Mao Zedong's Guerilla Warfare, So What?

on March 16,2010

Afghanistan in 16 characters,a news article, states:

By May 1928 the basic principles of guerrilla warfare ... had already been evolved; that is, the 16-character formula: The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue." Mao Tse-tung, 1936

I've been studying Mao Zedong for years for fun. I didn't think much of this formula at first. Only now, after reading this article a few days ago, I suspect that many people may be still awed by this stuff.

There's no reason for such an over-respectfulness. We can find a way out of this mantra rather easily. Let's reformat the mantra to see its constituent parts more clearly.

The enemy advances ----- we retreat;
the enemy camps ----- we harass;
the enemy tires ----- we attack;
the enemy retreats ----- we pursue

This shows the yin/yang or what he fondly calls Dialetics clearly.
There are 4 ways out of this rhyme:
(1) Negate the Left Hand Side
(2) Negate the Right Hand Side
(3) Affirm the Left Hand Side
(4) Affirm the Right Hand Side

I'll demonstrate my approach only for the first line of the stanza, as,
(1) Negate the Left Hand Side. => I won't advance, I'll do something else.
(2) Negate the Right Hand Side. => I won't allow them to retreat.

(3) Affirm the Left Hand Side. => I advance but in a way beneficial to my side.
(4) Affirm the Right Hand Side. => I do allow them to retreat but in a way harmful to them.

As far as I know, I am the first to solve this riddle. Perhaps Gordian knots can never survive playful strikes.

If you are over-awed or puzzled by some formulas, send them to us. We have a few bits of our brains to spare in solving some stuff for you. We will solve it if it is fun.

Whatever the search engine thinks ("it's a little-known blog," "the post is too short," "there are no keywords," etc ), this is a remarkable post. If the engine doesn't pick this up, it just shows their algorithms' quality. More of this to come later.