The calculus of war is not a simple equation easily solved but a highly complex, fluid situation with events and actions changing by the hour and/or minute, responded to by military advisors, generals, admirals, their subordinates, their armies, air forces, navies, soldiers, marines, various levels of weaponry and then countered by opposing forces - with all their military resources - based on their intelligence gathering systems and responses to it.
Thrown into the mix are the unpredictable, unknown factors which produce the fluidity of war with "surprise" being the most important element.
Who will do what to whom and exactly when and where they will do it are among the unknowns which makes war like a chess game played in the dark and circled by opaque curtains with attackers on the outside ready to pounce with guns, knives, axes or other lethal weapons at any given moment.
When Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, attacked and killed Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 no one could have imagined that this singular incident would force most countries of the world to take sides and then explode into a worldwide conflict - the First World War.
On August 30th, 1939, the people of Poland were unaware that Germany planned a provoked incident which would allow them to begin their attack on Poland and Western Europe and begin Hitler's revenge on the Western Allies who had humiliated Germany in their surrender at Compiegne, France at the end of WW1.
When the Germans ended their Blitzkrieg air assault against Britain during the Second World War, little did the people of London imagine that one day in the near future they would be subjected to attacks by previously unheard-of V-1, cruise-type missiles and later the V-2 intercontinental-type missiles.
When Hitler broke his treaty with Russia and began his fateful Operation Barbarossa (June 22, 1941), no one was more surprised than Stalin who immediately shut himself up in a room for a week in disbelief and failed to respond to the crisis.
The people of Honolulu and Pearl Harbor had no idea of what was happening until it was too late - no one expected the Japanese to strike without warning. Likewise, the unsuspecting people of Darwin, Australia received the same treatment two months later.
When the Americans dropped the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the population of this 300,000-plus city never expected it and could never have imagined such human horrors only the day before.
When North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel on June 25th, 1950 and attacked Seoul no one imagined that either. This simply began a see-saw series of battles that went back and forth from Pusan in the south to the Yalu River in the north for three years and ended with almost the identical lines they began with in 1950.
During the Vietnam War, the Americans were convinced that the Viet Cong would never attack during the Tet New Year, but that's exactly what happened much to their surprise. The Tet Offensive (1968) was the turning point in that war; from then on, things went steadily downhill until the Fall of Saigon (April 30th, 1975) when Americans cut their losses and bailed out of S.E. Asia. The world watched as they beat a hasty retreat from rooftops near their embassy.
On September 10, 2001 no one imagined that the very next day the world would change dramatically. Today's tense Middle East events are again similar to that day.
Hopefully, the "Friends of Syria" have carefully considered the consequences before inadvertently setting off just such an unstoppable, fissionable calculus.
