Bush and the Art of War
t m z z
while the Bush Administration appears determined to ignore Sun Tzu's
lessons.
By Scott D. O'Reilly
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
Written some 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu's The Art of War is one of the most
penetrating and relevant works on the subjects of leadership and waging war.
Its most timeless lesson, perhaps, is that "in all history, there is no
instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare." Presently,
the United States is engaged in two protracted wars--in Iraq and
Afghanistan--and an ongoing conflict with a shadowy army of Islamic
extremists who threaten American interests across the globe. So how does Sun
Tzu's advice bear on America's predicament, and more particularly on the
strategic vision of our leaders and that of our enemies? Unfortunately, bin
Laden and al-Qaeda seem to have absorbed the lessons of Sun Tzu to a far
greater extent than has the Bush administration.
Sun Tzu's Lesson #1--Empathize with the Enemy
Empathizing with the enemy is an essential factor in defeating him. Not in
the sense sympathizing with his aims or feeling his pain, but in
understanding why he fights and how his worldview influences the tactics and
strategies he will employ. In battling al-Qaeda and bin Ladenism the Bush
administration has displayed a woeful ignorance of the most dangerous enemy
America has faced since defeating Hitler's fascism.
America has won a series of tactical battles aimed at defeating Islamic
extremism--most notably in Afghanistan and Iraq--but it is losing the war
against terrorism according to numerous counter-terrorism experts. This has
helped lead to an extraordinary rift between the Bush administration and the
intelligence services, with many current and former analysts contending that
the Bush administration's tactics are directly playing into al-Qaeda's
extremely well thought-out strategy for defeating the United States. If
their arguments are sound, America is potentially facing a catastrophic
defeat with George W. Bush leading a charge that will make General Custer's
last stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn seem like a sensible military
exercise in comparison.
Much of the problem is that the Bush administration has neither explained to
the American public the true nature of the threat it faces from a growing
Islamic insurgency, nor does it fully understand this threat itself.
Contrary to administration assertions, bin Laden is not an irrational
nihilist who hates America because of her freedoms and representative form
of government. Rather, bin Laden is a highly patient, experienced, cunning,
and immensely capable adversary who is waging jihad against the United
States to achieve logical and attainable aims--to remove the United States
as the dominant power in the Middle East and to ensure that the Arab people
benefit from their region's oil revenue by receiving a fairer price per
barrel.
Bin Laden has been able to tap into the widespread resentment many Arabs
feel because of U.S. support of oppressive regimes that betray the Arab
people by allowing the West to siphon off the region's oil wealth that in
turn fuels America's great military power which is used to subjugate and
attack Muslims. Bin Laden is seen in much of the Muslim world as a figure
akin to Robin Hood, a pious defender of the Islamic faith against a hi-tech
but heartless American military that continually sheds Arab blood to steal
Arab oil. Among a large portion of the Muslim world, bin Laden inspires
reverence by the example of his piety and by gaining a reputation as a man
of his word. Unlike his counterpart George Bush, bin Laden is a bona fide
warrior whose predictions and pronouncements have proven more accurate than
his adversary's. Sun Tzu said that a successful commander "knits [his
soldiers] together by good faith." By hyping the threat that Iraq posed and
repeatedly breaking promises to U.S. troops regarding the duration of their
tours of duty, the Bush administration has flouted Sun Tzu's sage advice
that "if faith decays," defeat follows.
Sun Tzu's Lesson # 2--Accommodate Yourself to the Enemy
The invasion of Iraq has bolstered bin Laden's standing in the Arab world
because he predicted that the United States would invade an oil rich Arab
country to gain control of its petroleum, while simultaneously handing him a
strategic victory by having America's forces spread thin, close at hand, and
easy to target. Like Mao Zedong, who traded territory for time, bin Laden
recognizes that time favors an insurgency over a foreign occupying force,
and his goal is to slowly bleed the United States to death, one soldier at a
time, until America loses its resolve. The fatal predicament facing U.S.
soldiers in Iraq is that they rarely know when or where the enemy will
attack, or even how to distinguish foes from friends. Bin Laden, an expert
in offense and defense, is obviously familiar with the thought Sun Tzu
wrote:
Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to
defend; and he is skilful in defense whose opponent does not know what to
attack.
Contrary to administration assertions that al-Qaeda knows that if it loses
in Iraq it loses worldwide, and that it is therefore putting up a desperate
last ditch effort, al-Qaeda recognizes that the American occupation provides
them numerous advantages beyond serving as a recruitment device. As Ayman
al-Zawahari recognizes: "The Americans are facing a delicate situation [in
Iraq].. If they withdraw they will lose everything and if they stay they
will continue to bleed to death."
Sun Tzu's Lesson #3--Defeat the Enemy Before the Battle Begins
In short, bin Laden didn't even need to lure the United States into Iraq,
but such a thought was certainly part of his strategic thinking. And no
wonder: Iraq was virtually a no-win situation for the United States from the
start. Quixotic attempts to install and prop up a representative government
not only run against the tide of culture and history in the region, but also
will continue to exact a huge cost in blood and treasure. For the
foreseeable future, the best the United States can hope for is the avoidance
of a full-scale civil war and the emergence of Iraq as a failed state that
serves as a terrorist haven. To a large extent, the U.S. invasion of Iraq
has already succeeded in fulfilling these aims on behalf of bin Laden, with
the added windfall of alienating America from its allies and disheartening
an American public that was promised a clear, clean, and decisive victory.
America's "Shock and Awe" campaign was designed to instill fear and respect
in the hearts of her enemies, but instead the invasion's lack of legitimacy
has sown discord and dismay while sapping morale among the troops, the
public, and allies alike. Bin Laden seems to recognize more than Bush, as
Sun Tzu writes:
Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence;
supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without
fighting.
Bin Laden also understands, as Clausewitz preached, that to defeat an enemy
one must attack his "center of gravity." For bin Laden, America's "center of
gravity"--its economy--is also its weakest link. Bin Laden recognizes that
the mere threat of attack causes America to divert enormous resources with
elevated terror alerts, not to mention the heavy psychological toll constant
vigilance exacts on a population, particularly those charged with protecting
the public. Al-Qaeda, on the other hand, has no readily discernable "center
of gravity"--no homeland, no economy, no traditional army or military
bases--which makes is doubly difficult to attack, let alone defeat. But
al-Qaeda's ability to be nowhere and everywhere should not be taken as a
sign of weakness or cowardice, but as exemplifying sound military sense. Sun
Tzu writes, for instance:
O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible,
through you inaudible and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.
Bin Laden's "center of gravity" is anti-Americanism. So long as the United
States continues to inflame the Islamic world by supporting oppressive
kleptocracies like Saudi Arabia in order to insure America's access to cheap
oil at any cost, America will be feeding bin Ladenism. The war America is
fighting is taking place not just on the battlefield, but also in the
informational, ideological, and psychological spheres as well. It is a
three-dimensional game of chess where tactical military victories on one
level can undermine success on other levels. Reducing America's reliance on
Middle Eastern oil through energy conservation, alternative fuels, and
perhaps even developing America's Artic reserves would go a long way to
defusing the dysfunctional status quo that has engendered the current
conflict. This would be a reversal, of course, but in the words of Sun Tzu:
The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing
disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service
for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.
Sun Tzu's Lesson #4--Deceive the Enemy
Sun Tzu's most famous dictum is that "all war is deception." So far the Bush
Administration has managed to deceive the American people about the nature
of the threat the country faces and the reasons al-Qaeda has declared war on
the United States. Al-Qaeda is not just a collection of nihilistic
terrorists, but a growing anti-American, anti-Globalization insurgency that
has increasingly widespread support among the world's nearly 1.4 billion
Muslims. We are risking a "clash of civilizations" in no small part because
of our energy policy vis-a-vis the Arab world. Unfortunately, thus far the
Bush Administration has proven far more adept at fooling itself and the
American public than it has in deceiving the enemy.
Sun Tzu wrote that the master tactician is like the shuai-jan, a snake found
in the Ch'ang Mountains. "Strike at its head, and you will be attacked by
its tail; strike at its tail and you will be attacked by its head; strike at
its middle and you will be attacked by head and tail both." Bin Laden and
al-Qaeda, alas, have obviously made effective use of Sun Tzu's thought, and
their character as an adversary reflects that. The Bush administration, on
the other hand, appears determined to ignore Sun Tzu's lessons. The failure
to plan for the post-war phase in Iraq is just one example of the
administration failing to recognize that "the enlightened leader lays his
plan well ahead." This is tragic, for "the art of war is of vital importance
to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road to either safety or
ruin. Hence under no circumstances can it be neglected."
Scott D. O'Reilly is an independent writer with degrees in philosophy and
psychology. He is a contributor to the book The Great Thinkers A-Z and is
working on Deconstructing Demagogues, a book which examines how politicians
use and misuse language. You can email your comments to Scott at
sc...@interventionmag.com
Posted Friday, August 6, 2004
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.phpop=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=827