Ronin Thought of the Day

Once again, we consult Sun Tzu:

You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended. You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked.
Hence that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.

Remember what the doormouse said: “Feed your head.”

No Comments

  1. That saying reminds me of what I know about the Battle of Antietam. Dumbass General McClelland kept attacking the bulk of the Confederate Army, or heavily fortified bridges, when there were weaker parts of their line that were only a man across. In the end, 23,000 people died in a battle that ended up being a tactical draw. Both armies simply left the battlefield.
    Hmmm. . . maybe Gen. McClelland is an ancestor of this guy.

  2. Or as Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest (CSA) described his winning strategy, it consisted of “gittin’ there firstest with the mostest.” See also Liddell Hart’s indirect approach of forcing the defender to decide what to defend by menacing more than one valuable target, essentially forcing him to give something up.

  3. Protagonist- Um, no, he didn’t. That was General Burnsides, who was under McClellan at the time. He was to be attacking across the Burnsides Bridge (no, it wasn’t called that at the time), the ONLY bridge across which union troops moved under fire (the other two prominent thrusts of movement being across a nice open wheatfield, and a constricted corn field), but was held off by… if I remember right, a small group of texan infantry who sniped at him from very good rifle positions. The doof could have simply scouted downstream a bit and found a place to ford the river right there, possibly coming into the battle earlier and enabling a swift and decisive Union victory, but noooo…
    But yeah, McClellan was a complete idiot. I don’t know how the heck he was popular with the Army of the Patomac.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.