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Sun Tzu said:

I. War is a matter of vital importance to the State; the provice of life or death; the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied.

Li Chuan said:

'Weapons are tools of ill omen.' War is a grave matter; one is
apprehensive lest men embark upon it without due reflection.

We simply failed to properly plan for the Iraq War. We got about as far as "Shock and Awe" and decided we would figure the rest out later. It appears as if almost no consideration was given to the military climate that would exist after Saddam Hussein was removed. Vacuums in power are immensely transient and will be immediately filled by ambient political/military interests. Not being prepared to rapidly fill the gap in power has enabled the insurgent forces to become more entrenched in their positions. They have been granted time to study our strategies so that they may avoid our strengths and attack our weaknesses. The insurgency has reportedly been on it's last legs for quite some time now, although they recently seem to be getting good at shooting down helicopters.

The bottom line is that we were not prepared for urban warfare, which was obviously the direction this war was headed. Our soldiers are trained to destroy the enemy, not police civilian populations, so they are naturally heavy-handed when pursuing insurgents. Every time our soldiers kick down an Iraqi man's door at 4am and handcuff him in front of his family we cause serious damage to our military efforts. The roughed up man will now at least not like American soldiers in his country and at worst want to blow them up.

Sun Tzu and the Iraq War

Hopefully, this series of blogs will examine the current war in Iraq through the lens of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War". This series will focus solely on comparing the application of our military power in Iraq against the fundamental military principles explained in The Art of War(AW). It will only consider factors that have a causal relationship with our effectiveness to wage war. Determining when to go to war is tasked to our elected representatives, not our military. However, once the decision to go to war has been made, the military campain must be conducted according to sound military principles. War is cruel and war is cruelty.