John Minford, #SunTzu 10: 3 "'Entangling' means that advance is possible, withdrawal hard. On entangling terrain, if the enemy is unprepared, go out and defeat him. But if he is prepared, and our move fails, it will be hard to retreat. The outcome will not be to our advantage."
How often in life do we get entangled? The wrong job, the wrong girl, the wrong friends, and most certainly the wrong habits, the wrong decisions. It's all so easy to get started, so difficult to extract oneself. I noticed myself get entangled earlier today, no kidding.
Yeah, you guessed it, it was that damn temper of mine. Someone here on Twitter pissed me off and I let my fingers fly. I didn't go off halfcocked, but my tone was all wrong. Finally, I withdrew, and then later, apologized. It's unlikely the apology will do much good.
Perhaps the greatest entanglement in America today is that of addiction. From pain killers to alcohol, to the hard drugs on our city street corners, we have allowed something in our character to go off kilter. Yet again, it's just so easy to get started, so difficult to withdraw.
In spy stories, the exact opposite behavior is always demonstrated. The spy goes to his meeting site in advance. He checks it out for what they call ingress and egress, I don't know why, it just means ways in and out. A good meeting site has at least two avenues of egress.
But what if it's a well-guarded club and there's only one way in and out? Well, then the spy better know the weaknesses of his enemy, and if he's getting high or drunk inside, then he can catch him unprepared. That, Master Sun teaches, is a risk worth taking.
America Herself is in great turmoil over this topic right now. We have entangled ourselves in interminable wars, in Afghanistan and all over the Middle East. They're awfully easy to commence, much more difficult to wind down. But there's more.
How many bases do we operate with forward reach around the planet? And at what cost? There can be no question that we hold the largest empire in history, but just never call it that. We're entangled in all these locations and we don't know how to leave.
Letting our normal whipping boys alone, the MSM, Democrats, globalists and their crew, our greatest entanglement of all is with our Intelligence Community. No has any idea of the cost or the power we've granted them. Not even the weakest guess.
Have you followed the outsourcing story? Since it was illegal for the American IC to go after Trump, they simply requested covert aid from the Intelligence Agencies of allies to do the spying for them. How does such a thing come about? It's not that difficult to comprehend.
Our IC has built the capability of supporting or destroying governments the world over. It has every skill, from PSYOP to corruption to terrorism, all at its disposal, just pieces on the board of their game. When it came time to employ those tools here, it was easy for them.
Perhaps I say that too lightly. Without the guiding, controlling hand of Obama and team, they'd not have been able to do it all on their own. But what Obama and team knew is that America is so entangled with our IC, they have so much power, that we'd have no egress.
They know the entanglement far better than we can keep up with. They knew they'd be able to get a special counsel to prosecute the Russia Hoax investigation. The fingerprints of Intel are all over that fiasco. From FBI through DOJ through FISA Court, one player serves the next.
Here's another, very familiar example. I have the joy of having my 16-year old granddaughter recently move in with us. She's been attending public school all her life, and we're certainly not set up to home school her. So, her education continues in that so-entangling world.
Small team leadership faces an entanglement to be avoided almost at all cost if possible. Culture is the normal way of doing things, understood instinctively by team members. If you allow a culture of resistance to rise up in your team, you'll likely not get much done.
The cure is simple in concept. We discuss as long as appropriate. Then, we either build consensus, take a vote, or the leader decides. In any case, once the decision is made, every member of the team must give it 100% support, disagreements surrendered, jettisoned.
The perennial entanglement that underlies all such cultural wrong directions is the failure to recruit. Team membership must be contingent on cultural fit with values that lead to real outcomes. Without recruiting, you cannot guide the values your team culture adheres to.
Today's last point is this. If we all had both perfect foresight and perfect character, we'd never find ourselves stuck in these ruts. None of us do. Master Sun smiles, laughing at us, knowing that only learning from our failures will sink these lessons in.
286 verses completed, 170 to go. To return to previous sections in our #WarForAmerica2020 and #SunTzuForMAGA series, don't forget to head over to @WarForAmerica21. You'll find the digital table of contents for this series, there. Please retweet each entry you enjoy.
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