Warfare 500 B.C and 2000 A.D.

I'm reading Sun Tzu's, "The Art of War," written in 500 B.C. and considered a milestone in the discipline of War.

Torture is not a topic that is even brought up in the text or the index.

It says, "the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting," and

"He did not conceive war in terms of slaughter and destruction; to take all intact, or as nearly intact as possible, was the proper objective of strategy."

Is this strategy now militarily obsolete? Is plunder, as in the days of Attila the Hun, Idi Amin and others of that same ilk now the ONLY modus operandi?

Is there no longer any Honor in war?

the thing with Iraq is, there arnt any buildings or other things of any importance to the USA (apart from its oil facilities which it sends in teams to defend before attacking such areas) its far cheaper for america to bomb cities to the ground killing all inside then it is for them to go in and fight close combat

But is "cheaper," ethical, law-abiding and decent?

Have we abandoned "what is decent"?

as posted by defrag99
Is there no longer any Honor in war?

All I need to do is look at the First Gulf War and I see "honor" written all over it. But hey, this is my subjective opinion.

My objective opinion is that despite the lack of commentary by Sun Tzu about "torture," all one has to do is research the time period and one will see that "torture" did take place. The main reason: information. Acts of rape, mass killings, and wholesale "slaughter and destruction" were transpiring then. All despite trying to maintain something "intact."
Sun Tzu's strategies and doctrines are valid today, but one must compare the day and age of his time and todays day and age. Yes, some to most are debatably relevant, but most, when applied to todays multiple strategy's and doctrine's are also null-in-void, per se'.

My question is what do you imply or quantify when you assert and alledge:
"Is there no longer any honor in war"?
General "honor"?
Specific "honor"?
As such, the word "honor" becomes relative, and specifically, relative to his time and todays time.




seekerof

[edit on 2-1-2005 by Seekerof]

One must compare the day and age of his time and todays day and age. Yes, some to most are debatably relevant, but most, when applied to todays multiple strategy's and doctrine's are also null-in-void, per se'.

My question is what do you imply or quantify when you assert and alledge:
"Is there no longer any honor in war"?
General "honor"? Specific "honor"? As such, the word "honor" becomes relative, and specifically, relative to his time and todays time.

WordNet Dictionary Definition: HONOR -- QUOTE --
[n] a woman's virtue or chastity
[n] the quality of being honorable and having a good name; "a man of honor"
[n] a tangible symbol signifying approval or distinction; "an award for bravery"
[n] the state of being honored
[v] accept as pay; "we honor checks and drafts"
[v] show respect towards; "honor your parents!"
[v] bestow honor upon; "Today we honor our soldiers"

Let's take the "honor your parents" version. What does that mean?

Promote and reward what is Good [in your parents]. That is the meaning of "Honor" that we were taught in school forty years ago--which has been removed from all U.S. textbooks for school-age children.

That is why you do not know what Honor is : it was REMOVED.

When?

Good question. Anybody know? Anybody have access to textbooks going back a few decades, to see when "Honor" was removed as an index item, along with "courage," "truth," "integrity," "duty," "ethic," "fairness," "justice," "loyalty," "chastity," "devotion," "character," and "sacrifice." There are more.

I noticed ten years ago when I was substituting in the public schools for a while, that all these terms had been omitted from public school textbooks.

At that point, I realized something was rotting.

And all this ties into Sun Tzu's military strategies and doctrines how?
And all this ties into what was "honor" in 500 B.C., in Sun Tzu's time, and today how?
With the public school system?



seekerof

Yes, Reality is coherent.

Family links with schools links with neighborhood community links with
community links with state links with region links with nation; links with
philosophy links with ideology links with judiciary links with legislature links
with administration links with Press links with Academia links with Media
links with cause-and-effect.

Either it all works together, or Truth has been put down.

Originally posted by defrag99
Is there no longer any Honor in war?

i think words honor and war dont go togather very well.
there is no honor in war!
and no winners.
just casualties.

Well, in the PAST, there was a war ethic--among gentlemen.

Just as we have the Geneva Accords today, there have been agreements about how war should and should not be conducted.

Our Gummint is violating, ignoring and trampling all those agreements.

Further, we have intell to show our Gummint was also complicit in both the 911 Pentagon and the 911 WTC attacks; so the rational for attacking both Afghanistan and Iraq is extremely weak or negligible.

This regime has no principles. It is lawless.

To my mind. Especially, reading Sun Tzu from 2500 years ago, the current Administration has the appearance of a bunch of savages by comparison.



[edit on 2-1-2005 by defrag99]

as posted by defrag99
Either it all works together, or Truth has been put down.

Agreed. But I again assert that what is considered "honor" today is not necessarily the same as what "honor" meant in the 12th-14th Century or what it meant in Sun Tzu's time, nor what it meant in 500 B.C. Hence my assertion that "honor" is indeed relative, when applied to time periods.

Basic understandings of "honor" will carry over, generation to generation, family member to family member. But what Academia considers "honor" may be explained and noted differently by media, historians, school systems, communities, societies, and ultimately, the family unit.
"Honor" is more than something that is taught or read about. "Honor" implies action; action in regards to integrity, values, courage, etc.

Have no fear, "honor" exists, even in this day and age. If not, please feel free to read and comment to this. After all, it is but on example:
THE SEVEN ARMY VALUES

If one unit 'preaches' such, be assured that many to all the units within this ultimate organization adhere to it, the best that they possibly can.
Ultimately, "honor" will change with each generation, but its cores will remain. Indeed, "honor" does exist and is every bit applicable today as it was in the past.





seekerof

I think the old gentleman honour system was fantastic, i mean the whole system now is a piece of crap.

Thank you. I wanted to get a copy of those concepts articulated by the military. Great find.

Let's just put it this way: The concept of HONOR has gone from self-disciplined, limited, ritual war to all-out war and plunder with pillage and rape and torture being routine.

We have DE-EVOLVED in terms of civility, decency and ethics, back to the behavior of simple savages. Worse, we savage, waste and pollute the environment; we don't just kill people.

That's reverting to cavemen's ethics -- "might makes right" and to hell with the children.

Horrifying.

Where is mercy? Congress and the President are busy lying and deceiving us about their motives.

Where is conservation and wisdom? They're plundering the treasury, wasting the military by spreading them out too far for too long.

Where is is decency? They don't even EXPLAIN their stupid moves--choices that result in the deaths of good men and the waste of good families.

For WHAT? They've never even explained, for what!

as posted by defrag99
For WHAT? They've never even explained, for what!

When a military man or woman signs the dotted line, does he necessarily have to know for what on each and every situation, circumstance, or order?
Despite the reasonings, ask the men and women who are currently serving?
This might help:
We asked what you think. You told us.

Seems to me that they know exactly for "what", but as par, its those who answer "no" that get the limelight and attention, not those who agreed with the "for what".





seekerof

[edit on 2-1-2005 by Seekerof]

Originally posted by defrag99
Well, in the PAST, there was a war ethic--among gentlemen.

Just as we have the Geneva Accords today, there have been agreements about how war should and should not be conducted.

Our Gummint is violating, ignoring and trampling all those agreements.

Further, we have intell to show our Gummint was also complicit in both the 911 Pentagon and the 911 WTC attacks; so the rational for attacking both Afghanistan and Iraq is extremely weak or negligible.

This regime has no principles. It is lawless.

Now we get to the essence of this post, the real reason for it being written in the first place. Just another anti-adminstration rant.

You should have just stated that in the beginning, instead of beating around the bush. That would have been honorable.

I realize, that's what they believe.

I know this because my own son comes from that viewpoint; and it's becoming difficult to know what to say to him.

Thanks to the default of the American Press, what's Right and what's Wrong is becoming increasingly difficult to infer from school textbooks or the news they happen to report and the holes they leave in the fabric of history.

With investigative reporting now being illegal under Patriot Act II, dys-information is going to get nothing but worse, too.

The problem is not JUST with the Administration; it is much larger than both parties put together, plus the bought-out press, plus plus plus.

I notice the people in Australia are complaining on-line about the same sorts of hyper-paranoid legislation on that continent also, that we in the US are dealing with.

The group of people strangling representative government on this planet are not limited to Washington, DC. But I have no idea what their boundaries actually physically are.



[edit on 2-1-2005 by defrag99]

[edit on 2-1-2005 by defrag99]

Originally posted by defrag99
I'm reading Sun Tzu's, "The Art of War," written in 500 B.C. and considered a milestone in the discipline of War.

Torture is not a topic that is even brought up in the text or the index.

It says, "the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting," and

"He did not conceive war in terms of slaughter and destruction; to take all intact, or as nearly intact as possible, was the proper objective of strategy."

Is this strategy now militarily obsolete? Is plunder, as in the days of Attila the Hun, Idi Amin and others of that same ilk now the ONLY modus operandi?

Is there no longer any Honor in war?

I delve into military strategy myself . I must say that your logic is flawed though. First of all, I'm assuming you're referring to military doctrines in general. If that's the case, honor and torture is NOT covered in a military doctrine or strategy. Sun Tzu's Art of War is a book covering military strategy, and it's basically given that it will not cover the subject of torture. Needless to say, you won't find ANY strategy books covering torture.

It says, "the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting," and

"He did not conceive war in terms of slaughter and destruction; to take all intact, or as nearly intact as possible, was the proper objective of strategy."

It still is that way. The general that can execute the best manuevers and deceive the enemy while maintaining the least casualties is respected not only among his people, but his enemies. Let's take Erwin Rommel as an example. Erwin Rommel was a field marshal of the Wermacht as in he was fighting for Nazi Germany (although anyone who studies Rommel knows that he opposed the Nazi party). Rommel was a tactical genius, and was able to suffer little casualties while overwhelming his enemies. He was respected by both the Axis and the Allies! Churchill once made a speech to the House of Commons that Britain was facing "a great general:"

"We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great General." -Winston Churchill

Rommel also stated:

"Sweat saves blood, blood saves lives, and brains saves both."

That would equate to minimum casualties by use of strategy, correct?

Now I do realize that you're mainly focusing on 2000 AD. However, I'd like to jump back only 50-60 years. Once again, this is referring to Rommel. First of all, Rommel never tortured his prisoners. Secondly, the story of Rommel's forced suicide is nothing short of chivalrous. You might want to research the story yourself:

www.eyewitnesstohistory.com...

The above link points to Rommel's son's account on his father's death. The lines are very moving, and I can only imagine the innocent child having to lose his father prematurely.

And just for the record, several US personnel have been punished for their torturing of Iraqi prisoners.

I've been spending some time lurking around a military Forum, and listening, and asking a few questions now and then--

with a Bouncer/Gatekeeper following me around making lewd comments--but anyway--

what I am inferring from the general chit-chat--maybe, intuiting is more accurate to say--

but the issue is not oil; it's not diplomacy; it's readiness.

There are some threats out there the PTB aren't talking about. And their truly grave mistake, half a century ago, was when they began lying to cover what was going on.

First, we have bad karma because of genocidal policies from the git-go. And then the Pentagon in 47 and again in 62 make it a formal policy to lie.

And now, of course, all the lies have compounded, wrapped around each other and made every action that the Pentagon takes look absolutely ridiculous from a strictly objective viewpoint. (I don't have or watch TV, so I don't go with network news or ABC Monday-night quarterbacking.)

Lying never works out--regardless what the Truth is.

They're just keeping our troops warm for some larger battle to come.

And that's my sense of it. It's not TOTALLY CRAZY. But the lies are crazy.

ok,
once there was co-called "honor" in warfare i agree, since soldiers actually saw each other in combat and had to really kill the enemy by their own hands. today in this hi-tech warfare enviroment, where one army has extreme tech advantage and others dont, this old school warfare rules and regulations dont apply anymore.
i mean it took balls to charge on your enemy with a sword or a bayonette, what courage do you need to drop bombs and launch missiles? for some its a little bit more than a computer simulation!
this modern war has gotten too dirty and complicated.
thats why you can forget about words honor and war today.

The nobility of warfare is gone once you can kill a man at a distance. Men are much less willing to fight when they can smell their enemies breath and feel his blood. The Kings and Emperors themselves would fight and die with their men. The rulers had a duty and they undertook it personally wether it was good or bad. Today though it is hardly realistic to imagine the Ayatollah and Kim Jung Il personally leading their armies in the fight against George Bush as he fights at the front.

In Iraq the Americans are doing their best to keep Iraq intact. From what I have seen it is the foreign jihadists causing most of the infrastructure damage and the loss of human life. America did not start this war. Saddam did when he invaded Kuwait disrupting the West's oil supply and forcing the American military to remain permanently fixed in the Middle East. Bill Clinton allowed Saddam to fester and laugh at the world powers in their efforts. George Bush had the cajones to finish whay his father failed to finish.

Yes America needs oil. Oil is a big reason for Operation Iraqi Freedom. What is do evil about that? America gives some bedouins some mone and they give us oil. Kuwait is a great example of what oil revenue can do for a Middle Eastern nation. Kuwait is a modern developed nation where its people enjoy a high standard of living thanks to America's appetite for oil and Kuwaits own willingness to give it to us.

The Iraqi people will be free whether they want it or not and I believe most common people in Iraq do. Of course freedom for the everyday Iraqi will be an obstacle to the ambitions of the fanatics who wish to dominate the will of the Iraqis. The Iraqis will sell America oil and they will be rid of the dictators yoke. If it takes a decade so be it. Just look at South Korea, Japan, West Germany, Kuwait, Taiwan, and even France was once occupied by America.

Originally posted by Blackout

Originally posted by defrag99
I'm reading Sun Tzu's, "The Art of War," written in 500 B.C. and considered a milestone in the discipline of War.

Torture is not a topic that is even brought up in the text or the index.

It says, "the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting," and

"He did not conceive war in terms of slaughter and destruction; to take all intact, or as nearly intact as possible, was the proper objective of strategy."

Is this strategy now militarily obsolete? Is plunder, as in the days of Attila the Hun, Idi Amin and others of that same ilk now the ONLY modus operandi?

Is there no longer any Honor in war?

I delve into military strategy myself

. I must say that your logic is flawed though. First of all, I'm assuming you're referring to military doctrines in general. If that's the case, honor and torture is NOT covered in a military doctrine or strategy. Sun Tzu's Art of War is a book covering military strategy, and it's basically given that it will not cover the subject of torture. Needless to say, you won't find ANY strategy books covering torture.

It says, "the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting," and

"He did not conceive war in terms of slaughter and destruction; to take all intact, or as nearly intact as possible, was the proper objective of strategy."

It still is that way. The general that can execute the best manuevers and deceive the enemy while maintaining the least casualties is respected not only among his people, but his enemies. Let's take Erwin Rommel as an example. Erwin Rommel was a field marshal of the Wermacht as in he was fighting for Nazi Germany (although anyone who studies Rommel knows that he opposed the Nazi party). Rommel was a tactical genius, and was able to suffer little casualties while overwhelming his enemies. He was respected by both the Axis and the Allies! Churchill once made a speech to the House of Commons that Britain was facing "a great general:"

"We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great General." -Winston Churchill

Rommel also stated:

"Sweat saves blood, blood saves lives, and brains saves both."

I also have studies military stratagy, as well as Tsun Tsu. Olso you shoudl take into account Hagakure's way of the Samurai and Minimoto Musashi's book of five rings. If you also want to get an idea of eastern honor and concepts of fighting and training you can also study Funikoshi.

Anyway, The stratigic lessons writen by Tsun Tsu is still studied in West Point, the lessions are very much applicable to todays military. Weather what is tought is actualy followed.. well that is annother story.

You will find that his teachings are at the core of almost all successfull campains throughout history, weather intentional or not. At the moment any given general strayed from his philosphy they have faled.

I believe there are a few inhearant truths that we have discovered.

Laws of Thermodynamics.
Laws of Gravity
and the art of war are among them.

Wraith