Attack by Stratagem

General Tzu begins this section by stating that it is better to take a country whole and intact than to destroy it. He also applies this same rational to troops and says it is better to capture an army than to destroy it. In an ideal situation I think this makes perfect sense because then you would have the additional resources of the country and troops at your disposal. However, I do not think this necessarily applies to our situation today because we are fighting a different kind of war. We do not want to destroy either Iraq or Afghanistan, but not because we want their resources but because we are only fighting against the insurgency. It is important to leave the country as whole and as intact as we can for the local populations.

Tzu also states that "supreme excellence consists in breaking your enemy's resistance without fighting." This idea seems consist with the idea of fourth generation warfare that we learned about last year. Fourth generation warfare is when you weaken the opponents will to fight. I think these tactics are actually being used against us because the terrorists know that if they wear down the resistance of the public back home then the US will have to pull out of their countries.