Interestingly enough, that’s a reality that I understood playing Starcraft and similar simulation strategy computer games. No matter how perfect my defense of positions and bases was against all possible avenues of attack, I never made any gains unless I took the offensive intiative.

Two other things I learnt here were:

– No matter how perfect a defense, the enemy has the uncanny tendency to carefully evaluate fortifications and attack where strengths are weakest, often in a way the defender could not even expect.

– Even when a bold offensive appears to be a failure with loss of men and treasure for the attacker, it can inflict such damage that the defender is either too wounded to retalliate, or the next attack easily finishes the job once all the “hard work” is done.

The old adage is true—the best defense is a good offense.

This may or may not be true in my opinion. Whether or not this is a principle of war hinges upon the relative strength of the participants. In the current situation, the jihad movement was bound by this principle because of the movement’s relative weakness. The United States and other coalition forces are not necessarily bound by this principle because of their relative strength. In other words if a relatively weaker actor decides to stage a war and no one shows up, who has achieved victory?

With today’s warfare, when a state starts attacking, that is the beginning of losing for them. Power belongs to the people-who fight back and never give up, because the state always gives up eventually.