Zulu & Al Qaeda.

This is coolbert:

I am watching this TV program just now on PBS called, "Secrets of the Dead". And this particular program dealt with the Zulu victory over the British at the Battle of Isandhlawa.

And the conventional wisdom is that the British were defeated due to their own ineptness. Reasons such as poor generalship, lack of flow of ammunition, rifles overheating, etc. And there is probably a degree of truth and credibility to all these reasons.

What the TV program also stressed, and this I did not fully comprehend as I should have when I saw this program before, is that the defeat cannot be fully blamed on merely British ineptness. Credit the Zulu with a superior performance too. Numbers, superior generalship, motivation, organization, tactics, etc. The performance of the Zulu was all very good in these regards.

It was not so much that the British were so bad, but that the Zulu was very good.

And this also has a modern analogy.

I have mentioned this before as well.

The 9/11 debacle is often attributed to American ineptness. That our security was poor. That our intelligence was poor. That a lot of people fell down on the job. Etc. It is only our fault, goes the thinking. If we had only did better, this all could have been prevented.

Well, consideration should also be given to the fact that the hijackers were also very good at what they did. Very planful and very meticulous in their planning for the hijackings and subsequent suicide attacks. Many things had to be taken into account by the terrorists when planning these hijackings. To hijack one aircraft is said to be not too easy. To hijack four airplanes simultaneously and direct them to targets for suicide attack is even magnitudes more difficult [such a thing was historically unprecedented]. And yet the terrorists were able to succeed in a manner totally unanticipated.

It seems that there is a constant here. When you lose, the tendency is to blame yourself. To not give credit to the adversary. Rather to find fault with yourself and mete out blame among those in your own camp who are felt to be "responsible".

There is a danger with all this. If you are not giving proper consideration to the ability of your adversary, you are running the risk of not being able to properly evaluate their potential. Sun Tzu's dicta concerning this is most appropriate:

"If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat."

Al Qaeda, whether we like it or not, is good at what they do, and we should realize this at all times.

coolbert.