this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2026
330 points (99.4% liked)
pics
26586 readers
1081 users here now
Rules:
1.. Please mark original photos with [OC] in the title if you're the photographer
2..Pictures containing a politician from any country or planet are prohibited, this is a community voted on rule.
3.. Image must be a photograph, no AI or digital art.
4.. No NSFW/Cosplay/Spam/Trolling images.
5.. Be civil. No racism or bigotry.
Photo of the Week Rule(s):
1.. On Fridays, the most upvoted original, marked [OC], photo posted between Friday and Thursday will be the next week's banner and featured photo.
2.. The weekly photos will be saved for an end of the year run off.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://mastodon.world/about
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
An actual rule from Sun Tzu that applies is roughly this:
Never engage the enemy on 'Death Ground'.
'Death Ground' is basically territory that cannot be retreated from, in any direction, cannot be abandoned, due to physical/terrain constraints, or I think serious strategic necessity, like uh, you can't retreat from where all your army's food is.
The idea is you never want to fight people who have no option but to fight to the death, because they will fight fiercely.
You always want to give them an option to runaway, don't block all their possible escape routes.
... ICE is treated the Twin Cities like Fallujah, and this is literally the home of everyone who lives there.
Beyond the moral atrocity and PR nightmare of what they are doing... they're just actually being strategically incompetent at this point.
... The only way what they are doing maybe strategically makes any sense is if they assume they can literally kill or imprison everyone in the country who would resist them, that they have the resources and manpower to be able to do that.
Even viewing their whole campaign as an occupation of hostile territory... you can't win that in the long run with the kinds of 'tactics' they are using, we learned that the hard way, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also Vietnam, many other examples.
Oh and of course there's the problem that if your campaign is in your own territory... you're destroying your own economic basis for a sustained campaign.