"The enemy [always/also] has a vote."

[Jonathan Lighter]

Mot on YBQ or DMP, this  military maxim observes that the enemy's decisions
and actions can (and will) throw various-sized monkey-wrenches into the
best-laid strategic and tactical plans

Clausewitz , among other, also realized this, but he wasn't quite as adept
with a quip.

The earliest GB snippet is very early, but ref. to the "War Production
Board" places it in the right time frame:

1943 _Army Ordnance_ XXIV 511: The enemy has a vote on where, when, and how
we fight.

After that, nothing till this:

2002 [U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations] _Afghanistan: Building
Stability, Avoiding Chaos_ (Washington, D.C.: USGPO) 50 [GB: not verified]: In
Afghanistan's case this is a long run. The enemy has a vote on when victory
is decisive. We are not fighting a nation state; in this case, the enemy is
a terrorist organization — who decides on surrender? Who decides they are
defeated?

Since then, 429,000 raw Google hits.

JL

-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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