting in everyone and his brother having a say in decisions, which are then broadcast just in case the enemy hasn't bothered to turn on his intelligence gathering apparatus that day. Is there anyone out there who doesn't know exactly how this war is being waged down to the assignment of individual units? If victory is won by surprising the enemy , we're lucky they haven't planted the crescent moon of Islam on top of the White House yet. Napoleon said he would rather have one mediocre general leading an army than two great ones. What do you think he would say about the Dems getting ready to subject the entire war effort to intimate committee scrutiny? My God we are stupid!
Now I have no hope that we are going to change things around and suddenly become smart about all this. Unfortunately too many imbeciles have a vested interest in keeeping things the way they are, safe in their belief that we are so powerful that we don't have to play by the rules that have applied since man first picked up a rock and hit the guy next to him. I just pray that even with the handicap of having these kind of people as our leaders , flagrantly flaunting the wisdom of centuries, we can defeat the enemy that confronts us. But truthfully, the odds are not good.