When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, the men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be dampened. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength, and if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the state will not be equal to the strain. Never forget: When your weapons are dulled, your ardor dampened, your strength exhausted, and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however, wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays. In all history, there is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. Only one who knows the disastrous effects of a long war can realize the supreme importance of rapidity in bringing it to a close. It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war who can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.

--Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The above passages from Sun Tzu's chapter on "Waging War" are so crucial as to require repetitive drumming into the non-combat experienced Commander-in-Chiefs who cannot understand what infantry troops experience in warfare because they themselves have never been an infantry troop fighting a war. Not knowing what the men are up against or capable of could lead to unexpected results and quickly deteriorating conditions. That goes also for one's experience in assessing enemy capability, determination, and the contextual and timing factors of a war.

There is no requirement that presidents of the United States be combat experienced. However, I sometimes wonder if Sun Tzu's language above ought to be added by way of Amendment to the U.S. Constitution's executive qualifications article so that presidential nominees without combat experience give greater respect to the timeless war wisdom that all West Pointers are required to read.

Technology may help in some situations, but it also breaks down a lot and can become a ball and chain in an environment like Iraq where sand gets into everything. If dulled weapons and dampened ardor are possible anywhere, it is in extreme warfighting environments such as the Iraq desert. This makes the more rapid closure of warfare important.

The U.S. units in Iraq have done well in foraging off of the indigenous resources, which is one of Sun Tzu's admonitions to help alleviate the stresses and costs of long supply lines to the supporting nation. However, how long can this go on before it becomes burdensome?

Do you recall that the colonies which became the United States listed in their Declaration of Independence grievances and in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that the government may not quarter soldiers within the peoples' homes? Even with British Redcoats who were of common ancestry and culture with the colonials, it got old. Very old. How much more so would this be true for troops of a separate culture altogether, entering, searching and holing up in Iraqi homes, eating their Desert Flakes in camel's milk, and drinking their Turkish coffee (or using it for an engine degreaser?)

The point Sun Tzu made so long ago is a hologram of warrior wisdom drifting into our eyes from newly printed pages of venerable American publishing companies. The Art of War is one of those books that is not a best-seller, but sells consistently over time, and even if it didn't could be deemed a non-tangible capital and non-monetary value that should not disappear from the public consciousness lest that public lose its republic for forgetting that wisdom. And then where would the publishing companies be?

In that vein, perhaps the most troubling part of Sun Tzu's work that I want the Bush Administration to think about more than any other is:

Never forget: When your weapons are dulled, your ardor dampened, your strength exhausted, and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however, wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

Those who blow people up in cafes, hotels, airports and skyscrapers are the no-brainer terrorists of brute force. The more sophisticated kind slip poisons, chemicals and other noxious substances into salads, tea, coffee, and other places we'd rather not find them.

For example, one method that has been particularly egregious over time has been slipping poisons into cigarettes during their manufacture, and as allowed by "law." But what is a law that for a long time had been misled about the realities of the contents of cigarettes? And what is the law if after someone is hooked to nicotine, you cannot really say their free will was guiding their habit outside of the powers of the most addictive chemical known to us?

Other industries have been tolerating known carcinogens in multiple products while denying what they are, and these knowing persons sit in a like seat of culpability with that of cigarette manufacturers.

In cancer wards over the past 50 years, millions have perished around the world by slow and excruciating death, mostly from cigarette-smoking related cancers and related diseases. And the treatments have not been any nicer than the cancers in many cases. What, if not mercenary terrorism, can this be, to include torture?

Responsibility comes with knowledge. When knowledge arises in the persons doing a business that the very population that constitutional democracy and regulated enterprise gave them the privilege to serve was getting poisoned by the industrial actions of said persons, those benefitting have knowledge of their responsibility, and the duty to immediately cease the activity.

Once it is known by a company and its executives that it is poisoning its customers, workers and or third-parties, that knowledge is equal to the mental state of intent under all criminal codes and common law. Yet poisoning the masses is not the only method of committing mercenary homicide.

What industries have knowingly profited by and urged the employment of American troops in foreign wars against nations which have not attacked the United States? Of those, which ones have donated campaign funds to political candidates who have exercised influence to help put the troops into wars in which they also double as security forces for said companies to make profitable inroads into these nations?

Those companies that have paid politicians, whether by campaign donations, soft-money, stock, or other consideration, with then or later awareness that the candidates' actions for the company in office include prosecuting foreign wars that force new markets and contracts for the companies, may be guilty of sponsoring mercenary terrorism. That is, unless they pull all profitable ventures out of said war zone, pay back all funds obtained, pay reparations, and agree to testify against the politicians with whom they agreed to effect or pay a quid pro quo for mercenary wars.

How do we extricate the pretextual purposes for going to war from the mercenary interests weighing in on the invasions and occupations such as in Iraq? I'm not sure we have to do so. It is enough for the mercenary interest to be a contributing factor without which the pretextual factor would not have moved the troops into such a war. Otherwise, the U.S. would be committed to a dozen more foreign wars in democracy's name elsewhere. It is not.

There is only one thing for the United States to do if it wants to recover from the malignancy that a mercenary campaign abroad introduces into the nation's international standing and governing fabric. Constitutionally mandated surgery. We must hold our own politicians accountable for their wrongs.

How would mercenary abuse of the U.S. Armed Forces constitute a crime? It would first be approached from the standpoint of avoiding a defense to a high crime. The first defense would be that the executive was exercising a constitutional power of its office in a legal way, i.e. its acts in effecting the foreign war were constitutionally privileged acts under the executive Commander in Chief powers.

However, those powers do not express or imply mercenary expeditions not necessary for U.S. national security or defense. And when all other national defense and security expeditions are ruled out as false pretexts for executing a particular war, even against the great weight of seasoned military advisors from the beginning, the question of mercenary war must then be investigated.

If the evidence would show that the war could not have been for any other realistic purpose than mercenary gain for special interests that were not part of the electorate which gave the executive its office, then the fact that sons and daughters of the Republic have been placed in harms way, killed, maimed and otherwise damaged for a mercenary war suggests that the troops of the United States were murdered or maimed for hire by their own government. Who pays the bills for all of those troops with lifelong disabilities? Their families bear the hidden and un-beneffited costs, while the taxpayers as a whole -- not the corporate beneficiaries of the mercenary war -- pay the rest.

This is no way to treat fellow Americans. It is unacceptable.

I am not saying this is proven to be the case today. However, if the evidence showed that this was the case, then the high crime would be the murder and or manslaughter or negligent homicide of over 3,000 U.S. citizens and troops, impeachment would be proper, and all participating parties within the government-industrial joint venture that knowingly approved of the deaths of U.S. troops for mercenary corporate gain should be prosecuted under the full extent of the law for any crimes of which they were or became guilty with knowledge.

Let me finish by pointing out some other hidden costs: by acting in mercenary treason against the proper, Constitutional use of the U.S. Armed Forces, this gives despots and anti-democratic regimes across the globe tacit permission to oppress their peoples, commit similar aggressions, and worse, drag the U.S. Armed Forces into wars which might not have been but for the instigating transgressions.

We must be a good country if we would be great.