May 12, 2004, The Iraq War as the Health of the State. Not.
This post, I'm going to do something a little different. At at the suggestion of Mrs. TD, I'm going to quote (extensively) from some of the greatest minds in human history to have studied the art of war, one at a time. (This might be a singleton, but I'll start with the best). Such minds seem a bit more, shall we say, "with it" than a President pumping his fist and saying "feels good" as he is about to lead his own nation and another into ruin and thousands of people into death and... "abuse". We also wouldn't have heard a lot of Rummy's nonsense blather (occasionally, I believe he may not be psychologically fit to stand for the war crimes trial he so richly deserves).
We'll start this (I smell "SERIES" ) with Sun Tzu, and some passages from The Art of War.
I. LAYING PLANS
1. Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance
to the State.
2. It is a matter of life and death, a road either
to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry
which can on no account be neglected.
3. The art of war, then, is governed by five constant
factors, to be taken into account in one's deliberations,
when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field.
4. These are: (1) The Moral Law; (2) Heaven; (3) Earth;
(4) The Commander; (5) Method and discipline.
5,6. The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete
accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him
regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.
9. The Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom,
sincerely, benevolence, courage and strictness.
1
13. (1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued
with the Moral law?
(2) Which of the two generals has most ability?
(3) With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven
and Earth?
(4) On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced?
(5) Which army is stronger?
(6) On which side are officers and men more highly trained?
(7) In which army is there the greater constancy
both in reward and punishment?
14. By means of these seven considerations I can
forecast victory or defeat.
17. According as circumstances are favorable,
one should modify one's plans.
18. All warfare is based on deception.
19. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable;
when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we
are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away;
when far away, we must make him believe we are near.
26. Now the general who wins a battle makes many
calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought.
The general who loses a battle makes but few
calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations
lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat:
how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention
to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.
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.
5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war,
cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.
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.
10. Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army
to be maintained by contributions from a distance.
Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes
the people to be impoverished.
19. In war, then, let your great object be victory,
not lengthy campaigns.
20. Thus it may be known that the leader of armies
is the arbiter of the people's fate, the man on whom it
depends whether the nation shall be in peace or in peril.
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. So, too, it is
better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it,
to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire
than to destroy them.
2. Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles
is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists
in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
3. Thus the highest form of generalship is to
balk the enemy's plans; the next best is to prevent
the junction of the enemy's forces; the next in
order is to attack the enemy's army in the field;
and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.
4. The rule is, not to besiege walled cities if it
can possibly be avoided. The preparation of mantlets,
movable shelters, and various implements of war, will take
up three whole months; and the piling up of mounds over
against the walls will take three months more.
5. The general, unable to control his irritation,
will launch his men to the assault like swarming ants,
with the result that one-third of his men are slain,
while the town still remains untaken. Such are the disastrous
effects of a siege.
6. Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy's
troops without any fighting; he captures their cities
without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom
without lengthy operations in the field.
7. With his forces intact he will dispute the mastery
of the Empire, and thus, without losing a man, his triumph
will be complete. This is the method of attacking by stratagem.
8. It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten
to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one,
to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army
into two.
9. If equally matched, we can offer battle;
if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy;
if quite unequal in every way, we can flee from him.
10. Hence, though an obstinate fight may be made
by a small force, in the end it must be captured
by the larger force.
11. Now the general is the bulwark of the State;
if the bulwark is complete at all points; the State will
be strong; if the bulwark is defective, the State will
be weak.
12. There are three ways in which a ruler can bring
misfortune upon his army:--
13. (1) By commanding the army to advance or to retreat,
being ignorant of the fact that it cannot obey.
This is called hobbling the army.
14. (2) By attempting to govern an army in the
same way as he administers a kingdom, being ignorant
of the conditions which obtain in an army. This causes
restlessness in the soldier's minds.
15. (3) By employing the officers of his army
without discrimination, through ignorance of the
military principle of adaptation to circumstances.
This shakes the confidence of the soldiers.
17. Thus we may know that there are five essentials
for victory:
(1) He will win who knows when to fight and when
not to fight. (2) He will win who knows how to handle both superior
and inferior forces.
(3) He will win whose army is animated by the same
spirit throughout all its ranks.
(4) He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take
the enemy unprepared.
(5) He will win who has military capacity and is
not interfered with by the sovereign.
18. Hence the saying: If you know the enemy
and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a
hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy,
for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will
succumb in every battle.
Prior to the commencement of the Iraqi adventure (when Sheriff Bush gave Saddam, Qusay and Uday two days-- or was it three-- to get out of Bag-dhodge)
Sheriff Bush was in the ideal position. Sun Tzu saw "fiasco" written all over this one centuries ago, if one did not use the strength of their position to win without firing a shot. The UN inspectors could have cleaned Saddam's clock-- proven once and for all that "he got nuttin'). If only the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NOT BEEN 100% INTENT ON DISCREDITING THE UN INSPECTORS-- we could have ensured that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction (not hard, seeing as he didn't). How? Simple: we had the military assembled at his door step. Oh-- we CAN'T INSPECT THAT PALACE, Saddam? No problem (he said, launching a series of cruise missiles and reducing said palace to rubble). Anything else we can't inspect? No? Thanks...
George W. Bush could have secured the stated objective (yes, "regime change" was stated, but until just weeks before the invasion, the stated answer was "to disarm Saddam Hussein's Iraq"). THAT DISARMAMENT could have been achieved without a single American casualty. So I say to you now: the blood of every single American killed or maimed in Iraq (not to mention Iraqis, and coalition forces) is on George W. Bush's hands, and dare I say it, on his hands alone-- because this war would not have happened but for him. He could have overruled Cheney and the Neocon nuts-- but HE WANTED TO BE A TOUGH WAR PRESIDENT (and quite possibly, he alone decided to serve his Saudi masters to the detriment of his own nation).
If there is a hell, G.W. Bush has certainly earned himself a place in it. Here on Earth, I would happily settle for a trial for crimes against humanity. And unlike Rummy, who may have a legal impairment to stand trial, stupidity and arrogance are not defenses.
Comments
This was a good idea, Mr. and Mrs. TD. I am amazed at how much of the "they're terrorist bastards and therefore we should torture them without mercy" kind of juvenile rage I hear about this subject. Yesterday's posts being pretty similar to some immature ranting I've heard around my office, for example. It's hard not to be disappointed in people you thought had some intellectual ability when they start in on this line of "argument."
But of course, like most irrational hatred, it can be chalked up to ignorance and poor education, not mental disability. None of these screaming children seems to have studied anything at all about war, methods of interrogation, intelligence work, or even police work. You kind of wonder why they never picked up anything by John Le Carre (much less Sun Tzu)--know what I mean?
For the record, folks, torture is bad because (a) you lose the ability to convince other people (such as Europe, India, Pakistan, Africa, Australia, South America, South Korea, and Japan--you know, the people we wish were paying the bills for this) to take your side of the argument, (b) you endanger your own soldiers who may be captured by people who now feel no compunctions, where they might have wanted to appear humane before, (c) you lose the ability to convince the population of the "other side" to give up nicely, since you have now become monsters in their eyes, rather than "liberators," (d) it's simply not effective--tortured people say anything they think the torturer might want to hear--not necessarily the truth, and (e) ok, let's at least put it on the list--because it's just not right. But (e) is only ONE of the many reasons torture is a bad idea. Which is why there aren't a lot of people using it, except terrorists--i.e., people who use torture simply want to demonstrate their power and ability to control the torturee; they aren't really interested in obtaining intelligence.
Even in a "war on terrorists," as we can amply see from examples in our own lifetimes (such as Northern Ireland and Israel), the only hope of stopping terrorism ultimately is first, to use "real" intelligence and police work (such as infiltration and cultivation of embedded sources) to stop as many bad things from happening as possible, and then to capitalize on the desire of some of the, usually "second generation," terrorist leaders to be viewed as "statesmen," rather than as terrorists. How do you capitalize on this? By ALLOWING them to become statesmen. By using their power to convince their own people that peaceful negotiation is a better option. Come on, my little students, flamers and apologists for torture, let's compare and contrast the recent progress of Northern Ireland v. Israel. Apart from satisfying your selfish fury, which way is more EFFECTIVE in achieving our national goals?
Notice that I didn't ask "which way is more effective in achieving Bush's political goals," because he clearly considers satisfying his ignorant constituency to be more important than our national interest.
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Posted by Nelson M at May 13, 2004 06:01 PM
So as I suggested to Max Speaks, the Bush Emperor has lost the Mandate of Heaven.
I have an old translation of Art of War that says something like: When armies are maintained at a distance, the taxes will become burdensome, and the people will suffer. The costs of armor and Charitots will rise to over thiry percent of the Country's wealth, and the economy will collapse, with chariots rusting and armor falling apart.
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