in regards to podcast number 23 in the art of war many of the rules seem very simplistic in black and white take this one for example when the enemy occupies high ground do not confront him if he attacks downhill do not oppose him where does that leave us with battles like normandy where troops had to get up those cliffs what about the idf conquering the golan golan golan heights golan heights in the six day war there are many other examples i could give it’s obviously not ideal to do such things as fighting a well-entrenched enemy uphill but dealing with less than ideal situations is a part of war we should all be so lucky as to only be able to choose battles that fit the art of war but from my experience it’s often not an option in real life and you have to somehow get it done anyway so yeah this is a pretty simple question with a pretty simple answer too don’t forget that the laws or the the the art of war and the and the laws in the art of war the rules the simplistic black and white rules in the in the article are governed by other rules that say to break the rules themselves so so just to pull out a couple quotes i went and pulled these out sun tzu says he who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning may be called a heaven-born captain so if you can adapt to the situation and and adapt your tactics and modify your tactics so attacking uphill is a modification of a tactic right yes the next one i pulled out sun tzu says do not repeat tactics that have gained you one victory but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances that answers the question in its own right let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances and the last little quote i pulled up from sun tzu according as circumstances are favorable one should modify one’s plans so there’s three rules from the art of war that tell you to change the rules of the art of war when you have to so um yeah you’re told to avoid these situations but sometimes you have to now it’s also important to remember that the philosophy of the art of war generally espouses an indirect methodology of combat aware often times you’re trying to keep yourself safe and inflict damage when you can that implies that maybe i have less physical strength or size than my opponent so i have less soldiers or less equipment than my opponent and from that perspective let me ask is would it be smart to attack normandy if you actually didn’t have the the numbers to carry out the attack and you didn’t have the overwhelming force that we had amassed on england to go and assault france it wouldn’t make sense then it would make sense to continue to obey the the the principles in the art of war which is you know what we’re not going to attack on we’re going to figure out another way to do it so like i said these are rules but these are rules like all rules that are meant to be broken when the time calls for it so good question but it’s a it’s a the the art of war answers that question in itself
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