Leadership Quote by David Hackworth

Hackworth’s “Fortunately” lands like a field report with a raised eyebrow: an old soldier acknowledging the clock has nearly run out, then insisting it hasn’t. The line is engineered to shame complacency without surrendering to despair. It’s not optimism; it’s operational urgency dressed as hope.

The phrase “comprehensive global strategy” is a rebuke to the way wars are often sold and run: reactive, piecemeal, domestically performative. Hackworth spent his career watching institutions confuse activity for strategy, body counts for progress, headlines for victory. “Comprehensive” implies intelligence, diplomacy, economics, alliances, and legitimacy - the unglamorous infrastructure that actually determines outcomes. “Global” widens the aperture further, rejecting the comforting fantasy that complex threats can be solved inside one border or one theater.

Then there’s the knife twist: “our real enemy.” Hackworth is almost certainly speaking to a post-Vietnam, post-Cold War, and especially post-9/11 audience conditioned to fixate on the enemy we can name, bomb, and televise. The subtext is that we misidentify targets because it’s politically convenient. “Real enemy” can mean ideology, failed governance, corruption, poverty, fanaticism, or the self-inflicted wounds of bad policy and bureaucratic inertia. It can also mean the enemy within the system: careerism, denial, and the refusal to learn.

The intent is to force a strategic adult conversation: if we keep fighting the wrong foe with the wrong tools, time isn’t our ally. The only “fortunate” thing left is the chance to change course before the next catastrophe makes the decision for us.