You know, I never cease to be amazed at the things I find on blogs. I’ve been sitting on this link since New Year’s Day, but I still can’t get this amazing story about one of the greatest Americans you’ve probably never heard of, Colonel John Boyd, out of my head. He was a freakin’ modern day Sun Tzu and our nation owes him a debt of gratitude for his steadfastness in refusing to succumb to the Pentagon bureaucracy.

This is not a blog post, it is an extremely well-written essay and if you have any interest in history or military doctrine I promise you will find it well worth your time. Hell, I’ve given you two links already, what are you doing here?

Excerpting won’t do it justice, so go give it a read.

Ok, here’s a teaser to get you started:

This is a story about success and failure. It is a story about Iraq, and of something much bigger than Iraq. It is, perhaps, a small look into what makes victory, and defeat. It is a tale of infantrymen, of brave soldiers in dusty alleys a world away. It is a story of generals and strategies, too.

But to understand our newfound success there, to know a little of how we achieved it and most importantly, how to keep it, we need to move away from that Mesopotamian desert and those boots on the ground, and back to a different desert on the other side of the world a half century ago. For there, a vision was vouchsafed to a most unlikely warrior priest… the kind of insight that comes once or twice in all of human history.

Go ahead, I’ll be here when you get back and we can talk about it in the comments section.

Thanks to Proteus at Eject! Eject! Eject!