Thread by @ThyConsigliori

John Minford, #SunTzu "Strength is depleted on the battlefield; families at home are destitute."

This verse needs a bit of context, and you may want to read the previous verses' commentaries, here:

2:10 – bit.ly/2I3Y6hf

2:11 – bit.ly/2WXFC5d

To review that context briefly, Master Sun has been discussing the economy-breaking impact of extended wars fought far abroad. Here in verse 12, he brings us to the next step in his case, painting how bleak the picture can become.

In the verse 13, we will see one final, technical list of consequences, economic losses due to specific expenditures and then in verse 14 we begin, finally, to hear the cure.

Today’s verse is essentially the final vision of loss before we close it out and turn to solutions.

No strength left to fight, the families at home are devastated, destitute. Distant adventures, poorly planned, wrongly executed. It's impossible to stay away from American warfighting since the end of WWII. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, they all fall into this category.

What escapes this critique, interestingly, is the Cold War, and our lessons learned in all our short, tactical engagements, usually run by one or the other of our special operations capabilities. I wish I could exclude Golf War I, but I really can't.

Golf War I did employ massive force, rapidly deployed with a clear tactical objective that was quickly accomplished. But it completely failed for lack of strategic objective. As we'll soon see, the outcome of a war must be calculated strategically, not just economically.

So basically, we won the war tactically, but leaving Saddam Husein in power, we turned victory into a simmering, distant, long, expensive policing action that we performed so terribly that it led to Golf War II, the fails of which hardly bear recounting.

The political consequence of our Iraq disasters - or should I say the long slow debacle from 1990 - 2019 - led us into the Obama era, followed by the Clinton candidacy and even the current state of continuous attack against @realDonaldTrump.

If it needed proving that Master Sun was right, post WWII America is the best example you could find, all the way up to the present moment in time, here at the beginning of 2019. We need look no further.

There's a deep dynamic at play in Master Sun's simple declaration. This is what foolish expenditures lead to.

It's as if he got control of our heads, is forcing our eyes open, and making us look.

We don't, naturally. The only thing we see is what makes us look good to ourselves. To question the success of anything or anyone is to be rude. To challenge the absolute rule of the ego is to be socially unacceptable. The naked king has taken over, completely.

Master Sun couldn't care about any of that, less. "Oh naked king," he says, "you've ruined the nation with your far flung, poorly planned expeditions, and the families of the nation are bearing the cost of your foolishness. You may not care about them, but your armies are weak."

One final observation. There are two practices required here. The first is failure analysis which offers lessons learned. The second is open-eyed, worst case scenario analysis. We extend the lesson forward, looking at the most unpleasant outcome we can.

Perhaps we can summarize these two, tough-minded practices with the following clear visualization. The naked king always wears a very visible dunce cap. Don't be the naked king. And don't be his flattering advisers either.

Try to be more like #SunTzu. Everyone should.

To return to previous sections in our #WarForAmerica2020 and #SunTzuForMAGA series, don't forget to head over to @WarForAmerica21.

And also, be sure to purchase John Minford's translation, here:

amazon.com/Art-War-Pengui…

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