Comments on: Pentagon’s Iraq Message: T.B.D.

By: Byron Skinner

Byron Skinner — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 19:24:58 +0000

Good Morning Folks,
I agree with the appearent agreement here that the Newsweek article is on the money. The big question is how did this happen?
The U.S. has invested $billions in the area of cybercentric warfare, it was the cause de. celeb of the 80’s and 90’s how did we let the Terrorist trump us?
Maybe it the fact that we are a Demotratic Society and have a revolution to “propganda”, was it not a year ago that someone uncovered that the DoD was paying to plant articles favorable to the U.S. in Iraq in Iraqi newspapers and of course the sh** hit the fan.
If we are going to compete in this are we have to go back to the lessons that Joseph Goebbels taught the world in the 1930’s and make your case early, often and loud.
Until the U.S. learns that it’s the message and the technology we will be on the losing side in this game.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner

By: Robot Economist

Robot Economist — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 02:06:14 +0000

As an U.S. Army employee and blogger, I think our PAOs would probably do a better of job of getting the ‘message’ out under three conditions:
1) If they didn’t have to scrutinize every word of information slated for public release.
2) If they didn’t clamp down on milbloggers, regardless of their feelings about the mission in Iraq.
3) If they had a more compelling message other than ‘U.S. forces, democracy, Iraqi government = good. Terrorists, insurgents, militias = bad.‘
Americans will trust a more transparent Army, even if doesn’t always have something positive to say. Iraqis will listen to the U.S. government if it speaks to their day-to-day needs and actually helps the Iraqi government deliver.
I will get off my soapbox now.

By: Haninah

Haninah — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 15:58:05 +0000

I think Nicholas makes a good point. Anyone who's been reading this site regularly probably agrees about the problems we've been having with getting our message across to the Iraqi people - with the "how" of the hearts-and-minds campaign - but I'd like to know whether the military has a much better idea of what the content of the message should be - the "what" of hearts-and-minds. As Nicholas says, the content question is easy for the bad guys (it always is): their two messages are 1) "the Americans and the [insert rival Iraqi group here] evil" and 2) "we are righteosuly slaughering them." For the good guys, the job is harder. Clearly, you want to get across the message that what we're doing is good and what the other guys are doing is bad, but the obvious ways of doing that, like discussing reconstruction, don't seem to be going very far. We can't push the message that the bad guys are evil by showing the bad stuff they do, as Nicholas points out, because that will just inflame one side and do the other side's propaganda work for it. More generally: we all know what propaganda is shockingly effective at getting people angry and violent, but what type of propaganda gets them calm and willing to sit down and talk? Do we even know the answer to that in theory? I'm really curious to hear what people think about this. I hope this doesn't turn into another DefTech flame-war.

By: Nicholas Weaver

Nicholas Weaver — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 15:27:20 +0000

The other problem: the pentagon has a hard hard story to sell, especially in Iraq…
An insurgent’s footage of blowing up a HMMWV is one of liberation. To the local audience, it plays like a woodcut of Washington crossing the Delaware.
Footage of the US’s response, or one of the cliche “bomb-cam” views, plays like watching a teenager beat up a 4-year old kid on “America’s Most One Sided Fights Caught on Tape”, a huge problem.
Worse, footage which shows portions of the insurgency in a bad light (EG, the carnage from the secarian bombings) is liable to up the heat in the civil war, and doesn’t necessarily help the US anyway (for I think the following: “I’ll still shoot the enemy of my enemy in the back” largely holds)

By: Michael Hampton

Michael Hampton — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 05:38:33 +0000

Apparently by accident, I got a Pentagon message about the war in Iraq, complete with images, and published them over the weekend. The firestorm of controversy was much larger than I expected.