Posted on 04/22/2007 12:01:57 AM PDT by Cannoneer No. 4
I was an auxiliary one cold November night in 1977. My mission was to navigate and ride shotgun in my buddy’s uncle’s dump truck as we drove through the DeSoto National Forest in south Mississippi with 30 G’s (guerrillas) in the back while evading the law enforcement OPFOR (opposing force). This was part of a Special Forces training exercise, similar in many ways to a Robin Sage, but the guys being trained were an Operational Detachment Alpha from 5th SF Group (I may have the Group wrong; it was a long time ago). The Exercise Coordinator had used the DeSoto National Forest for this purpose before, and had already recruited a number of local civilians to participate as auxiliaries, people who assist the guerrillas, sympathizers who don’t pull triggers, but help feed, cloth, move, supply and aid the fighters. Every resistance movement needs auxiliaries. He needed a truck bigger than any of his auxiliaries could get, so he called a buddy of his who happened to be an Assistant Professor of Military Science at the University of Southern Missisippi, who recruited my buddy, who recruited me. We spent the first four hours of our participation in the exercise chatting with the Exercise Coordinator in the darkness of a hayfield in the middle of a pine forest that was the drop zone into which the team would arrive. We were part of the reception committee. I never did see that guy in the daylight, but he made a big impression on an impressionable youth.
For about three years I have been carrying this idea of volunteer civilian infowarriors around in the back of my mind, then they changed INFOWAR to INFORMATION OPERATIONS and I had to educate myself on the component of IO where we were getting creamed by the Bad Guys, Psychological Operations. I wondered why we were doing so poorly, and found out that the Good Guys aren’t allowed to conduct PSYOP that might encourage the domestic target audience to support the war, while the Bad Guys and their auxiliaries in the Main Stream Media have unlimited and unchallenged access to our eyes and ears and hearts and minds. PSYOP scares a lot of people, especially “civil libertarians,” and there are several laws that govern public diplomacy which, because many PSYOP products and their dissemination constitute a form of public diplomacy, also govern military PSYOP. Our military PSYOP people are forbidden by law from producing programs and actions designed to nullify propaganda or mitigate its effects on the American domestic target audience. They pretend that Other Government Agencies counter propaganda outside the AO, knowing full well that strategic counter propaganda is too hot a potato to mess with.
So what to do? At last year’s Milblog Conference Public Affairs took a lot of heat for failure to conduct counter propaganda, but counter propaganda has never been PA’s mission, and they are under the same restraints as PSYOP. These legal restraints are not going to be repealed in time to win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the enemy propaganda
which caused partial regime change in America last November,
which persuades the majority of Americans that it is not treason for the third in line of Presidential succession to travel to enemy countries and negotiate with their dictators,
which prevents mobs of peasants with pitchforks and torches from gathering to burn down the Senate Majority Leader’s castle,
is not going to be nullified or mitigated by military PSYOP or OGA, then we can either remove all sharp objects from our pockets, place our heads between our legs, and kiss our asses goodbye
OR
WE can do it.
Who is “we,” Kemosabe?
If you are still reading this and you’re not a troll and you haven’t accepted defeat, you can be one of the “we.”
ping
I think this would better be posted during the day.
Maybe you could ping it around for me in about six hours.
Bump...
I’d have to say that Free Republic busting Dan Rather for pushing forged National Guard docs would qualify as a quality civilian counter-propaganda exercise.
...But it’s much more problematic for civilians to go busting traitors like Valerie Plame and her paramour Joe Wilson for their fabricated Niger uranium operation...since civies don’t have access to the right data.
Yes, I can ping people to it tomorrow but that’ll be Sunday. Not many are around on Sunday. I’ll ping on Monday also.
“Busting traitors” would be outside the lane of civilian volunteer counter propagandists, but convincing fellow citizens that treason should be punished wouldn’t be.
Your first mission as an IO Auxiliary.
ping
Bump in six hours.
I took the oath in 92, it still applies, let me know what I can do.
Ex military intelligence (see profile). Let me know what I can do, though I’m rusty....
placemarker
I write this from Iraq, near Baghdad, and as a psyop tactical team leader.
We are forbiden from using psyop on Americans.
We are forbiden from mentioning the enemy by name.
There is no means in the government to counter the propaganda of the mainstream media except sites like Free Republic.
Tactically, are ability to accomplish our mission and goals for the supported command is compromised by political correctness, ignorance and a lumbering process for vetting and approving new psyop products. We do what we can.
There isn’t the will within the government to counter the mainstream media.....they are afraid of them. And those that are afraid are the cowards who fail to confront evil and those who passively support it.
L
Guys like you, posting anonymously, could provide valuable assistance to wannabe info-guerrillas. There are counter propaganda techniques that could be applied at the strategic level by people who aren't subject to the Smith-Mundt Act. Refutation is a whole lot like fisking, and doesn't require formal PSYOP training. Silence is not working.
The pajamahadeen are waiting for leadership and instruction. If you are not encumbered by any restrictions on your free speech, consider blogging, or commenting on blogs, where distance learning for potential counter propagandists can take place.
“Propaganda” has long had a negative connotation here. That may even be one of the reasons our MSM is so heavily against any positive news from the war - they fear being accused of disseminating government propaganda, but have no problem with disseminating the enemy’s propaganda.
Propaganda is neither evil or good. It can either be The Big Lie, or the truth. According to Webster, propaganda is any widespread promotion of particular ideas, doctrine, etc.
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