Monday 1 May, 2006
Dragon and the Art of War
During his recent visit to United States, Chinese leader Hu gave president Bush a copy of The Art of War, the timeless Chinese classic and the oldest military treatise in the world. I thought the gifet was a subtle mockery at Bush's ability as the commander-in-chief, and the incident inspired me to read the book once more.
Enthralled by the timeless wisdom of Sun Tzu, I thought to share some of finest quotes wih you. I picked the ones that I think mr. Bush really should pay attention to:
Sun Tzu said: There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
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.
Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
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 entire masterpiece of Sun Tzu can be found here.
Posted by Dragon at 1 May 22:35, 2006The book was published in Finnish quite resently. I enjoyed very much the sound and rational way of thinking from time beyond thousands of years. E.g. Sun Tzu said about intelligence: (freely recalled from finnish edition) "The information about the enemy cannot be obtained from gods, signs or tokens. It has to be collected from people".
# 2 - Dragon (on May 2, 2006 11:51 PM):
Well selected quote. In general, Sun Tzu's approach seems to be to avoid conflict to the last, save every drop of blood of both his own men and their enemies, and save the people from excessive suffering. No wonder his wisdom has lived through ages.
# 3 - Rel Fexive (on May 3, 2006 11:18 AM):
I keep my copy on my PC. Time to read it again, I think.
# 4 - St. Thomas (on May 4, 2006 09:44 AM):
The Jihadist movement, which some might trace to the late forties and the establishment of Israel, has been in continous violation of Sun Tzu's principles -- yet still persists. The reason it, like war in general all over the world, still persists can be found in Nietzsche's more inciteful look into the all-too-human nature of humans -- a genetic predatory blood lust underlying political or sectarian rationlizations.
Sun Tzu presents a progressive program for dealing with the enemy and achieving political objectives. The US tried the "leave the conquered enemy intact" approach in the first Gulf War. But this only lead to over 60 cease-fire violations, including the ejection of arms inspectors and regular radar-missle lock-ons -- all a policy of humiliating the US as proof of sectarian invincibility and encouraging the Jihadists' movement.
"The Art of War" was the "bible" of Reagan's political stratagist and is well known to the Republican Party. Democrats (and the in-process of being converted/defeated Former-Communist-Now-Nixon Chinese) never fail to sucker themselves into the Sun Tzu trap of "looking stupid to your enemy". Sun Tzu is but one of the ways of "How we wiiiin."
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