day no. 15,127: a winning that loses; a losing that wins

"Those who know when to fight and when not to fight are victorious. Those who discern when to use many or few troops are victorious. Those whose upper and lower ranks have the same desire are victorious. Those who face the unprepared with preparation are victorious." 
— Sun Tzu

Proverbs 11:14
Where there is no guidance, a people falls,
but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.

"Tactical success of itself does not necessarily bring strategic success. It is possible to win all the battles and still lose the war. If the battles do not lead to the achievement of the strategic objective, then, successful or not, they are just so much wasted effort." 
-- MCDP 1-2: Campaigning

Proverbs 15:22
Without counsel plans fail,
but with many advisers they succeed.

"As we have seen, actions at the higher levels in the hierarchy of war tend to overpower actions at the lower levels, and neglect of the operational level can prove disastrous even in the face of tactical competence. Without an operational design which synthesizes tactical results into a coalescent whole, what passes for operations is simply the accumulation of tactical victories." -- MCDP 1-2: Campaigning

Proverbs 20:18
Plans are established by counsel;
by wise guidance wage war.

"Tactical competence can rarely attain victory in the face of operational incompetence, while operational ignorance can squander what tactical hard work has gained."
-- MCDP 1-2: Campaigning

Proverbs 24:5-6
A wise man is full of strength,
and a man of knowledge enhances his might,
for by wise guidance you can wage your war,
and in abundance of counselors there is victory.

"Reduced to its essence, the art of campaigning consists of deciding who, when, and where to fight and for what purpose. Equally important, it involves deciding who, when, and where not to fight. It is, as Clausewitz described, 'the use of engagements for the object of the war.'" -- MCDP 1-2: Campaigning

Luke 14:31-32
What king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

There is a winning that is losing and there is a losing that wins.

day no. 15,126: sweat it or regret it

"During times of peace, the most important task of any military is to prepare for war. Through its preparedness, a military provides deterrence against potential aggressors. All peacetime activities should focus on achieving combat readiness." -- MCDP 1-2: Campaigning

In other words, "The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war."

Keep sweating, brothers.

Matthew 24:43
But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.

Stay awake and stay safe.
Don't sweat it and regret it.

day no. 15,125: operational and tactical level hindsight

"Leadership at the operational level requires clarity of vision, strength of will, and great moral courage. Moreover, it requires the ability to communicate these traits clearly and powerfully through numerous layers of command, each of which adds to the friction inhibiting effective communication... Operational commanders must establish a climate of cohesion among the widely dispersed elements of their commands and with adjacent and higher headquarters as well. Because they cannot become overly involved in tactics, operational commanders must have confidence in their subordinate commanders. With these subordinates, commanders must develop a deep mutual trust. They must also cultivate in subordinates an implicit understanding of their own operating style and an explicit knowledge of their specific campaign intent. Operational commanders must train their staffs until the staffs become extensions of the commanders' personality." -- MCDP 1-2: Campaigning

Acts 6:2-5a
And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. 3 Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. 4 But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” 5 And what they said pleased the whole gathering

Operational commanding is a different skill set then tactical operation. Not everyone has good enough eyesight to see the battlefield at the 30,000 ft. level. Conversely, not everyone who can see the world from that perspective has the ability to see things clearly in the trenches 3 ft. from the action. They are different skills. If you can see 3 ft in front of you, it doesn't mean you should be promoted to seeing things 30 ft away. First of all, it removes you from a place of strength and second of all, there is no correlation per se between seeing things up close and seeing things from 30,000 ft above. 

Those who are able to see from 30k ft. must train those beneath them in order to pass along what only they can see. They must trust the vision of those at the 3 ft. level to do what only they can do and provide them such clarity from their vantage point that all of them achieve their uniform's goals.

day no. 15,124: wishes get stitches

"At the operational level much more than at the tactical, logistics dictates what is possible and what is not. 'A campaign plan that cannot be logistically supported is not a plan at all, but simply an expression of fanciful wishes.'" -- MCDP 1-2: Campaigning

Proverbs 12:11
Those who work their land will have abundant food,
but those who chase fantasies have no sense.

A plan that works in your daydreams, but not in broad daylight is not a plan. It's a failure in process. It is a plan only in the sense that it has steps and leads to somewhere, but those steps are foolish and that somewhere is destruction.

Proverbs 28:19
Those who work their land will have abundant food,
but those who chase fantasies will have their fill of poverty.

There will be plenty of something. The one who has a plan that can be cashed out will have plenty of cash, while the one with the plan borrowed against the clouds will have plenty of hot air.

day no. 15,123: use roads to march on; fields to fight on

"Use roads to march on; fields to fight on . . . when the roads are available for use, you save time and effort by staying on them until shot off." -- Patton

"If the essence of the operational level is deciding when and where to fight, operational mobility is the means by which we commit the necessary forces based on that decision." 
-- MCDP 1-2: Campaigning

When your goal is moving soldiers from one place to another, roads are your best bet and you do well to stay on them unless a battle pulls you off of them before you reach the intended destination. But once at the destination, engage battle in the fields, not on the roads.

Do not march on fields unless you're forced to and do not fight on roads unless you must

Ecclesiastes 10:10
If the iron is blunt,
and one does not sharpen the edge,
he must use more strength,
but wisdom helps one to succeed.

Wisdom knows what things are for and does with them what's best. Axes are for cutting down trees and sharpeners are for making better axes. You can't short cut it by using sharpeners to hack down trees or axes to sharpen sharpeners. Knowing how things work is a matter of knowing what they are for, when to use them and how to employ them.

day no. 15,122: initiative shapes; passivity is shaped

"Ideally, operational commanders fight only when and where they want to. Their ability to do this is largely a function of their ability to maintain the initiative and shape the events of war to their purposes. 'In war it is all-important to gain and retain the initiative, to make the enemy conform to your action, to dance to your tune.' Retaining the initiative, in turn, is largely the product of maintaining a higher operational tempo, which we will discuss later in this chapter." -- MCDP 1-2: Campaigning

Initiative is inescapable. Your life and livelihood will be determined by initiative: either yours or someone else's. There is no scenario where you live uninfluenced by internal drive or external force. Someone's initiative will force your hand. Make that initiative yours and move your hands where you want it to go or withhold it from where you don't want it to end up.

Initiative shapes, passivity is shaped.

Be a man. Have agency. Look to God. Observe all He commands by working your hands as hard as you can.

Ecclesiastes 9:10
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might

day no. 15,121: five hundred pounds from here to there

"We must make this campaign an exceedingly active one. Only thus can a weaker country cope with a stronger, it must make up in activity what it lacks in strength." —Stonewall Jackson

You can lift 500 lbs. by being strong enough to do it all at once or by being active enough to do it 100x in 5 lb. increments. If the job requires 500 lbs. to be moved, you will have to either find the strength or the perseverance to move it. But not all jobs grant the time it would take to do it in 5 lb. increments. And not all objects can be broken down. Some require all at once or not at all kind of strength. Others can be broken down, but cannot be assembled back together again. While still others can be broken down, but cannot be reassembled with the same structural integrity exhibited prior to being broken down. If you have the strength to lift 500 lbs. you have options. If you aren't strong enough, you have limited options in proportion to your limitations. If you're weak, lifting it all at once is not an option. If you're strong, you may opt to lift 50 lbs. 10x, not because you have to, but because you find that advantageous. But either way, you must work with what you have and if the gig is 500 lbs. from here to there, then you must flex whatever resources you have available to you.

day no. 15,118: the end state

"In examining any proposed end state, we must consider whether it guarantees an end to the fundamental problems that brought on the struggle in the first place, or whether instead it leaves in place the seeds of further conflict. If the latter, we must ask whether the chosen method of termination permits our unilateral resumption of military operations." -- MCDP 1-2: Campaigning

If the goal of any conflict is to end the conflict as soon as possible, you are only sowing the seeds of future conflict. Conflicting wills do not simply go away because the combat of hashing it out is inconvenient. Whatever elements led to the flash point will remain if the combat does not persist to the point of stamping out the variable that led to the vitriol. 

The goal of conflict should NOT merely be to end the conflict, but to diffuse the bombs which made the conflict necessary. If you call for a peace treaty before the matters which caused the war have been addressed, you are only pausing the war, not ending it.

If an end to the fundamental problems is not reached, you must consider how the current cease fire affects your ability to begin firing on all cylinders again when future fighting invariably erupts. 

James 4:1-2
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

day no. 15:117: method must bow to mission

"Rigidity inevitably defeats itself, and the analysts who point to a changed detail as evidence of a plan's weakness are completely unaware of the characteristics of the battlefield." - Dwight Eisenhower

"The farther ahead we project, the less certain and detailed should be our design. We may plan the initial phase of a campaign with some degree of certainty, developing extensive functional and detailed plans. However, since the results of that phase will shape the phases that follow, subsequent plans must be increasingly general. The plan for future phases will be largely conceptual, perhaps consisting of no more than a general intent and several contingencies and options."

"Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." - Dwight Eisenhower

Planning forces you to consider all of your resources and liabilities as well as your enemy's center of gravity and critical vulnerabilities. But in the moment, a center of gravity can move or a new vulnerability may present itself and one's plans must change.

Those auditing the procedure critically may accuse the commander of failing to achieve each objective, but they fail to account for the fact that the overall battle plan and objective was achieved precisely by abandoning the earlier plan. You have to keep the overall goal in mind as you execute the orders. When things change, an eye on the end can help you adjust to real time, unpredictable developments that still lead you to the same end you planned from the git go. If you are more committed to seeing your plan go according to its blueprint, you may actually fail to achieve the overall objective in the process.

Mission determines method and methods must adapt in order to accomplish the mission.

Method must bow to mission.

day no. 15,116: the body politic

"The fingers have to know what the brain is feeling for, and the brain has to know what the fingers are actually touching." -- MCDP 1-2: Campaigning

The brain thinks on behalf of the entire body and the fingers feel on behalf of the entire body. The brain is not responsible for feeling, but it is responsible for listening to what the fingers are saying. The fingers are not responsible for thinking, but they must report to the brain what they're feeling if they want to benefit the body.

Romans 12:4-5
For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

In the body, there are different parts with different functions and differing levels of responsibility and accountability. There is a hierarchy and it is not a result of inadequacy, inferiority or sin. The fingers report to the brain by design and not because of a broken system. To the contrary, it is the healthy body whose brain informs it fingers with direction and whose fingers report what they're finding back to the brain with alacrity.

1 Corinthians 12:12
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.