The Art Of War was written by Sun Tzu in China more than 2,500 years ago. It is widely considered the greatest book ever written on the topic of war. Now before you stop reading, this isn't a Diary about war per se. It is more a Diary about peace and leadership.
I got my first copy of The Art Of War in 1987 (out of print), edited by James Clavell (of Shogun fame). My father gave it to me cause he used it as a primary text when teaching future military leaders at the Army War College (like the grad school for West Point) and he felt it would help me prepare for college and a future working in the business world. As Clavell explained in his foreword, "it is as much a book about philosophy of successful leadership then war."
It is a book I've come back to time and time again for both insight and inspiration. And although I realize those in the DoD and White House are far smarter than myself, after 9/11 I've often wondered if I should send them my copy. That statement will make sense below the fold.
I just turned 40 a week ago. Maybe a little bit of a mid-life crisis, I don't know, but I've spent more than a little time reflecting on my life and the world in general. It is hard to escape the fact that for pretty much my entire life we've been at war somewhere. Sure there have been a few years we were not at war, just a huge nuclear standoff with the former Soviet Union, but pretty much at war 24/7. I find it strange that outside of places like here, this isn't talked about a lot more.
In The Art Of War there are very specific instructions on how to wage war, but for anybody that has read it, it is clear Sun Tzu's core thesis lies elsewhere. The third chapter of the book, titled aptly enough "The Sheathed Sword" starts like this:
To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.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.
[....]
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. With his forces intact he disputes the mastery of the empire, and thus, without losing a man, he triumph complete.
This is the method of attacking by stratagem of using the sheathed sword.
As you can see Sun Tzu was a pretty wise man. He realized if a country is worth conquering, or liberating in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, it might be a good idea not to kill all the citizens and destroy the infrastructure in the process.
This is a line of debate I find almost totally lacking in the "traditional" media. In fact, outside of maybe Joan Walsh of Salon I can't even recall somebody taking about this in an intelligent manner in the past couple weeks. And IMHO it should be topic #1 that any "war hawk" should have to address in an intelligent manner before they can be taken seriously.
This brings me to my second point, and one Sun Tzu talks about in detail, the use of spies. Now stick with me here, cause I will start off sounding like a Republican, but I do in fact have a point. When the news broke over the last week about CIA/Special Forces hit squads my issue wasn't with the tactic itself, it was hiding it from Congressional oversight.
On the use of spies Sun Tzu said:
Raising a host of a hundred thousand men and marching them great distances entails heavy loss on the people and a drain on the resources of the state. The daily expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces of silver. There will be commotion at home and abroad, and men will drop down exhausted on the highways. As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded in their labor.
Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory that is decided in a single day. This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy's condition, simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity.
One who acts thus is no leader of men, no present help to his sovereign, no master of victory. What enables the wise sovereign and the good general is to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge. Now this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits; it cannot be obtained inductively from experience, nor by any deductive calculation.
Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only be obtained from other men.
He goes on to say that paying a bribe, killing another leader, or using a spy to foil another army is far superior to engaging in a bloody war. Now I will give Bush Co. props on brides, they seemed to have that down. But Bush seemed to have forgotten the lessons we learned at the start of our invasion of Afghanistan.
A perfect example to highlight my point, that these ideas are just not idle musings on my part, is a new book out called Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan.
It is about four CIA officers and 16 US Special Forces that dropped into Afghanistan long before any of us knew we had boots on the ground. They carried around suitcases of cash, paid bribes, and got several Afghan warlords/tribal leaders to take on the whole of the Taliban. In a couple days, on horseback charging enemy lines against Russian tanks they routed the whole of the Taliban army that wasn't based in Kabul.
How could they do this, they had boots on the ground Afghan spies behind enemy lines, and were able to call in targeted air strikes. So 20 really brave dudes, a few million in cash, and targeted air strikes destroyed the Taliban.
So what did we learn from this, well not a whole lot. Cause next thing you know we put in more than one hundred thousands solders and try to force a square peg into a round whole by sheer force of will.
And to prove we can't seem to learn from past mistakes, we're now dropping bombs on folks in Pakistan with no boots on the ground. Killing folks at wedding parties, not terrorist. It just makes no sense on multiple levels.
Now I will just conclude with something I started off saying in the intro, I wonder if folks in the White House and the Pentagon need a copy of The Art Of War.
I will just end with one more quote, maybe the most well known from The Art Of War:
In peace prepare for war, in war prepare for peace. The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence under no circumstance can it be neglected .....
BTW: You can get a free copy of The Art Of War from the Gutenberg Project.