Posted on 12/30/2005 3:12:56 PM PST by Congressman Billybob
Even political junkies like me take breaks from news and the Internet. In the middle of a football break, I realized the football analogy is false for American politics. So, I reread Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” and wrote this column.
Sun Tzu wrote that all warfare depends on deception. There is some deception in football. Occasionally it controls the outcome. I remember acutely a game that my high school lost in 1959, because I was deceived on the same play, twice.
Both times, the opposing quarterback faked a handoff but then pitched wide to the halfback who ran for a touchdown. As the defensive tackle, containment on that side was my responsibility. Both times, I put a bone-rattling tackle on the fullback, who did not have the ball. In my own defense, I played without glasses or contacts. I could not see the ball, so I tackled the man I thought had it. But enough of former triumphs.
Opportunities for deception in football are limited. The field is defined. The rules are enforced. Time is limited by the clock. Those restraints don’t apply in warfare or politics. There are no limits on the opportunities for deception. As Sun Tzu wrote, with deception an able commander can defeat even a stronger enemy.
There is a second, overwhelming difference between football and warfare. In football, every play is designed to defeat the plans of the opponent. In warfare and politics, the goal is not to win every possible confrontation. It is to win in the end, regardless of how many small defeats are inflicted along the way.
Apply Sun Tzu’s lessons to a certain public policy success of the Bush Administration over the Democrats, now. First, a dose of Sun Tzu’s “Art of War,” written two millenia ago:
Any military operation takes deception as its basic quality. A commander who is competent should pretend to be incompetent, he who is ready to use military force should pretend to delay his action;....
A good commander must offer a bait to allure the enemy who covets small advantages, capture the enemy when he is in disorder, take precautions against the enemy who has good preparation and substantial strength, evade for a time the enemy while he is strong, enrage the enemy who is hot-tempered, pretend to be weak in order to make the enemy arrogant or haughty, wear the enemy out if he has taken a good rest, set one party against another within the enemy if they are united. A commander must understand how to attack where the enemy is unprepared, and hit when it is unexpected. All the above-mentioned is the key to military victory, but it is never possible to formulate a fixed plan beforehand.
Look at the massive defeat the Bush Administration has just inflicted on the Democrats, on the subject of intelligence-gathering in wartime. The Democrats made a huge issue of the “outing” of CIA employee, Valerie Plame. Skip all the points about whether she was even the kind of employee who COULD be outed. Prosecutor Fitzgerald seems to agree, since he hasn’t charged anyone with outing her.
Pushing that issue, that hard, for so long, put the Democrats in an indefensible position concerning the revelation by the New York Times of the NSA program of interception of electronic communications between Al Qaeda suspects overseas and people in the US (who may or may not be US citizens).
By their own choice of prior tactics, the Democrats are in the weakest possible position to complain about the release of secret information to the media. A long series of Democrat attacks had (apparently) weakened the Bush Administration. Democrats and the press made much of the “declining poll numbers” for President Bush. But it is not the objective of any competent President to maintain high poll numbers. It is to accomplish his set purposes.
For a time, President Bush “looked” weak. Now the Democrats are hoist by their own petard. What does Sun Tzu say about that? “Pretend to be weak in order to make the enemy arrogant or haughty.” On this issue, as on many before, the Democrats have worked themselves into a losing position, by underestimating Bush. He has used their tendency to attack, all times and all fronts, against them
The Democrats are worse than I was on that football field 46 years ago. They have been defeated more than twice by the same tactic. And they lack the excuse that they couldn’t see it coming..
This should not close without applying Sun Tzu’s admonitions to its obvious subject as well as its allegorical one. Most of the leading Democrats are clamoring for “a plan for victory in Iraq.” Here’s the 2,000-year-old answer: “It is never possible to formulate a fixed plan beforehand.”
About the Author: John Armor is a First Amendment attorney and author who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
What is SEC caliber?
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I can't say that I'm upset that our rival lost, though I will say a few things. This being Barry Alvarez's last game contributed alot to it, as he clearly had more riding on this game than did Tuberville, and he drilled that into his players. Also, my best guess, Auburn seriously underestimated Wisconsin, they thought they'd be a push over, and as such, didn't prep as hard. A typical cow college mistake.
bump 4 later
The SEC isn't a bad football conference, but purty those southern boys have a hard time competing with The Big Ten. On Wisconsin!
Modern American formulation: "No plan survives contact with the enemy."Have we not yearned for Bush to say something like,
"It is enough for enemies meddling in Iraq to know that we have the personnel, the equipment and the commitment in place, and our help will enable the Iraqi people to win security within their own country. Publishing an overly detailed plan would be futile, and would unnecessarily give the enemy opportunities to win cheap political victories which would only delay, but not change, that outcome. I cannot predict how long it will take for the enemies to decide that further disruption of that process is no longer worth the candle.But we will adapt to the enemies' tactics as necessary. And together we, and ultimately the purple-fingered Iraqi people, will disillusion all enemies of the Iraqi people of any hope of reestablishing tyranny in Iraq."
America expects a friendly government to emerge in Iraq for the simple reason that America expects to be a valuable ally to the democratic republic which emerges from Iraq's political process. But America has no illusions that a democratic Iraq will be a puppet of the US government any more than, say, Turkey is. We are establishing the conditions for Iraqis to pursue happiness. That is a major undertaking, which has so far cost two thousand treasured American lives. And that - together with the territorial integrity of Iraq which is essential to peace in the region - is the limit of our ambition in Iraq."
Here’s the 2,000-year-old answer: “It is never possible to formulate a fixed plan beforehand.”
"A battle plan never survives first contact with the enemy."
Von Moltke
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