What do the Palestinians and Ross Lyon have in common?
Both have never understood the difference between tactics and strategy. They share a magnificent ability to get the win on the day but never take the ultimate prize. And after one of their campaigns, a term which we’ll come back to, they are always worse off than when they began.
The Palestinian suicide bombing campaign of the 2nd Initifada in the early part of last decade was one of the great tactical successes of modern warfare. It married all the basic precepts of 4th generation warfare into a single coherent act that genuinely shook the Israeli state and people. And gained worldwide attention for the cause of the Palestinians, which is the aim of the modern guerilla outfit – make things so horrible the “world” intervenes and keeps your oppressor off your back for you.
But sending people – all very much willing to go – to blow themselves up on buses and pizza parlours and wedding receptions was never a viable long term strategy. Not for lack of the basics needed to keep it going – with a birth rate of close to 10 per family the Palestinians were never running short of the “human resources” required.
No, it wasn’t a long term strategy to achieve Palestinian statehood because while it did terrify and shake the Israelis for a year or so, the Israelis are tough, smart and ruthless customers. They studied their opponent’s new tactic and developed a long term strategy to counter it. A key element of which was building a wall around the Palestinian areas which helpfully furthered the Israeli long term strategy of creating “facts on the ground” to make their illegal occupation of Palestinian land a de facto reality, if not de jure.
And where are the Palestinians now? Corraled into modern day Bantustans, utterly reliant on the Israelis for everything from electricity to mobile phone services to food. They lost and they lost because in large part the tactic of suicide bombing civilian gatherings lost international public support so when the Israelis responded to the tactic with their draconian strategy, apart from the usual suspects, there wasn’t any groundswell of international opinion to make the Israelis stop. The leadership of the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas itself, has acknowledged that the suicide bombings were ultimately a failure.
Ross Lyon’s defensive strategies have also been brilliant at winning on the day for years. But they haven’t brought him the ultimate success: a premiership. And there’s those at St Kilda who would argue that he wreaked IDF F-16 on a Gaza apartment building style devastation on their list in the quest for that flag.
St Kilda should be able to recover from Lyon’s all in bet on a premiership, even if they are currently hemorrhaging cash. But that’s only because in the corporate socialist model – dare I say it even fascist in the correct sense of word – of the AFL, they won’t be allowed to go bust.
But in the real world, General Lyon would have led the Saints to a catastrophic defeat like that suffered by the Aztecs or Carthaginians. Freo are a different matter, they can afford a Lyon type all or nothing punt at a flag because they have the resources to rebuild afterwards. Big clubs like Freo are countries like the US – they can attack their goal with the wrong tactic and strategy and fail, yet still survive to fight another day.
Some clubs, and peoples, can’t. Take the Kurds, currently fighting “their Stalingrad” in Kobani. For the Kurds, tactics, strategy and the idea of a campaign are inseparable. The Kurds simply can’t lose in Kobani or they face genocide. Their tactics are basic – fight to the death and take help from wherever it comes, be it Iran or America. The strategy is the same – survival. And for the Kurds, there’s no end of season break. They are playing for finals spot every day.
The American campaign in Iraq involved a shift of strategy and repeated changes of tactics until a suitable exit could be arranged. In footy terms, they didn’t win the flag but they did manage to gain enough experience to put them in good stead for their next season – the fight against ISIS.
But the Kurds are like a Western Bulldogs or North. There is no withdrawing from the campaign to rebuild, like a Great Power can. A mistake in tactics, like Dean Laidley’s defensive and ugly football which alienated many supporters and affected the club’s bottom line, can be catastrophic. Similarly, a strategic blunder – as the Dogs risk with the great Tom Boyd gamble – can have effects that a bigger club could shrug off.
In today’s football environment, such clubs have to get the tactics and strategy right at all times just to survive, let alone win. Bigger clubs have the luxury of preparing their challenges at their leisure.
And this is why the AFL’s equalisation strategy – the air strikes that have saved the Kurds/Kangas/Dogs so far – is vital if we want a genuine competition, rather than a return to a world where a small number of Great Powers colonise the weaker and divide the world and its premierships between themselves.
