Back to the basics

" . . . if you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles . . . "

Sun Tzu said that thousands of years ago and it is still true.

One of the reasons we are having such trouble in our current wars is our (as a nation) lack of knowledge of our enemies. We describe them with parsed ideas: "evil-doers," "terrorists," "radicals." But we stop there and do not examine the root causes that drive these people to take action against us.
Simply put, they are foreign to us. We must become familiar with our enemies. The theory of keeping your friends close but your enemies closer can be linked (however loosely) to this idea - where to keep an enemy close is to study that enemy and get to know that enemy's motivation. Know that enemy's values. Do not, under any circumstances, assume that this enemy shares our values. To speak scientifically, our enemy is applying a different calculus to its battle plan. It has different values equated within its cost-benefit analysis of war. Until we can understand these values we cannot effectively strike this enemy, and we will be shocked after each enemy strike.