Know yourself

Yesterday Lex addressed Sun Tzu’s advice to generals to “know your enemy”. Knowing your enemy is important, but is only half of the equation of laying a solid foundation for military success. Generals, leaders and nations must also “know themselves”. Sun Tzu’s entire quote on the subject reads, “If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.”

Well I think it’s pretty clear that, if we do know our enemy, we refuse to call him by name. But how well do we know ourselves? Most people know that Americans, irrespective of the stakes, tire of war and the necessary casualties associated with it rather quickly. That’s why the Soviets were not confronted at the end of WWII. That’s why Korea ended in a stalemate, and Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia in losses. Given the political will, it would have been relatively easy to crush our enemy each time. We lacked the will.

If we knew ourselves, we’d know that America doesn’t lose wars. Politicians quit them. We should know going in that our MSM media will do everything in its power insure an American defeat, particularly if there happens to be a Republican president. We should know that the casualty clock, as well as the time clock are ticking from the time the first bomb falls. We weren’t two weeks into the Afghan war when the NY Times declared it a quagmire. We are now more than two years into the Iraq struggle and after ignoring every possible success story in favor of a steady beat of defeatism, our MSM have turned the tide of public opinion in favor of once again quitting.

Well, if we don’t know ourselves, the enemy surely does. He knows it’s a fool’s errand to confront the American military. Every American enemy knows that our strategic center of gravity is not to be found on the battlefield but rather in halls of congress. Our enemies target useful idiots like John, the good and honorable, Murtha knowing their propaganda arm, aka the American MSM, will make Murtha a hero once he turns against the best interests of his own country.

It seems the ITF have scored a double victory. Not only have many Americans turned away from the necessity of confronting ITF, but the opposition party and the MSM have actually declared President Bush “the enemy”. We need to know the enemy. Equally important is knowing ourselves so that we can avoid traveling the same road to defeat over and over. Sadly, our politicians are again leading us down that road.