War, Counterinsurgency and Prolonged Operations
BY Herschel Smith
20 years, 1 week ago
Sun Tzu, “The Art of War,” II.6:
“Thus, while we have heard of blundering swiftness in war, we have not yet seen a clever operation that was prolonged.”
Sun Tzu, “The Art of War,” II.21:
“Hence what is essentialy in war is victory, not prolonged operations. And therefore the general who understands war is the Minister of the people’s fate and arbiter of the nation’s destiny.”
The “Small Wars Manual,” 2-9(d):
“The initiation of a campaign before adequate preparations have been made, may well be as fatal in a small war as in regular warfare. Prolonged operations are detrimental to the morale and prestige of the intervening forces. They can be avoided only by properly estimating the situation and by evolving as comprehensive, flexible, and simple a plan as possible before the campaign begins.”
Letter from al Qaeda high command to Zarqawi:
” … prolonging the war is in our interest.”
Concerning timeliness and adequate force projection, the counsel to us from the “Small Wars Manual” is clear and without compromise:
[…] I have argued for increased force size on many occassions, and in my article Consequences of Inadequate Force Projection, I pointed out that lack of adequate force projection (along with lack of timeliness and speed with which the war has been conducted) has had debilitating consequences to the war effort. […]