Wisdom comes in all sorts of places. Here are 6 lessons modern military leaders could learn from Bugs Bunny, Pinky and the Brain, and Winnie the Pooh:
1. Don’t rely on technology to solve all your problems
Yes, F-22s, M1 Abrams, and Apache helicopters are sexy marvels of engineering, but they can’t win wars on their own. In a 1982 battle, Syria lost all of its fancy surface-to-air missile batteries in only two days of fighting because, instead of keeping them mobile or emplacing them in hard-to-template areas, they deployed them near bathrooms so they wouldn’t have to dig latrines.
2. A plan that is “so crazy it just might work!” usually doesn’t
For all the flashy tricks in war, the best plan is often relatively simple. Don’t make a nine-step plan with 100 moving parts when you can send in an infantry company and get the job done. More moving parts equal more failure points.
3. Take care who you’re getting your advice from
Not all intel is trustworthy. Plenty of locals are willing to provide fake tips to U.S. troops to get rid of political or business rivals. Troops in Afghanistan learned this the hard way when Pech River Valley residents got rid of families in Korengal Valley by siccing Americans on them. Soldiers deployed to the Korengal Valley footed the bill for those early mistakes.
4. Pick your allies and recruits wisely.
Allies have to be rigorously screened. Some of the senior Iraqi political and military allies of the U.S. stripped their own army of key leaders, neutering it and leaving the country ripe for takeover by ISIS. Now U.S. troops are filtering back into the nation to redo the work they thought they completed just a few years ago.
5. Don’t bring more gear than you need
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Whether it’s a training ruck march or troops establishing a new combat outpost in country, packing should be done according to mission requirements. Food, water, ammo, and batteries are essential. Everything else should be scrutinized before it’s packed.
6. Don’t let your actions become predictable
All militaries practice battle drills and write doctrine, even if they call them something different. This is vital to make sure that all units know what to expect from one another. But, they need to take care that they don’t make their actions predictable for the enemy. When trucks stop 50 meters from a suspected IED, insurgents will immediately begin planting secondary IEDs 50 meters from a primary.