Strategic concepts and the theories they encourage and enable are discretionary intellectual constructions. Strategic concepts are not dictated to us; rather, we choose them and decide how they can serve as building blocks for the edifice of theory we prefer. When strategic theory is confusing, misleading, and not fit for its practical purposes of education and even advice, then it is akin to bad medicine that we take in the mistaken belief that it will do us good. Unfortunately, it is necessary to alert Americans to the inadvertent self-harm they are causing themselves by the poor ways in which they choose to conceptualize strategic behavior.