The Rules of War (Noveling) — STEVEN HARDESTY

Because I write war novels, I like to give advice on how to conduct wars. Novel-writing isn’t sufficient cred for that job, you say?

Well, I also was a soldier in a losing war and spent a lot of time analyzing Confederate military strategy to write a book about it. Thinking about those things makes me worried we are not prepared for our next war.

So here are my seven rules on how to get ready for war:

One – Know yourself. I’ll talk about you later.

Two – Know your enemy. More importantly, give him credit for being as smart as or smarter than you are. Once you know him, do not assume you know him. Keep learning about him. Learn from him. Ask yourself, Why does he refuse to change his ways in response to all the misery I am dumping on him?

Three – Count the cost of war before you make war. Can you pay the tariff without reliance on some mystical “will” or “spirit” to make up for lack of trained manpower and material resources? Do you really believe enthusiasm alone will allow one of you to whip five of them?

Four – Never assume you are the meanest, toughest son-of-a-bitch on the battlefield. Or the smartest or best armed. Or possessor of the best strategy and best military leaders. If you believe you are all of those wonderful things, then ask yourself, Why would a cowardly, inferior, ill-equipped, poorly generaled rabble want you for an enemy?

Five – Never offer to fight except in a just and honest cause and out of desperate necessity. 1776. 1861. 1941.

Six – There is no such thing as a limited war. Go at every war hammer and tongs. Use all of your resources from the beginning. That way you will get it over quickly and inflict the least misery on the fewest human beings and have the least mess to clean up. Applying this rule also may persuade your citizenry that this war is not worth the risk in death and dishonor.

Seven – Know yourself. Know your arrogance, your prejudices, your stupidities, your blindnesses as well as – no, better than – you know those of your enemy. Are you a proud representative of the greatest country in the world, the most powerful military, the finest civilization? What do you think your enemy thinks of his country, his military and his civilization and why would he fight for something so inferior to yours?

Last, and this is hardly a rule, just commonsense – Remember that this war is not yours, it does not belong to you. It belongs to the whole people of the country who sent you to war.

Will they share with you the moral opprobrium of a bad war badly made? Oh, yes. Will they forgive you for dragging them into that kind of war? Oh, no. Nor should they.

Keep foremost in your war-thinking that you have been given on loan all the material and spiritual resources of your people. If you use those resources wisely, if you use them decently, when the war is done – won or lost – you and they together need not be ashamed of what you have done.

I suppose that is why I write war novels. To tell readers what I learned from my own time in war. To tell them that the country and people who sent me to a pointless war that killed too many of my friends did not demand that their military and political leaders follow these seven rules. Or any rules.

To say that the misery I still feel a half century after my war I don’t want you to feel except in the pages of a war novel. Where you can learn the rules we all must demand of our military and political leadership when we contemplate making another war.

And there always is another war waiting just around the corner.