It’s important to know how to conduct military campaigns because it aids in the seduction of women, the securing of lucrative employment, and the command of a battery of servants, children, and mistresses. Most important, perhaps, is the way that as a military commander one is invited to all the country balls, to dance with the local virgins, and to spend all one’s time in exquisite luxury while recounting a past life sleeping on the field. “I voted for George Bush because he’s my commander in chief, and what he wants it’s my duty to give him, and if he wants to be president, then it’s my duty to vote for him.”
These are recommendations from West Point:
rise and fall of great powers, kennedy
war in european history, howard
makers of modern strategy from machiavelli to the nuclear age
diplomacy, kissinger
thinking in time, neustadt, may
command decisions, US gov’t
on war, von clausewitz
on strategy, summers
supplying war, logistics from wallenstein to patton
art of war, jomini
the soldier and the state, huntington
the campaigns of napoleon
personal memoirs, grant
sun tzu, on warfare
guns, germs and steel, diamond
caesar, the gallic war
attacks, rommel
Enchiridion, epictetus
