Clausewitz

"Clausewitz illustrates friction thorough the simile that doing things in battle is like moving in water. This doesn’t sound too bad, but imagine that you are trying to escape from a pursuing sheriff’s posse. Hounds are braying; bullets are zinging overhead. Suddenly you run off a bank and plunge into a river. As you thrash around waist deep, you find that the faster you try to go, the harder everything is. Your life depends on moving faster, but you can’t, and the harder you try, the more frustrated you get. It won’t take much of this before panic begins to sink in, and you lose the ability to make effective decisions—very much like the effects Boyd and Sun Tzu aim for. They don’t come directly from the physical difficulty of moving through water so much as from not knowing how far away the dogs are and from the fact that nothing you’re trying seems to be making the situation any better and you’re running out of ideas fast. It’s not industrial strength…"

""He is a general in permanent motion, with the vision of a Clausewitz, an expert in the war of positions,""