You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

ChristianKl comments on Military Rationalities and Irrationalities - Less Wrong Discussion

21 Post author: pscheyer 09 September 2013 11:48PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (58)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: ChristianKl 11 September 2013 12:10:19PM 3 points [-]

Measuring success in war related matters isn't easy.

The US army did a lot of bad things because generals got the goal of achieve a high body count of dead Taliban.

Comment author: dthunt 12 September 2013 09:58:03PM 0 points [-]

I think that statement right there is the crux of it.

I have mixed feelings on Clausewitz, but one thing I that did seep in from my first read of On War was that it is very hard to achieve success (let alone measure it) if you don't have a clear idea of what your goal is. "Kill lots of enemy" is not particularly good goal.