The US Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., recently announced its list of the “top 10 classics” in warfare. To understand the dynamics that bring countries into conflict, and the skills needed to win, students and scholars are urged to read Carl von Clausewitz’s 1832 classic “On War” and the ancient works “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu and “History of the Peloponnesian War” by Thucydides. It is an important list, but the books are mainly about big wars a long time ago, and have limited application to the situations today’s cadets are likely to face.
Just as the military itself has had to adapt its tactics and equipment in response to irregular warfare — the battles between big powers and smaller ones who utilize insurgency and terrorism — it should do the same with its reading list. This shouldn’t be a difficult task: Military literature is filled with lessons learned from guerrilla warfare as far back as the American and Chinese revolutions, the Algerian insurrection against the French, and the fall of empires from the British to the Ottoman.
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I believe it was Sun Tzu who offered the sage advise to "know your enemy." If there ever was a time to take that sage advise it is now. However, not only is it being ignored, the Pentagon has adopted a policy of actively discouraging knowing the enemy which at this point in our history is the clear and present danger of the Islamic doctrine of jihad. The topic is off the table for discussion. Related courses have been shut down, official manuals have been purged of references that even obliquely connect terrorists attacks to Islam.
The enemy cetainly knows us, they read us like a book. Make no mistake, coupling that ridiculous YouTube video to the embassy attacks was no coincidence. That was a well planned tactic that got the desired effect. The enemy knew where we would focus our attention and they were right. They even got us to open the issue of modifying our 1st Amendment. They accomplished all this and they don't even have a West Point.
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Speaking as a retired military officer who has read many of these books, I think this editorial writer misses the point. In large part, these books describe the human nature of war, as well as the intersection of war and politics. These subjects are timeless. Our current conflict against Islamic fundamentalist inspired militancy, as manifested currently by the threat from Al Qaeda, is a contest between humans. Osama bin Laden followed the principles described in these books as surely as Napoleon did in his time. Just because the books were written years ago does not mean that human nature has changed.