Voice from history

American films are not often shown in the Soviet Union, but after The Magnificent Seven I did not miss a single one. .....The heroes of American films would submit for long periods and with great patience to humiliation and insults and were cheated at every turn, but matters were always settled with a dramatically decisive gunfight.
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Many years passed and I became an officer serving with the General Staff. Suddenly, as I studied American theories of war, I came to an appalling realisation. It became clear to me that a modern American cowboy who is working up to a decisive fight will always expect to begin by spitting at and insulting his opponent and to continue by throwing whiskey in his face and chucking custard pies at him before resorting to more serious weapons. He expects to hurl chairs and bottles at his enemy and to try to stick a fork or a tableknife into his behind and then to fight with his fists and only after all this to fight with his gun.
That is a very dangerous philosophy. You are going to end up by using pistols. Why not start with them? Why should the bandit you are fighting wait for you to remember your gun? He may shoot you before you do, just as you are going to slap his face. By using your most deadly weapon at the beginning of the fight, your enemy saves his strength.

Gen Viktor Suvorov Inside The Soviet Army 1982

I found this while doing research to compare current Democrat methods of conducting political warfare to the old Cold War era methods employed by the Soviet Union against our country. This speaks to the manner in which we are expected to wage armed conflict of course, but I found the corallory to how we conducted the campaign against Iraq versus Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan there was no warning. No years of debate at the UN. No No Fly zones where we endured constant attacks on our aircraft, no resolutions, no Oil for Food and that campaign is being trumpeted for the most part as a success while in the case of Iraq we are having to endure criticism of every move. This voice from the past may very well need to be heeded by todays leaders.