Authors’ Note

doi:10.5810/kentucky/9780813169552.002.0008

Front Matter

Authors’ Note

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https://doi.org/10.5810/kentucky/9780813169552.002.0008

Pages

xiii–xvi

Published:

August 2017

Extract

Cato the Elder, who often served as commander of Rome’s armies and always emerged victorious, believed that he could better serve his country if he wrote on military matters instead of his personal exploits on the battlefield since the results of heroic acts pass away whereas writing for the good of the public is of lasting benefit.
(Vegetius, De re militari)

Raison d’étre

This book is not history for history’s sake but a study of generalship—the art of command at the highest levels. Its target audience is the senior political-security level in Israel, among them members of the General Staff, corps, division, and brigade commanders and officers designated for or aspiring to reach this elite group, and the reader who wishes to gain a deep understanding of the issues facing this group and the manner in which the challenges created by these issues are—or should be—dealt with.

It was not our intention to present a systematic doctrine via scholarly lectures, dogmatic sermons, or the regurgitation—manifest or disguised—from the vast literature on this subject. Instead, we chose to describe, and occasionally express our opinion on, specific events on the Suez Canal front during the Yom Kippur War, with a focus on the IDF’s southern front headquarters, the IDF General Staff, and the divisions that fought in the Suez Canal theater, particularly in the Egyptian Second Army sector, because of the essence of generalship that can be learned from them. In this field, like any other, the most powerful and reliable tool for gaining a penetrating understanding is strategic and operational failure. The lessons of success are often illusory and misleading and always vague and deceptive; the lessons of failure, however, are always sharp, reliable, and clear if we take the pains to derive them wisely and honestly. We wish, then, to focus on the mistakes but not necessarily on their perpetrators.

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Authors’ Note

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Raison d’étre

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Raison d’étre

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