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.Seems like nobody in DC understands this kind of warfare.
— Sun Tzu, The Art Of War III:1-2
And yet I could have sworn that that approach was part and parcel of Obama’s own struggle to destroy America.