Has George W. Bush ever read The Art of War by Sun Tzu?

[Has George W. Bush ever read The Art of War by Sun Tzu?]

Has George W. Bush ever read The Art of War by Sun Tzu?

Yes of course.

 2 (16.7%)

No of course not.

 4 (33.3%)

Karl Rove read him selections.

 3 (25%)

It's a trick question: he is illiterate and married a librarian to compensate for it

 3 (25%)

Total Members Voted: 11

[pass36]

This is only the world's single greatest manual of political and military strategy (yes, I have read On War also), yet he seems to go against its advice constantly.  Ignorant or simply shrewd?

[Deus Ex Machina]

Perhaps Bush once read the back of a Cornflakes box and thought it was the Art of War.

[habeas dorkus!]

No. But that won't stop him from referencing it. Oh, he's got the Cliff's notes, alright.

[tkd720man]

Absolutely not. Neither have his advisors. They all read Machiavelli's "The Prince."

Osama bin Laden HAS read Art of War, though, and he seems to have understood it very well.

[ElectricalStorm]

oh geeze 

[dividebyzero]

He drew a picture of Daddy dropping bombs on Iraq, called it "Art of War", and voila!

I think it's pretty obvious...not just from how he conducted the war in the first place, but from the many clashes the administration through Cheney and Rumsfeld had with the DOD, specifically the Dept. of the Army. Unlike the Bush Administration, "The Art of War" is almost required reading for combat officers (I thought Clausewitz "On War" was far better and less vague, but that's imho.)

"Psshaw, you won't need more troops, they'll be home by Christmas!"

/I'm using slashies on LSD.
//They actually told us that the reservists and the guardsmen would be back by Christmas in '03 while I was still in the military.
///Then came "Stop-loss"...

[Little D]

"Back then, I didn't sell to Osama Bin Laden. Not because of moral reasons, but because he was always bouncing checks."

 

[dividebyzero]

"Back then, I didn't sell to Osama Bin Laden. Not because of moral reasons, but because he was always bouncing checks."

 

I love how they threw that into the movie. It was perfect!

It really pissed me off that it took the administration as long as it did to finally say, "Uhh, maybe we shouldn't do EXACTLY what we did in Vietnam by politically interferring with the military all the time." At least they kinda-sorta eventually did it.