Archidamus gives good advice on al-Qa’da (some thousands of years ago)
Thucydides reports on the speech by Archidamus, the Lacedaemonian king, warning the Spartans not to be too anxious to declare war on the Athenians:
“In practice we always base our preparations against an enemy on the assumption that his plans are good; indeed, it is right to rest our hopes not on a belief in his blunders, but on the soundness of our provisions.”
The Peloponnesian War, Book I, LXXXIV. (4), available through Tufts.
In the current war against various radical Islamists, we hear much about how our president screwed this up, or our military screwed that up, or how this, that, or the other political figure is personally responsible for whatever trouble we are having at any particular time. What I do not hear much of – except on web sites considered right-wing – is discussion of the plans and strategies of the, you know, bad guys. Just because they're perhaps crazy and certainly depraved does not mean they cannot have "good" (sound) plans.
Why don’t we ever talk about the possibility that sometimes the enemies’ “plans are good” instead of assuming that the war would somehow be no trouble to win if certain of our leaders were only competent.
“In practice we always base our preparations against an enemy on the assumption that his plans are good; indeed, it is right to rest our hopes not on a belief in his blunders, but on the soundness of our provisions.”
The Peloponnesian War, Book I, LXXXIV. (4), available through Tufts.
In the current war against various radical Islamists, we hear much about how our president screwed this up, or our military screwed that up, or how this, that, or the other political figure is personally responsible for whatever trouble we are having at any particular time. What I do not hear much of – except on web sites considered right-wing – is discussion of the plans and strategies of the, you know, bad guys. Just because they're perhaps crazy and certainly depraved does not mean they cannot have "good" (sound) plans.
Why don’t we ever talk about the possibility that sometimes the enemies’ “plans are good” instead of assuming that the war would somehow be no trouble to win if certain of our leaders were only competent.
posted by Agim Zabeli at 11:28 AM
1 Comments:
True for you, Agim.
It is unfortunately true that one's adversary seldom consents to sit immobile while one maneuvers against him. Here is a quote, from the book I recently reviewed on my blog, which doesn't blame the mess in Iraq on President Bush, but on our failure to recognize that there are other actors in this drama, and not just props.
"After Vietnam, the U.S. military had vowed never to wage a counterinsurgency war again - indeed had largely stopped preparing for the possibility. In the year since Chiarelli had arrived in Baghdad, however, he had learned what so many commanders before him learned, and always the hard way: The enemy has a vote." Martha Raddatz, The Long Road Home (2007), page 291.
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