Self-Inflicted Defeat

The enemy.  He is not confused about who he wants to defeat.

Self-Inflicted Defeat

Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy. - Sun Tzu

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. - Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu authored The Art of War centuries ago yet it is as applicable in the 21st century as it was in 300 BC. Unfortunately while professional soldiers spend their lives studying the precepts of Sun Tzu in many different forms, politicians generally fail to understand the lessons that were meant to be conveyed by the "wise" quotes that we are all used to seeing whenever authors want to appear wise when writing about war. Few politicians have read Sun Tzu and even fewer understand what was being conveyed in those writings. Obama has heard of Sun Tzu, I am sure, but I doubt that he read The Art of War and, if he did, he failed to understand it. Not that Obama is ignorant but his concept of battle comes more from the likes of Saul Alinsky than from classical strategic and tactical thought and this makes him less effective that even Lyndon Johnson who tried to run a very hot war from the White House. Democrats, with the exception of Harry Truman, have proven time and again that it just can't be done that way.

What we see with the Obama Regime, and with the Bush Administration before it, is the reticence to clearly define and identify the enemy. The failure of the Bush Administration was because after the shock of 9/11 wore off and the civil libertarians started their counter-campaigns to humanize the enemy, Republicans began acting like Democrats and paying homage to "political correctness" rather than giving the military a clear objective and allowing them to prosecute a war. With the Obama Regime, conducting war is something that has to be very tightly controlled so as to not cause any bad publicity or cause any blood to be splashed on their own shoes thus their reliance on Preditor strikes and covert action while publicly restricting the activities of troops committed openly to battle. As much as I like and admire Special Operators, folks, that is not the way to win a war. It is a way to ensure defeat, politically if not militarily. Just ask Lyndon Johnson.

You can be certain that the enemy, the Islamo-fascists who were historically allied with the National Socialists in WWII, are adhering to the teachings of Sun Tzu and von Clauswitz. You can be certain that their goal is absolute victory and they aren't worrying about looking bad in the Left Stream Media because they see the Left Stream Media, if it doesn't support them, as an enemy to be eventually eliminated as well. Their goal is total dominance. Under Obama, ours is to get along and be a "nice guy."

I wonder what Sun Tzu would say about that?

Follow the link for a very good commentary.