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Football, Warfare, and Public Policy
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By: John Armor
[BB 496, 29 December, 798 words]
Even political junkies like me take breaks from news and the Internet.
In the middle of a football break, I realized the football analogy is
false for American politics. So, I reread Sun Tzu's "Art of War" and
wrote this column.
Sun Tzu wrote that all warfare depends on deception. There is some
deception in football. Occasionally it controls the outcome. I
remember acutely a game that my high school lost in 1959, because I
was deceived on the same play, twice.
Both times, the opposing quarterback faked a handoff but then pitched
wide to the halfback who ran for a touchdown. As the defensive
tackle, containment on that side was my responsibility. Both times, I
put a bone-rattling tackle on the fullback, who did not have the ball.
In my own defense, I played without glasses or contacts. I could not
see the ball, so I tackled the man I thought had it. But enough of
former triumphs.
Opportunities for deception in football are limited. The field is
defined. The rules are enforced. Time is limited by the clock.
Those restraints don't apply in warfare or politics. There are no
limits on the opportunities for deception. As Sun Tzu wrote, with
deception an able commander can defeat even a stronger enemy.
There is a second, overwhelming difference between football and
warfare. In football, every play is designed to defeat the plans of
the opponent. In warfare and politics, the goal is not to win every
possible confrontation. It is to win in the end, regardless of how
many small defeats are inflicted along the way.
Apply Sun Tzu's lessons to a certain public policy success of the Bush
Administration over the Democrats, now. First, a dose of Sun Tzu's
"Art of War," written two millenia ago:
Any military operation takes deception as its basic quality. A
commander who is competent should pretend to be incompetent, he who is
ready to use military force should pretend to delay his
action;....
A good commander must offer a bait to allure the enemy who covets
small advantages, capture the enemy when he is in disorder, take
precautions against the enemy who has good preparation and substantial
strength, evade for a time the enemy while he is strong, enrage the
enemy who is hot-tempered, pretend to be weak in order to make the
enemy arrogant or haughty, wear the enemy out if he has taken a good
rest, set one party against another within the enemy if they are
united. A commander must understand how to attack where the enemy is
unprepared, and hit when it is unexpected. All the above-mentioned is
the key to military victory, but it is never possible to formulate a
fixed plan beforehand.
Look at the massive defeat the Bush Administration has just inflicted
on the Democrats, on the subject of intelligence-gathering in wartime.
The Democrats made a huge issue of the "outing" of CIA employee,
Valerie Plame. Skip all the points about whether she was even the
kind of employee who COULD be outed. Prosecutor Fitzgerald seems to
agree, since he hasn't charged anyone with outing her.
Pushing that issue, that hard, for so long, put the Democrats in an
indefensible position concerning the revelation by the New York Times
of the NSA program of interception of electronic communications
between Al Qaeda suspects overseas and people in the US (who may or
may not be US citizens).
By their own choice of prior tactics, the Democrats are in the weakest
possible position to complain about the release of secret information
to the media. A long series of Democrat attacks had (apparently)
weakened the Bush Administration. Democrats and the press made much
of the "declining poll numbers" for President Bush. But it is not the
objective of any competent President to maintain high poll numbers.
It is to accomplish his set purposes.
For a time, President Bush "looked" weak. Now the Democrats are hoist
by their own petard. What does Sun Tzu say about that? "Pretend to
be weak in order to make the enemy arrogant or haughty." On this
issue, as on many before, the Democrats have worked themselves into a
losing position, by underestimating Bush. He has used their tendency
to attack, all times and all fronts, against them
The Democrats are worse than I was on that football field 46 years
ago. They have been defeated more than twice by the same tactic. And
they lack the excuse that they couldn't see it coming..
This should not close without applying Sun Tzu's admonitions to its
obvious subject as well as its allegorical one. Most of the leading
Democrats are clamoring for "a plan for victory in Iraq." Here's the
2,000-year-old answer: "It is never possible to formulate a fixed plan
beforehand."
About the Author: John Armor is a First Amendment attorney and author
who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
John_Armor@aya.yale.edu |
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