Edicts of Ares: 13 Absolute Rules of Warfare

By Michael Riggs

Of the successful military leaders over the past recorded millenia, there are a few nuggets of military wisdom that are consistently repeated by the most successful military leaders in history, truisms that have been successfully demonstrated time and again.

When one sees highly successful military leaders utilize the identical same principles, though separated by continents, culture, and millennia, it would appear that one who proposes to take up the art of war as a vocation would give these basic concepts significant weight.

For those who would follow these edicts of war, not a single battle, campaign, nor war has been lost since 1479 BC. Yet even the greatest commanders, including Hannibal Barca, Napolean, and Lee lost when they uncomprehendingly abandoned these absolute rules. Thus, these inviolable edicts determine battlefield success. Not the General.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 11, 2006
• ISBN: 9781469119250

Michael Riggs

Special Forces trained, the author experienced combat with the First Cav, served with the elite O Company Arctic Rangers, the 82nd Airborne and the 101st Airborne. A keynote speaker for Special Operations forces functions, the authors analytical talents delve into the minute combat-proven truisms that apply regardless of century, continent, or composition.

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Copyright © 2007 by Michael Riggs.

Library of Congress Control Number:          2006906509

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Contents

Author’s Note

Introduction

Rule # 1

Rule # 2

Rule # 3

Rule # 4

Rule # 5

Rule # 6

Rule # 7

Rule # 8

Rule # 9

Rule # 10

Rule # 11

Rule # 12

Rule # 13

Observations

Epilogue

Dedication

To our nation’s Gatekeepers and Far-Archers, ever vigilant.

Author’s Note

This is not a book of tactics, nor a military how-to manual, which are a dime-a-dozen, and apparently of limited practical value, given our recent performances. These edicts of Ares are simple, direct, and absolute. When these edicts are followed, not one commander has lost a single battle, campaign, or war since 1479 B.C. That’s about as good as a record gets.

The rules’ simplicity of concept explains how Alexander at age twenty knew more of war and its approach than his Generals and ours combined. Alexander knew that to follow these rules, one is absolutely, positively, undefeatable. And he was.

Napolean, Hannibal Barca, and even Lee lost the moment they abandoned the very edicts that previously enabled their great successes. Sherman and Ghengis both used common elements and never suffered a loss.

The United States hasn’t used the first one of these thirteen absolute rules of war since the Second World War. Nor has the United States won a single war since the creation of the Joint Chiefs. One hundred hours is a great battle. The Joint Chiefs did manage to pooch two wars though, and while the jury is still out on the effort in Iraq, they once again appear to have squandered our initial successes with their bunker mentality.

Schwartzkopf recently used a few of these edicts and won a great battle. Scipio used these edicts and defeated a wily Hannibal Barca. Philip of Macedon used these edicts and won a kingdom. A very young Alexander used these edicts and won an empire—with a force one-fifth the size of his enemy. Success is never a matter of raw numbers. Our Generals require great numbers, only to conceal poor Generalship.

Today’s American General Staff reflects great success. On the Washington, DC cocktail circuit. Not in battle. Today our Generals are political administrators. Administrators second, politicians first. Not warriors. Generals want to command. And to command as a general, numbers are necessary. Not victories. Not the ability to lead, or even win in battle. Just numbers of troops.

Ask our senior army generals how many personal, confirmed kills they have made in combat, and how many personal combat kills they have made within the past four years of fighting? If the answer is none to the first question, then they should never be given a combat command. Ever. If the answer to question two is none, then that should immediately disqualify them for any combat command and they should be immediately retired.

When there is shooting and dying, and your leader has done neither, then he isn’t a leader. He lacks the guts, desire, drive, and isn’t hungry enough to pursue victory. What if all the soldiers took that same stance? What if no one would engage? A leader of fighting men who doesn’t and can’t fight cannot possibly be a leader of fighting men. A tennis coach who has never hit a tennis ball is not a tennis coach. He just likes being around short skirts.

Martial artist Bruce Lee said that when I punch, I am expressing myself. The actions of a man is an expression of who he is. A man is not his training, upbringing, or verbal expressions. A man is the summations of his actions. A warrior that can’t kill in combat is not a warrior. A leader of warriors must be a warrior leader.

Then again, to get around that requirement, some staff flunky will probably rig up some enemy cripples for senior leaders to gun down. Just like they have allowed senior officers to cheat during career make-or-break war games, enabling their battlefield success and thus promotion. Buddies.

Our generals most intriguing and passionate battles are fought within the Pentagon, with various forces and groups working against each other to gain more power, more influence, and more rank. Or to stuff, restrict, or bury political enemies, perceived or real, while padding their post-service employment opportunities.

Opposing sections within the Pentagon will temporarily combine efforts to destroy a threatening third section, and then immediately return to the previous state of being active enemies. One cannot be honest and truthful within the senior military. If you try, one of the many and several factions will label you a non-team player and then all sections get to gang up one you and have you crushed.

These honorable military leaders will stuff the welfare of the military and the nation just to win their personal battles, and we the people they work for be damned. If those within the Pentagon put half their current effort against our international enemies, we might, just might get some of our money’s worth. Within the Pentagon, it rapidly becomes one administrative and inter-service urinating contest after another, and their petty squabbles cost our nation dearly. A good man? Not in the Pentagon. Not for long. He’ll be transferred out or pushed out, and it happens all the time.

Rent the Pentagon out and push these generals into the field where they belong. The logistics staff positions can be contracted out to private sector models of efficiency, such as Wal-Mart or UPS.

In our military, we seem to have to learn and relearn the same tricks of the trade pertinent to battlefield success—over and over between generations. Don’t look to our Generals for battlefield skills—after fighting numerous in-house battles within the Pentagon and accustomed to petty office tactics that would make Machiavelli hold his head in shame—they don’t know real battlefield tactics either. Do they know dirty tricks and political power plays? They are masters. Do they know anything about being soldiers and warriors on the battlefield? Their battlefield record indicates they don’t have a clue.

The nearest the modern General or Admiral comes to a small arms encounter of any sort is at a duck hunt in the company of corporate executives at the treat of Continental Motors, Inc.

—C. Wright Mills

Conflict avoidance, political role playing, inter- and intra-service back-stabbing, crease smooching, flawless time-in-grade, and pristine performance reports are not desirable characteristics in a warrior. Washington, Morgan, Marion, Green, LaFayette, Grant, Sherman, Puller, nor Patton would be allowed in today’s military, much less the officer corps.

Mavericks. Romantics. Renegades. Misfits. Social Parias. Pirates. Brawlers, drunks, villains. Rebels, marauders and nonconformists. These are the men who led our nation to greatness, men who were determined warriors, and yet we now do everything possible to filter out any hint of these characteristics from our military.

Our military leadership has become so conformist, so petty, so bland, so like-thinking that we have institutionalized military idiodicy. We have our Alexanders, our Greenes our Morgans our Pershings, and Pattons, but they’ll never become senior military leaders because they don’t fit the narrow criteria for mistake-avoidance standard in our current military.

We are as predictable as the sunset. We telegraph every approach. The most efficient tactic for use against urban guerillas hasn’t been used the first time in Iraq, thus we have handed the guerillas the initiative. We hole up at every opportunity which completely negates the basic military concept of movement and freedom of movement.

Our senior military have forgotten the basics. They have forgotten how to win, and win smart, while the wisdom of the millennia is there for the taking. Our generals, quite simply, don’t know their trade. It is our troops that pay for that mistake with their life’s blood.

Our generals can’t even lead. They manage, and even then, do so from hundreds or thousands of miles away from the actual fight. Everything organizational is oriented toward maintaining their state of isolated supremacy. They do in fact succeed on the isolation portion, which is counterproductive.

The greatest military weapon is an intuitive, counter-intuitive, knowing mind that can lead. Our military commanders learn by rote, teach the same, and strive to maintain their distance from their soldiers, the battlefield, the enemy, and thus constant distance from victory.

Any reader of this work, military or civilian, may not like some of the edicts here as some may appear extremely severe and harsh, but that doesn’t change the fact. These edicts work. They always work.

They worked for Alexander, Scipio, Charles Martel, Napolean, Greene, Marlborough, Patton, Sherman, and more recently, Schwartzkopf. Just to name a few.

They always work.

Iraq? That’s one rabbit that can still be pulled out of the hat.

Iran? Iran approached properly, can be another repeat of historical meetings between East and West.

Introduction

In the recently passed twentieth century, the United States fought four wars, winning the first two, losing the last two. Since the creation of the Chiefs of Staff in 1947, the United States has fought in two wars for a total of seventeen years and hasn’t won a single one. (Thirteen years in Viet Nam and four years in Iraq.) A conflict that lasts one hundred hours is not counted here. That’s more a phenomenal battle. But possibly more indicative of future wars than any other.

These are thirteen absolute requirements for victory in war. And oddly, we haven’t followed the first required rule of conducting warfare since World War Two.

1. Choose your senior military leadership very carefully. Warriors, not politician-generals. True warriors by definition are poor politicians. Blistering warriors who are also competent statesmen are apparently given to mankind at the rate of one per century. Britain had Churchill, America had Marshall. Statesmen by definition make poor warriors. Choose blistering, intuitive warriors, not politicians in uniform. Warriors fight for all; politicians fight only for themselves.

Generals should not be selected on the current basis of mistake avoidance, pristine performance evaluations, PowerPoint presentations, pucker smooching, and success working the Washington cocktail circuit.

2. Make total war, or stay home. In war, the goal is to make it as violent and overwhelming as possible to make it as short as possible. The more bloody and ruthless on the front end, the quicker it’s over. The more humane your approach, the longer the war, the more total casualties, and the more frequent the wars. The purpose in fighting is to win quickly and decisively.

Like it or not, personal preferences aside, war is butchery. There is no enlightened way to war. The more ‘civilized’ the war, the longer the war will continue without resolution, thus the greater suffering and the greater total deaths on both sides. To be most merciful, one must be most ruthless. Get in, close with, kill the enemy with unbounded authority, destroy everything he holds dear, completely break his heart, crush his will to fight, and once hostilities are concluded, move the military out, ensuring its freedom of movement to aggress other potential enemies. There’s always someone else that needs shooting. Always.

A successful military keeps moving and never provides a stationary target. A moving military never stays around long enough to demonstrate its weaknesses. And all armies have weaknesses. Rapid ingress, rapid egress.

3. Establish immediate credibility. Maintain absolute credibility at all costs. One must by his conduct make all peoples and all nations fear to be your enemies, and desire to be your friends.

Have a definitive strategy. No more nebulous engagements for the sake of motion. War is not a punishment. War is violent eradication of one’s enemies for the purpose of ending a conflict.

No Bluffing. Act much, speak little. Once you have come to the decision where military engagement is imminent, drop the hammer. So hard that all your enemies fear you. Distant and potential enemies will be reluctant to risk your wrath. Credibility enables more fruitful negotiations with potential enemies in the future. It guarantees it.

By crushing your enemies quickly with absolute ruthlessness, the credibility you obtain will prevent many wars in the future. Few will be willing to push you to the point of conflict. Thus, ruthless destruction of your enemies will save lives.

4. Control all information during all phases of hostilities. Being a fluid unknowable is an absolute military necessity. One cannot unveil any information to the enemy in any form, nor does one reinforce enemy successes by announcing them. Time does not hurt the truth.

Good, timely information is critical to the military during military operations. Good, timely information during hostilities is not critical to the public.

Limit press access from day one of hostilities. An aggressive General cannot attack with total concentration and answer questions. And the General should have the answers, eventually. Which will have to wait until an appropriate time. Always after action, well after the fact, only after the facts are verified.

Details in progress are overrated. And often inaccurate. Combat is not the most seamless process, and accurate, timely reports are rarely available in a timely manner. Press conferences should be delayed until after successful engagement, and after some decompression time to assimilate many disjointed, and sometimes apparently conflicting reports. Even then one must conceal anything of military value from becoming public.

Press conferences unveil your combat condition to the enemy, a circumstance never to be allowed.

Keep the press block small and on a very short leash. No free-rangers. Leaks, even inadvertent leaks always occur with reporters in close to the fighting. Leaks always cost American lives. Twenty-five in the press pool, and nowhere else until hostilities are over. To maintain a fluid, unknowable condition is absolutely necessary to block your enemy from intuiting your intentions. To allow any information release is to enable your enemy anticipate your condition and in turn this will cause unnecessary casualties to your charges. For the duration of hostilities, use the press for disinformation purposes only. Never let a full truth pass your lips until hostilities are over.

5. Know your enemy and know yourself. Identify your enemy and exactly what enables his strengths. Don’t be afraid to call attention to our enemy’s nature, fearing to offend anyone. Know him and attack his weaknesses. Keep moving, and you thus hide many of your own weaknesses. When you engage, attack his weaknesses and vulnerabilities with focus and emphasis.

In war, that which is intuitive is counterproductive. That in war which is counterintuitive is productive.

6. Utilize all assets, all weapons, all methodology. If it’s in the inventory, then bring it. Massive focused point attacks. Our current guiding Jominian principles of warfare are obsolete. Linear warfare is obsolete. Jomini had some merit in the nineteenth century, but we are 0 and 2 using these principles. There’s a reason Napolean let his lieutenant publish his work while Napolean was still fighting.

War is mutual destruction. The side that destroys the most in the shortest period of time will win. Victorious leaders throughout history have used all assets and all weapons decisively.

Close proximity negates skill. Distance is your friend. Linear is disaster. Rapid, lateral and diagonal movement to concentrate on a selected weak point after many deceptive actions is victory.

Linear is disaster. Linear is to be anticipated. To fear being caught deep in enemy territory without a direct, linear line of communication and supply directly to a secure rearward area is to forego the ability to destroy your enemy. One only has to study Zenophone and the 10,000 and the battle of Agincourt. Study Sherman.

In decades to follow, no one will recall how nice the losers were. Few will really care about the tactical excellence. They will only remember who won. Within the war zone, be polite and professional to everyone, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet… generously… as required.

Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for.

Reorganize for speed and independence. Generals like numbers first and technology second. Numbers require generals. Big numbers conceal poor generalship. Big enough numbers conceal gross incompetence. Elements of organizational maneuver should be stressed at the company level to ensure independence, flexibility, and maximum speed. Core structure should not be at division level. Too big, too slow. Smaller units can always be brought together for larger concentrations when necessary. Bottom up, not top down. Even our soldiers are weighted down far too much for speedy response.

Deception and Concentration. Ninety-nine percent of all successful engagements, battles, campaigns, wars, and conflicts have been won using an indirect strategy, implemented with indirect tactics.

That which is intuitive is to invite disaster. That which is counterintuitive is to win. Combat intuition must be counterintuitive in substance. Counter-intuition must be learned. Counter-intuition must be practiced and learned until counter-intuition becomes intuitive.

Jominian concepts as used by the United States Military is wrong, wrong, wrong. And we have to look no farther than Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, and Iraq for verification. Our success in Afghanistan, using indirect tactics is a glowing example of the wisdom of indirect tactics. The more indirect, the longer the way around—the shorter the route home.

Speed Kills—the enemy. All life is either a race, a hide, or a fight. The fast-est with the most-est usually doesn’t have to worry about second place.

7. Never engage unless certain of winning. Plan well, be formless without an expected line of approach, conceal your movements, thus your intents, and concentrate your attacks at the enemy weak points. Thus, you only fight when you are superior, when you choose, where you choose.

Detect, assess, anticipate, aggress, and adjust. This sequence of engagement should be taught thoroughly, as this simple method is the most efficient manner of engagement, for the single soldier, the single division, or a nation.

With a complete understanding of indirect strategy and indirect tactics, you can absolutely, positively, never be defeated.

8. Get Lean. Real lean. (Lean is fast. Big is slow, and slow is dead.)

9. Always attack. Always be moving. (Only attack enables the initiative.)

The sword is more important than the shield. The shield is incapable of delivering a killing thrust. Eventually, the shield will either splinter or defend the wrong side of a killing thrust. Skill and intuition are more important than either.

The attacker maintains the initiative. A constantly mobile, moving army maintains the initiative. Even the few historical battles where the winning army was ‘defending,’ the process upon further study indicates an indirect, offensive defense.

Never, ever, spend two meals in the same location. Never, ever, have fortified or static positions within cities. Never, ever, conduct operations out of a population center.

Static positions cultivate every bad habit an army can accumulate.

Static positions have no secrets.

Static positions suit rot. Complacency.

Static positions are targets. Graves are static positions.

Always disengage the population centers and roam. This enables freedom of movement, surprise, security, and the initiative. To forego these critical elements and operate within population centers is to beg for defeat and mass casualties.

Anything worth killing is worth killing twice. Dead is good. Deader is better.

Anytime you aren’t shooting, you should be reloading and looking for something else to shoot. The faster you kill, the less shot you get.

Soldiers are for total war. Police are for policing. War is for warriors. Never, ever, assign soldiers policing or peacekeeping duties. A soldier should only be concerned with killing the enemy in the greatest possible numbers, as efficiently as possible, in the least amount of time. That’s a full plate.

If your shooting stance is really good, you’re not moving fast enough, you’ve misjudged the critical nature of your situation, your cover is insufficient, or you’ve already killed it once. Move.

Politics are for politicians. Never inhibit, restrict, or punish the military from bringing maximum destruction on the enemy. If there are political concerns that would in any way restrain, restrict, inhibit, or limit action, the military is definitely not the answer. The wrong group or innocents get killed during hostilities, too bad. It’s the cost of doing business. War business.

10. Respond in kind, but in multiples with absolute ruthlessness.

One must be absolutely ruthless.

Be most ruthless with yourself first and always, reviewing your plans, practicing your art and skills. Regardless of your plan, training, or execution, there is always one more thing to do. And when that thing is addressed, there is still another. There’s always one more thing you can do.

A capacity for great violence should never be equated with a preference for ruthless violence. Ruthless violence is the only way to get the fight over with, and the troops home. Anything less requires thousands of troops lives, billions of dollars, and many wasted years of effort with nothing to show for it.

One can respond with greater ruthlessness, and yet maintain the moral high ground. Another way of saying this is, if our enemy calls the tune, then let him dance to the tune until the song is over. Then burn the sheet music along with his carcass.

There are no rules. Anyone who says there are rules in war is delusional. Rules extend the suffering in numbers and length of hostilities. One must use every and all means to destroy your enemy’s will to fight. Nonuniformed combatants are non-persons. Legally, morally.

11. Simple is best. Simple works. Lately, we rely on technology to make up for poor leadership. Technology is not a crutch, nor a smokescreen to compensate or conceal poor military leadership.

The most capable, decisive weapon in the inventory is the mind. We need to recognize this, and once we find good leadership with blistering tactical excellence, our technology will only enhance the process to our success.

12. Defeat your enemy before the battle is really joined. Every tactic has a counter-tactic. Every strategy has a counter-strategy. Frequently, the tactics the enemy uses are often of those he fears most. Use any and all tactics your enemy fears and break him first in his own mind. If possible, utilize cultural and religious beliefs to create a dread in your enemy, making it clear that he stands to lose not only in this life but also in the next one as well.

The center of gravity in nonlinear warfare seems to result from a leader with fiery rhetoric, fervent religious enablement, religious nationalism, and regional public opinion. Thus whatever the enemy’s center of gravity, the enemy has weaknesses. Attack those weaknesses relentlessly. Attack mind, body, and wherever possible, the soul. The punishments inflicted on our enemies, at least within their own minds, must be worse than death. To a religious fanatic, damnation is worse than death. Use what the enemy gives you.

He will do the same.

13. Take no counsel of your fears. The emphasis is on council of your fears. There will always be uncertainties; there will always be fears, but one cannot turn from his goal because of possible uncertainties and variables.

Hesitation is ruin. Hesitation is another word for cowardice. Cowardice is another word for prey. Prey is another word for dead.

You have to go. You don’t have to come back.

With a thorough understanding of the military art, by applying all these thirteen rules of war, one with a much-smaller force may not be able to overwhelm a significantly larger enemy quickly, but one can always place oneself in a position to never be defeated.

If you are a commander and are compelled by civilian leadership to follow a plan that violates known principles of warfare which will ultimately result in the unnecessary deaths of your charges, demand those restrictions or directives be removed, or tender your resignation.

Rule # 1

Choose Your Senior Military Leadership Very Carefully

Ah, the Generals. So numerous and so useless.

—Aristophenes 400 BC

Leadership is not the art of getting others to do something they don’t want to do, contrary to what others have indicated. Intelligentsia and scholars frequently define leadership with quantitative analysis, citing specific behavior processes, group traits, action modifiers, transitional inspiration, and interactive processes. The trouble is, you can’t find a really good definition of leadership. But we all know what it isn’t. It isn’t a sensitivity program, an organizational value adherence program, nor is leadership a function of defining a feedback insight program.

War making ability demands knowing, intuitive, blistering leadership.

Leadership is a function of trust. Trust that a man is first and foremost competent. Trust that he is a man of intuitive vision, well-founded character, and that the man is genuinely respectful and caring for his charges. How does a man gain that trust? He must earn it through multiples of example and actions.

Some may think that rank alone assumes qualities of leadership. In Viet Nam, officers and commanders were shuffled in and out of different units on six and twelve month tours in order for everyone to get the command qualification necessary for advancement. However, at no time in American military history did we suffer from a greater lack of intuitive, competent leadership. Commands had revolving doors to facilitate rapid turnover of officers, many who should never have been placed in command of soldiers in combat. A handful of great officers, a legion of incompetent officers. No strategy, no consistency, no direction, and thus a complete lack of trust.

The trust cuts both ways. Once the intents and objectives of a leader are communicated to his subordinates, they should in turn be trusted to complete the task in whatever way the fluid, tactical situation demands, and then supported in whatever measures are required.

A military man doesn’t deserve a position of leadership just because he has followed a traditional, politically derived regimen. One should only be given the authority to command after proof of demonstration through action, not words. A private who works his way through the ranks to become a general will be more trusted, more respected, knowledgeable, intuitive, more experienced, more effective, more efficient, and more loved by the men he commands than any general that started off as a junior officer fresh out of West Point. It is much too bad that as in ages past, commanders aren’t selected and voted in, and held accountable by the soldiers. You can rest assured that since this is the man they will be following and trusting their lives to that they will pick a blistering, intuitive fighter. A warrior who produces results. Not PowerPoint presentations.

A worthy and intuitive combat leader will ensure the success of his charges, regardless of mission, duration, numbers, or hardships. A worthy intuitive leader will also have very, very few soldiers adversely affected psychologically by the experiences of battle in the moments or years following battle. A worthy leader will have very few occurrences of battlefield stress.

Any interested student of military history or warfare can note that of the scores of successful military leaders over the past few thousand years, there are a few nuggets of military wisdom that are repeated by the most successful military leaders in history, truisms that have been successfully demonstrated time and again.

When one sees highly successful military leaders repeat the identical same principles, almost word for word, though separated by continents, nationality, and millennia, it would appear that one who proposes to take up the art of war as a vocation would give these basic concepts significant weight.

Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others experience.

—Von Bismarck

One would think that with modern access to these multiple time proven concepts and truisms, that our current political and military leaders would never make a significant political or military mistake. To continue to do so on the scale we continue to see would indicate one of two things. Either the current military and political leaders are colossally stupid or colossally ignorant and thus colossally incompetent.

Let’s get this straight. War is killing the enemy as quickly as you can, as many as you can, as efficiently as you can, in the greatest concentrations possible, in the largest numbers possible. When you kill enough, the other side quits. That’s it. It’s just that simple, and to make any more out of it than that is a load of intelligentsia crap.

Intellectuals like to muddy up the most basic principles, by weaving clever analytical concepts together for the sole purpose of demonstrating how smart they are. However, some of the most analytical systems whiz kids enabled, and in fact choreographed the military disaster in Viet Nam. It is unfortunate that among intellectuals, they have an uncanny ability to lose sight of the basic elements of a problem by addressing many and several ancillary considerations. They can’t see the forest because they can’t see their way around the trees.

When even the most sophisticated football team gets its butt kicked on national television, how often have we heard the response, we have to get back to the basics, blocking and tackling? Common sense isn’t really all that common.

Armed forces abroad are of little use without prudent counsel at home.

—Cicero

To have learned military truisms, tactics, and strategery (I know it’s a word, because the commander in chief uses it) of operations does not take decades of pristine service as our senior military leadership would have us to believe. Alexander knew the concepts of warfare by his mid teens, and by age thirty he had conquered a significant portion of the known globe.

The rules of strategy are few and simple. They may be learned in a week. They may be taught by familiar illustrations, or a dozen diagrams. But such knowledge will no more teach a man to lead an army like Napolean than a knowledge of grammar will teach him to write like Gibbon.

—Colonel G. F. R. Henderson

All conflict evaluation can be described in five or so basic elements. These five principles apply internationally, nationally, at Army level, at Division level, at Brigade level, at Battalion level, Company level, Platoon level, Squad level, and even individual level. But if such a thing were so, then we wouldn’t have much use for the ‘experts’ and they would have no purpose. Military truisms are several, and simple to learn, but largely ignored.

That’s the critical problem. Students at our Military Academies, including West Point and Annapolis, do in fact learn tactics. They learn strategy. They learn honor. Likewise, in business schools they teach business principles and ethics. But not every graduate of business school is a master at their trade, and a mistake in business will not usually directly cost precious American blood.

In war, all tests are pass/fail.

Where our expectations of our Military Academies fall short, and what Alexander was able to master at a very early age was the actual principles of warfare. The concepts behind fighting. And the ability to actually lead a fight successfully. A scholastic regimen does not make for a leader.

An example is a standard undergraduate history class. You can study and learn by rote the names, dates, and major events of history. You can make an A in the class. When you get out, those names, dates, and the specifics of the events immediately begin to fade. However, if one is forced by the teacher to demonstrate a complete working knowledge of the concepts behind these events, then the basic concepts found within the lessons learned are burned into their memory and readily available for application in everyday life. What was the cause of the event? Who were the parties involved, and what principles did their society hold dear? What was the thought process and interests that determined the position of opposing parties? What tactics did each side use, and exactly why those tactics either succeeded or failed for each side? Raw numbers, geography, weather? What technology was available to each side, and what were the advantages of each? Did they take advantage of these differences? How? Training, motivation, leadership? And how did this effect a change on the world that continues up to this time? What fatal flaw that ran contrary to known military principles failed one side, and what absolute military principles enabled the other side to victory?

The battle of Thermopylae for example, was a tactical victory for the Persians, and the tactical layout of this particular battle can be found in numerous military books and other references. The Persians won. They completely wiped out the small assembled Greek force, 300 of whom were the selected Personal Body Guard of Spartan King Leonidas. That’s what the books say.

One will find upon deeper study that at Thermopylae, or the Gates of Fire, the Persians—though they won the battle—actually lost the war as a result of this battle. What? Why? How? When? By whom? Was this the strategy of Leonidas when he left home? Is this why he elected to stay in place to a certain death? What was his reasoning? How did he sell it to his men? What did the Spartans value enough to die in place? What did his stand accomplish? How did it affect the Persians? How did it affect the Spartans? The other Greeks? What effect did that one battle have on us even today?

This is how you teach. Concepts, concepts, concepts. Not dates, not overhead tactical renditions. War college? Graduates can only be found through personal combat. After all, strategy and tactics are nothing more than techniques of getting at the enemy through deception, ruse, and misdirection. If one has adapted and embraced the basic principles of war in every waking minute, then no strategy or tactic by any enemy can ever succeed against you.

Every action or tactical stance in war is being carefully observed and studied by others, eventually resulting in more far-reaching effects than on the immediate battlefield. Third party perceptions of your approach to war and your absolute determination to ensure victory at all costs are unfathomable. Our military leaders must understand clearly the time-proven principles of war, and the concepts behind the art of war, and then internalize these principles or they will blunder beyond decades.

Read over and over again the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus, Turrene, Eugene, and Frederick . . . this is the only way to become a great general and master the secrets of the art of war.

—Napolean

If the military tactical wisdom of the ages is readily available for the asking and the learning, then why must our senior military leadership continue to ignore the most basic elements of proven military success to our continued detriment? It is possible that the current emphasis for senior military advancement is skewered in the wrong direction? Do we emphasize the wrong strengths? Do we overvalue misplaced talents? Another possible reason our Generals have blundered so badly could be a colossal ego. Possibly the political and military leaders mistakenly assume that they somehow know better than all the time-proven military truisms of history. In recent American history, mass and technology applied through Jominian principles seem to be the dominating interests. Yet historically, mass and technology, and even Jominian principles are way down the list of time-proven military principles. These elements of using mass and numbers are more like crutches to conceal poor Generalship.

If the art of war was nothing but the art of avoiding risks, glory would become the prey of mediocre minds. I have made all the calculations, fate will do the rest.

—Napolean

On November 17, 1965, when the Second Battalion, Seventh Cavalry moved out from LZ X-Ray to LZ Albany, strung out in a long single file through the jungle with insufficient flankers, no one recalled the three Legions of Varus in the Teutoberg Forest, when they also traveled strung out, had their string chopped up into small bits, and were subsequently wiped out. A tactical error that any student of military history knew better than to repeat. Assuming one understood the most basic concepts behind the defeat of Varus, even a fifteen-year-old cheerleader would have known better. You don’t travel in dense forests strung out in a long, non-supportable line without sufficient flank security. But those in charge of the First Cav troops marching to LZ Albany were ignorant of this absolute, military, historically proven fact, and their charges paid for this ignorance with their lives.

I got a call one day from a local military base to see if I would bid on a contract. I told him I really wasn’t interested in working on either base because of the foolish security requirements, but he was most persistent, and I agreed to at least look at the contract. Two days later, he called and asked about my bid. I told him I wasn’t interested, and he actually became angry. He demanded to know why.

I told him that the stipulated specs would result in a half-assed job that I didn’t want to be party to, that it would take more effort and time to do the paperwork than to fulfill the contract, and that I wasn’t about to do either one. He slammed the phone down, and that was that. And this is not some isolated incident. The redundancy, the excess documentation—no wonder we are mired down. Our military can’t see the enemy over the paperwork. To make it sweeter, this Civil Service gentleman was the center of his universe, he didn’t want constructive criticism, he wanted inferior quality work, and he wanted it now. Does anyone think he is the only one in the system?

Once paperwork is generated by one person, others have to read it, some just for interpretation. Or filter it. Or consolidate it. Or summarize it. Wasted manpower and time, when a leader on site could already know.

Any large organization has a lot of excess fat. A 100lb. organization will sometimes weigh 150-200 pounds. Consider the Pentagon. If there was ever a circle of circles, this has to be it. Any Commander in Chief could tell the Secretary of Defense and the Chiefs of Staff to halve the manpower in the Pentagon through retirements and personnel cuts, to have it done by next week, and to maintain the same capabilities, or they would be fired, and he would find someone else to do it.

Does anyone in their right mind think for a moment that our military would suffer for cleaning house like that?

We could cut our Power Point General Staff by 50 percent, increase efficiency, and save the taxpayer enough money to almost field another badly needed regiment. We need fewer chiefs, and more little Indians. Staff position generals are like tits on a sore-tailed tomcat. The logic in many of their promotions is that their rank will enable—and when necessary—require compliance from Colonels, Majors, and other Generals. That isn’t logic. That’s lack of leadership.

The typical staff officer is a man past middle life, spare, wrinkled, intelligent, cold, noncommittal, with eyes like a codfish, polite in contact, but at the same time unresponsive, cool, calm and as damnably composed as a concrete post or plaster of Paris cast; a human petrification with a heart of feldspar and without charm or the friendly germ; minus bowels, passions or a sense of humor. Happily they never reproduce and all of them finally go to hell.

—George S. Patton

And our politicians, especially our commanders in chief, are often selectively ignorant. It is true that the commander in chief is a civilian, but if they take their jobs seriously as commander in chief, then they better know the basic question. And often they don’t. They frequently ask if they can insert troops into an area, rather than ask if they should. Can we? Not should we? Some use polling to make a decision. The fundamental military requirement demands that a prudent leader doesn’t join battles that he isn’t absolutely certain he can win. And don’t think the Generals will be truthful to a commander in chief. Because the general’s tin creases won’t be on the ground and in the dirt with those troops, the can-do response will invariably be ‘yes, sir! yes, sir! Three bags full!" How many poorly planned, poorly prepared battles would be fought if our generals actually had to get out front—and lead?

When badly outnumbered on a field of pending battle, it was suggested by a detractor that it was foolish for this Spartan warrior to die for the Spartan king who must be treated differently. His response was, oh yes, kings are different. My king is different. I sleep in this ____hole here. Pointing a few feet away, The king sleeps in that ____hole right over there.

I think it’s safe to assume that Spartan kings, (there were two at a time assuming a loss at the head of the army) knew the consequences of war, especially since they led from the very front line. Spartan kings didn’t decide on a whim to fight a war, just because it seemed politically expedient at the moment. Passion was not a Spartan virtue. Rhetoric was not part of the Spartan practice. Always on the front rank, the king suffered exactly what his men suffered, and the red-cloaked Spartans, king included, were all peers.

In fact, the concept of two leaders performing separate tasks was not a singular idea only in Sparta. The Ottawa had two chiefs, with the hereditary title going to the one in charge of civil affairs, and the other chief was determined by military prowess. As in proven leadership. Not schools attended, time in grade, error avoidance, or political alliances. Age and time-in-grade means squat. There are old fools just as there are young fools. Just not as many older fools, as foolishness has a bit higher mortality rate than non-foolishness.

We need generals who know about war and how to fight, and fewer generals whose expertise is knowing how to work the Washington military/political/cocktail circuit. Many so-called combat generals are more concerned with avoiding a mistake than with engaging and destroying the enemy.

The easiest and quickest path into the esteem of traditional military authorities is by the appeal to the eye, rather than to the mind. The ‘polish and pipeclay’ school is not yet extinct and it is easier