the art of war
 

Because of recent events at work, I've been taking another look at Sun Tzu. These lines struck a chord with me...

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.

and perhaps more importantly:

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.


Evidently it didn't make GW's vacation reading list though:
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/monica/24302

So you are saying that we should be using nukes?

I have three copies.. different interpretations.

I don't get the Bush connection?

btw.. The World is Flat's author does seminars for big policy thinkers and military. His point is that without the world being thoroughly connected there will always be an uprising. When a true new connection happens economic development follows.

based on his position it's imperative to connect to these prob countries as soon as possible. Afga neighbor's border openings is a step to this connection.

The above book was released before 9/11. His new book release is in motion afaik, maybe a few months.

I'll send a copy of this thread to the White House and ask to foreword this info to George. Maybe he'll visit for some OT action?

ps: the author & book is listed in Todd's site.

I took one important lesson from this book: Every battle it won before it starts.

In business, in life.....it pays to be prepared and to know your enemy.

I think it's more like, we should use nukes, but not quickly... hehehe

there's been a push for tactical nukes from the military for a few yr's now. I figure that Israel will do the experimenting, if necessary, on Iran some day. Otherwise the politics over here is a bit more complicated.

tactical nukes are smaller & cleaner right?

how small can they make them? or, do we even know?

one WTC building crumbling is similar in tactical power to a small European Theatre war tactical nuke.

the military wants them for bunker busters. They say it'll be pretty clean environmentally.. whatever that means.

Divide from the inside, win without engaging...The Vietcong credit John Kerry and the anti-war movement for the success and efficacy of this strategy.

Small as you want...but the value is the heat generated in such a small area. Disintegrated WMD is good WMD.

Heat is only part of the equation with a nuke. The pressure blast is what we really look for.

This can then be used to make clean nuclear weapons. The dirty parts of the use usually occur from the debris and dust that gets stirred up. This stuff "falls out" of the sky and coats everything. Since it is now radioactive, it eventually kills lots of people.

So, you can see that not detonating a bomb on the ground might possibly cause less fallout but still crush a target.

Also, fill up the bathtub with water. Drop something small in the center of the tub and watch the ripples. Now drop it by the edge. If the target is hypothetically on the edge of the tub, the ripples from the object dropped in the center of the tub will contact the edge of the tub over a greater surface area.

Good stuff from the Art of War. Especially the prolonged engagement segment. Nations benefit from the peace after wars. Militaries and warfare are a pure waste of resources, talent, money, and lives... as is pretty much all government.

I imagine that was Confuscious saying that...Doesn't sound like Sun Tzu...Whoever said it was obviously wrong...There will always be a nutjob who needs to be killed, and sometimes armies of them led by Tojos, Stalins, Hitlers or Usamas.

On what or who?

Who the fuch is Usamas? :confused:

Usama is a more accurate spelling, according to some...Including Clinton's indictment of Usama, linking him to Saddam Hussein.

It seems to me that America benefited from a prolonged war in the late 1700's.

That was me saying that. It is a waste. It would be nice if we could all get along, but we can't so we need the military. In a perfect world we wouldn't have a miltary, but obviously this is no where close to realistic.

Sadly, tactical nukes are no longer in vogue. Sun Tzu probably wouldn't have recommended them in this case anyway, because they simply weren't necessary force. See, this isn't the kind of war that ol' Mr. Tzu is talking about. We did that part of the business quick and clean, just like he would have liked. Now we're in to clean up the mess, which is something covered in his second book, "Sun Tzu's Art of Cleaning Up the Mess."

Why stop there, Nostatic? Why not expand your canon to include Carl von Clausewitz, Napoleon's Maxims of War, Machiavelli and Otto von Bismarck.

One more time: Many of the voices that bleat "quagmire" incessantly weren't for the war in the first place, so it's hard to believe they would EVER have the patience required. Still others, laboring under the assumption that we could do overnight nation-building in Iraq, are now frustrated that it's taken longer than they expected.

And yet the final group of critics are those for whom NO outcome in Iraq, or Louisiana, for that matter, would be satisfactory. For them, every crisis is the opportunity to oppose the administration, because its very existence is offensive to their leftist ideology. And therefore, because these people believe that the end, in this case, attempting to thwart the Bush Administration, justifies the means, which is continually opposing its efforts and creating the political turmoil that encourages our enemies to persist. And they don't care how many of our people die, at home or abroad.

The capitulation of the Nazis and the subsequent rebuilding of Europe was at least a 20 year process with a willing populace. The rebuilding of public safety, and hopefully, the creation of a stable, democratic government in Iraq, might take only another five years, or it might take ten. Or it might take a hundred. It does NOT matter anymore about the genesis of the situation, OK? We're IN IT ALREADY, stop crying over spilled milk and pointing the finger to advance your own agenda. Iraq's problem is OUR PROBLEM, Liberal, Conservative.

Mulhollanddose... then you agree that a limited nuclear device would have the same effect as carpet bombing had in ending the war in Vietnam?