How the fuck did some Chinese guy whose been dead for millennia manage to make something that's still relevant to...

...

The striking part is that even with that text in existence the vast majority of military officers still have no idea what they are doing in warfare.

Most of it's simple shit.

"You should ambush people!"

o wow really? thanks bro

And yet so many Power level/ X vs Y threads that are thrown about by most people are about fighting in a coliseum or tactical vacuum without understanding such simple concepts.

To give a real life example
> School debate years back
> Subject is viability of a conscript army in our country
> Opposition bring up the point about numerical disadvantage
> Unironically stated that small countries having an army is pointless because a big country like China could hooligan rush us "with chopsticks and win".
> We all laugh and clap
> Even our side
> Mfw a bunch of 17 year olds have no idea of any military tactics or the application of possibly hundreds of external factors.

He's completely wrong about clearly establishing internal laws and procedures though. Pretty much all recent wars were waged by making sure that your soldiers wouldn't be sure about the rules of engagement and would get away with shit that absolutely infuriates the locals.
The more successful armies of recent history also made sure that the chain of command doesn't need to be constantly janked in order to make operations work and then there are a lot of pages spent on establishing the leadership's charisma and awesomeness, which is completely useless anywhere but in the lowest rungs of a bureaucratic military, and even there it's optional.

Another thing he's outdated on is that he denies the value of the homefront, which makes sense for a time when armies could live off the land and shipping costs made up the majority of war-related costs and generals actually had the right to fulfill diplomatic functions and make all war-related policy-decisions on the spot.

> not reading Karl Von Clausewitz's On War
> not reading Machiavelli's The Prince

Pleb detected.

Not him but
>assuming he didn't
You're the real pleb here m8

>not going full weeaboo

The translation used in Shogun 2 was garbage. The translation these lyrics are from is the best.

youtube.com/watch?v=bUJoA7titIQ

Are you really making the completely absurd claim that Western military forces use unclear rules of engagement on purpose to cause civilian causalities?

>Pretty much all recent wars were waged by making sure that your soldiers wouldn't be sure about the rules of engagement and would get away with shit that absolutely infuriates the locals.
Do you havisfaction even a singalicious satisfact to snack that up?

I should read The Art of War again.

Since others are dwelling on your first point
> a good chain of command doesn't need to be constantly janked
I'll agree with you here, this is a Chinese "respect for authorities" thing from the times that has survived into today and constantly hamstrings our military operations but
> establishing the leadership's charisma and awesomeness
Is very important for line commanders in conscript armies today. Of course, today's idea of a charismatic leader varies according to the army.

I have the impression that Sun Tzu's stuff is more like a primer than an end-all. It's for aspiring commanders and fresh idiots like talks about to widen their view of the field and open up many new perspectives. But I haven't finished it so I might be wrong.

Not him but it often makes you question whether the extra bloodshed could be avoided but there's always several factors. Namely:

- Certain enemies use civilians as cannon fodder or cat's paws
- Not all leaders care about the civilian cost when they order their troops to conquer somewhere
- Civilians always get royally fucked in any conflict

I wouldn't say they specifically do it to cause civilian deaths but I wouldn't say they give two shits if a bunch civvies happen to get instagibbed in the bombing run to eliminate a high profile target.

If you really want to go full weeb you should read Hagakure in the original Japanese, of course.

It's full of stereotypical shit like muh honor and duty and y'all cowards don't even kill yourselves. Parts of it are literally just a bitter old Jap complaining about kids these days being shit.

>Parts of it are literally just a bitter old Jap complaining about kids these days being shit
This is why I prefer the book of five rings. It at least mostly reads like the guy knows what he's writing.

The more vague and basic you are, the more adaptable something is.
And that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just the way things are.

Musashi was perfectly reasonable, though. Fuck honor and aesthetics - you're fighting to win and live. Use everything and cheat whenever you can.

Well... Hakagure in it's own time was thought out as being a bit too cringy. Things weren't as harsh as they are depicted in that book. To phrase it like Veeky Forums usually would: Hakagure is how sperger would take things.

But that's exactly what makes it great for weebs.

It does have some actually nice bits, but it also has a lot of stereotypical exaggerated animu bullshit (before animu even existed) and an old guy complaining that kids don't commit enough sudoku these days.

I think there was a part where he explained that you could kill someone with your belly if you just bump hard enough into him. I might remember that part wrong.

Those and Sun Tzu are an excellent guide to the ruthless use of power, especially military power. There are only two issues

1) How does one obtain power in the first place? There are very few manuals on this, presumably because anyone who finds the secret doesn't want others using it against them!
2) How does one build a morally GOOD kingdom, which maintains its power while also providing the people with rights and care? Ruthlessness tends to build nations that last only as long as its strength. A nation that is supported by a loving and loyal population can endure weakness in a way a fearful nation will not.

>1) How does one obtain power in the first place?
You are born with it.

You build a morally good kingdom by having special people that are more or less incorruptible. People who know what is truly good for their people and are not afraid to seize it and direct others which would inspire love from its populace. The big problem with this is that it's always the people who shouldn't get power end up getting it. That and pressure from various groups making demands and the rulers bowing to their every whim out of fear.

It comes both ways. A benevolent ruler whose not afraid to personally break some skulls for his subjects and a populace that understands that for their kingdom to remain peaceful and prosperous, they need to learn to work with the rulers and not hamper them at every step.

>2) How does one build a morally GOOD kingdom, which maintains its power while also providing the people with rights and care?

People had rights even under the Romans and during the Middle Ages, user. Being morally good is just a proposition.

>when people had no idea what they were doing in warfare

But the book gives plenty of examples of people using those tactics, so clearly they weren't unheard of. This merely collected the principles, along with the examples, into one tome.

I mean, that's what textbooks do, don't they? They gather info pertaining to a certain subject all over the place and try to teach you how to implement and understand that info. It's simple, but that's why it's so easy to implement into so many things. If it went in-depth into period era infantry tactics and weapons, it's get outdated fast. But when it takes the concept of troop movement, maneuvers, morale and logistics, it can be applied regardless of the scale and technology. Attacking enemy supplies and flanks works just as well in 5000 B.C. as it does in the 21st century.

>chinese
>morally good

>make something that's still relevant to literally everything
"when you set a fire, make it upwind of the enemy" is pretty niche. There's four chapters just on fire.

Cao Cao isn't exactly your average Joe when it comes to morals theory.

Sure, but it's not like Chinese philosophy has been overly abundant on individual rights and "what's good for one it good for all" sort of stuff.

>>not fucking understanding the basic principle of force multipliers

Ask them why one school shooter can kill so many kids without being overwhelmed by students wielding pencils.

More like shoulder barging, but the principle is to ram your whole body into the opponent to take advantage of the weight as the common habit is to strike out with the limbs and leave the rest of your body behind.

Superior weaponry and fear/shock?

I see, the translation is to blame.

Lucky rolls.

SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED

To be fair you can use a force multiplier yourself against a school shooter. Ambush the guy, like stand behind a corner and swing backwards to use said pencil to give improv heart surgery.

But you gotta be fast.

>Schools

Liberal leaning environments have brain washed children at a young age that not fighting back is the best way to respond to violence and to wait until the authority shows up to handle the situation. It has promoted the concept to the point where people would rather be murdered in a large group than defend themselves with violence.

This was made even more evident when Brevik shot up the liberal as fuck camp in Norway. He recounted how he was shooting people and a large young man who could have easily overpowered him stood up and begged for him to stop. Brevik said, 'I pointed my rifle at his head and pulled the trigger. I heard a click. I was out of ammo. I calmly reloaded while this person, not five feet away from me still just kept asking me stop. He could have easily stopped me, but he didn't even try. I finished putting in my magazine. I slide the bolt forward. I aimed for his head and fired. He never even made an attempt to stop me to save himself or any of the other people there. That was the kind of people I killed that day. They had no survival instinct at all and were promoting that idea."

In short, people are trained to be pussies who think someone else will solve their problems.

Even in the Roman republic, there were serious abuses of power by the senatorial class, including the seizure of land and the mistreatment of the poor, or the use of demagogues to convince the plebs to vote against their own best interests. That's the kind of abuse that needs to be guarded against.

FUCKING TAKE YOUR /POL/ SHIT TO /POL/.

Reminds me of a conversation with someone.
>they claim we have no need for a military because modern democracies don't wage war on one another
>remind them that there are examples of democracies fighting one another, like Russia invading smaller countries
>they say Russia is not a democracy and doesn't count
>we live next to Russia

Sauce? Googling with quotes doesn't show anything.

Possibly, but also bear in mind what Musashi says about needing to physically practice a lot of this stuff for it to make sense.

Sometimes /pol/ is relevant even outside its containment field, user. This wasn't a bang on the Jews, or throwing around 'racist' fact. It was an explanation as to why superior numbers can fall to inferior one in modern climates even when they can feasibly fight back.

That said, this entire thread is pretty much garbage because Sun Tzu would have drastically altered his battle tactics and plans if magic and firearms were a thing.

Not him but that's not POL. He's recounting what Breivik did, not endorse it. And people being pussies in general when faced with violence is not a /pol/ opinion.

What would you have done?

To be honest, most students are just scared. Even on the battlefield in the 1700s and 1800s, many soldiers didn't fire their weapons. Average people are scared of the idea of ending another human being's life.

That said, that idiot who confronted Brevik was a fucking idiot. Don't mean to disparage his memory, but he was fucking OUT OF AMMO. Snatch the FUCKING gun you IDIOT!

Yeah sure. When people are dying around you and you have not a iota training.

Anything.

>internet tough guy on the prowl

Face it, user, if you were in the same situation you'd just shit your pants before dying. Outside of psychos and sociopaths, killing people is not natural. Even animals, when fighting over food, mates, or whatever would rather drive the competition off than outright kill them, even if it opens them up for retaliation later.

Even the US military has had to spend ages coming up with a training regiment that makes people capable of firing directly at humans without hesitation or fail. In Napoleonic times you could take a unit to the range and have them put relatively accurate shots into a target representing an enemy formation, but when it came time for the real deal, casualties caused by the same unit were far from what the target practice would have led to believe.

Don't get me wrong, you would be fucking terrified, confused and most likely shit yourself. But it doesn't account for everyone. There are plenty of people who could manage to overpower a gunman if they try and use their heads (don't charge the fucker face first. And don't fucking yell a battlecry as you charge you dingus!).

In this day and age, videogames and movies can actually help you and substitute for training to a very tiny degree. It's no secret that playing FPSs increases your hand-eye coordination f.ex

Most people will be pussies if faced with massive violence. Makes running away and hiding easier thus, on average, better chances surviving.

>he was fucking OUT OF AMMO. Snatch the FUCKING gun you IDIOT!

You're not one of those people who thinks an unarmed person is not dangerous, are you? You think Brevik only had one gun or would not have been capable of defending himself against a lone assailant?

Hey, two of three aircrafts hit the towers.

That's a lot of cases of people not fighting back against carpet knives.

So did he, got a headshot for it.

Amazingly enough, I am not finding it either, but I remember it clearly being said during the trial back when I was following it. It was one of those things that stuck with me. Like, how the hell could you just wait to die like that and not fight back at all.

Then again, many, according to him were playing dead despite him being the sole shooter so he knew he didn't kill them, so he just shot them anyway.

It was more than a little bit fucked up. To hear the description of how he killed so many people and they literally just laid down and died.

They probably didn't have any idea what was going on.

>let's blame a specific group of politically minded people for the students being incapable of coping with an armed gunman
>This wasn't a bang on the Jews, or throwing around 'racist' fact. It was LIBTARDS FAULT!
That's /pol/ shit.

I don't know if I'd freeze up if faced with death, but I sure hope that I'd at least try to fight back.

Then again, I'd hope I'd never be put in that scenario.

>What would you have done?

First? Asked him not shoot to me if I was caught dead to rights like that and didn't know the gun was empty.

After the click? Fight him and fight hard. Fight dirty as hell. Kick in the balls, bite his throat out, do what I have to do to kill him if at all possible because he totally means to kill me.

I don't think that he was actively channeling the powers of Wu Wei, but just a bitch pussy. At least running away would have been a good idea.

A person armed with an unloaded rifle is MUCH less dangerous than a person who's finished reloading his rifle.

Still. Eh.

Dude, that's a psycho's musings. A psycho who was certain that there are at least dozends like himself around who'd start their own rampage anytime soon after his.

The kid assumed that he was sane, he assumed that there are enough insane people around to make that mass murder worth his while.

I agree somewhat. But let's face it, the chances aren't looking pretty.
So bragging that oneself would totally rek that dude is rather baseless.

>brownies get up
>go ALLAH AKBAR ALLAH AKBAR
>storm towards the cockpit

"M... must be an ethnic dance of some sort."

Sadly he talked to the hero of /pol/.

It's also baseless to assume that everyone here would be too terrified to attack him.

>Moving the goalpost.
Also:
>believing the official version

Plane hijacks weren't a totally new thing even back then and using them as projectiles sure as hell hadn't been implemented as a tactic.

Shut up.

Makes it hard to believe it wasn't staged, right?

>psycho's musings
But everyone knows psychos are always right! They are cool and clever and totally do not have fucked up sense of reality. It's, like, in every book and movie and everything!

Absolutely not.
Tons of examples of people not acting in response to danger and then dying because of it.
Freeze is another possible response to danger if flight/fight are not deemed possible and your body doesn't know what else to do. It just freezes, hoping the threat will go away.

So when a dude takes hostages, do you automatically assume he's planning on killing them all and rush them? How many plane hijacks before that day had resulted in the entire plane being used as a weapon and how many resulted in a prolonged hostage situation where all or most hostages walked out of?

Hindsight 20/20 and all that shit.

Most hijacks of planes up to that point were in order to illegally enter countries rather than to blow up everyone on board.

I'm a martial arts instructor and it takes a hell of a lot of work to overcome people's natural instinct to avoid fighting by any means possible.

I have a military officer friend that told me in a deadly situation with untrained people

A quarter will attempt to fight (kill the threat or help others)
A quarter will try to escape by any means necessary
HALF will freeze

Usually in Japanese martial arts, the strength is supposed to come from the belly, so maaaybe there's a connection to signify "with your core body's strength / all body strength"... or it's bad translation (most likely considered the book).
Don't even know if the belly-focus is true in HNIR but then I don't see why not.

>HALF will freeze
Well hiding works pretty well for animals, on a evolutionary scale, and freezing is the most important step of hiding.

That makes some sense (although I'm surprised at the number who fight, actually)
When we evolved all these instincts most things that are considered threats were really big threats - lions and other dangerous animals. Running or fighting these things would be a terrible idea, so freezing was used to help avoid notice or at the very least avoid interest.

Against people, we don't want to fight each other (as mentioned already - animals have a huge tendency to not REALLY fight their own kind), but running can also incite a predator response (this is why you don't run from some animals - they'll note you as prey and now you're going to be hunted. It's similar with people sometimes)

So, you freeze. If both people freeze, all is good.

It doesn't work when you encounter psychopaths or a car is barreling down on you or a bunch of stuff... but our instincts don't know that.

Master Sun went on to say: "At a distance, use your crossbow; at close quarters, use your hand weapons. Hand weapons and crossbows are of mutual aid."

what did he mean by this?

He meant that dual wielding a crossbow and a hand weapon makes you cool as fuck.

If you're fighting at range, use a ranged weapon.
If you're fighting when they're within stabbing distance, stab them.

If you don't bring a gun to a gun fight, you're going to be in trouble, and if you don't have a knife you're going to get in some trouble if you can't get your gun out in time.

This is less important now we have easy to use sidearms, but is still useful if you replace crossbows with artillery and hand weapons with guns.

Basically you need more than just guns OR artillery, you really need both, and combined arms are better than just one or the other.

>not dual-wielding crossbows with bayonets

>Hand weapons and crossbows are of mutual aid

...

It's not unintelligent, it's just really obvious, and, I'd argue, not nearly as brilliant as people try to claim.

...

Taking a swing and maybe dying is better than standing there gibbering like a baby waiting for him to headshot you. Or hell, try to run, even that would be better.

If you fight you've got a chance. If you run you've got a chance. If you stand there begging you get shot in the head for sure. Seems pretty clear cut to me.

>There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

America , fuck yeah!