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Originally Posted by FlyingCaddy
Sun Tzu may have been a great general, but the fact is, he was a civil war general. Any genreal who gains a reputation for killing his fellow countrymen deserves less credit. If you want to note a great Chinese general in Classical times, I suggest Wu Di, the man beat the Huns, THE HUNS!!!
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"Wu Di" is not a person's name. In Chinese, "Wu" means military, "Di" means king. Wu Di's real name is "Liu che". "Liu" was the family name, and "che" is the given name. Because "Liu che" was famous of his militry achievements as a king, so the succeeding king gave he the name "Wu Di". In China, it's not appropriate for the descendants to call their ancestors by real name. "Liu che" was the fifith king of Han dynasty. He never fought in the warfares. It was his generals beat the Huns. The most famous two were "Wei qing" and "Huo qu bing".
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Going to the whole Hitite episode The Hitites were aware of the ideas at the same time and perhaps earlier than Sun Tzu wrote. For instance in CHapter 1, Sun Tzu writes:
18.All warfare is based on deception.
19. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable;
when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we
are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away;
when far away, we must make him believe we are near.
Well unless the Hitites had a crystal ball, they knew what was up. I think what makes Sun Tzu great was he was the only one smart enough to write down the obvious, I mean he didnt just wake up one morning and say I can fight. He speak about the generalities of maintaining an army not of tactics.
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"The Art of War" we see today is not written by Sun Tzu himself. It was written by another general "Cao Cao" in the "Three Kingdom" period. Because after hundreds of years, there were many versions of "The Art of war" in the Three Kingdom period. So Cao Cao summarized all versions of "The Art of war" and wrote the book we see today.
In China, Sun Tzu is not famous as a great general, but famous of his book.