Drones, Sun Tzu, Abenaki
"If you wait long enough by the river, the bodies of your enemies will float by." Anon
Anonymous because I cannot figure out to whom the above quote belongs to. A search on the Internet led me to an Australian band called The Drones whom on their website is said to sound like a car crash inside a washing machine. I also came across two obsolete references; one pointed to an old Native American tribe called the Abenaki and the other to Sun Tzu, the great Chinese general warrior. Moreover a query of various search engines dedicated to quotations turned up no result. For now I will presume it was Sun Tzu who said it, frankly because it sounds like something he might have said.
The reason I got interested was due to an article penned by Amir Taheri dealing with the development of China toward world hegemony.
For several years now the peoples of the industrial world have been rigorously primed and are now anxiously awaiting the day the tiger (China) pounces to unveil a dragon. After reading the article by Taheri I thought about the quote which I had initially heard from my good friend & colleague Mâyachykov A., who in response to the Chinese question said that they will in fact wait long enough until the bodies of their enemies float by.
If you think about this quote deeply you soon realize its profundity. It is pregnant with wisdom and patience, and it could also be so capitalistic. It also begs the question whether such a strategy can be turned against an oppressive regime?
One way to look at it is that a party with interests may both actively or passively wait on the side and watch the decimation of their foe by either an ally or friend -enemy of the enemy. For example, a drawn out civil conflict between Arab sects in Iraq monitored by a nebulous Iraqi security force would result in a favorable body count of dead Iraqis for an army with interests in the region. The alternative is the body count of dead American troops that could serve the intentions of ruling Mullahs in Iran in their bid for regional supremacy. In war it really matters exactly who is doing the waiting and who is doing the floating. So again I ask how such a philosophy can be adapted to serve the struggle of people in the clenches of oppressive governments? It is important to note that under tyranny it is the bodies of neighbors and relatives and friends that will be floating.