[novalogic]

"So many watching this thing are like a child watching a chess master and viciously scrutinizing his sacrificing of a pawn."

...unless you happen to be the pawn, of course.

[RobRoy]

>>...unless you happen to be the pawn, of course.<<
Pawns don't think. They move where the players hand guides them. And by pawn, I don't mean people - I mean battles and locations and timing and rhetoric. Like chess, war has a flow and patterns that are lost on the casual observer. And like chess, it is hard for a casual observer to know who is "winning" until someone says "checkmate."