What Mao Taught Us

"In the introduction to his 1961 translation of Mao Zedong’s On Guerrilla Warfare, retired Marine General and Navy Cross recipient Samuel B. Griffith II quoted from a Newsweek magazine article dated 3 Jul 1961:

“Pentagon– A new and fiendishly ingenious anti-guerrilla weapon is being tested by the Navy. It’s a delayed-action liquid explosive, squirted from a flame-thrower-like gun, that seeps into foxholes and bunkers. Seconds later, fed by oxygen from the air, it blows up with terrific force.”

Griffith angrily responded to the article, writing:

“Apparently we are to assume that guerrillas will conveniently ensconce themselves in readily identifiable ‘foxholes and bunkers’ awaiting the arrival of half a dozen admirals armed with ‘flame-throwing guns’ to march up, squirt, and retire to the nearest officer’s club. To anyone even remotely acquainted with the philosophy and doctrine of revolutionary guerrilla war, this sort of thing is not hilariously funny. There are no mechanical panaceas.”

Griffith’s translation of Mao’s text is a disturbing and enlightening read. The conclusion to be drawn is not only that American military and political leadership failed to understand the nature of guerrilla warfare in every war since the end of WWII, but more interestingly that the Iraqi insurgents have an equal misunderstanding of the war they are fighting and what it can or will bring them."
2 Dinars