This article comes from this link.
by Michael A. Aquino Lt. Colonel, Military Intelligence, USAR-Ret November 2003
In the later 1970s, Psychological Operations (PSYOP) doctrine in the U.S. Army had yet to emerge from the disappointment and frustration of the Vietnam War.
Thus it was that in 1980 Colonel Paul Vallely [1], Commander of the 7th PSYOP Group, asked me, as his Headquarters PSYOP Research & Analysis (FA) Team Leader, to draft a paper that would encourage some futurethought within the PSYOP community.
He did not want a Vietnam postmortem, but rather some fresh and innovative ideas concerning PSYOP's evolution and application.
[1] 1 Later Major General, USAR.
I prepared an initial draft, which Colonel Vallely reviewed and annotated, which resulted in revised drafts and critiques until he was satisfied, and the result of that was this paper:
From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory. [2]
*[2] The term "MindWar" was coined by another PSYOP officer, Colonel Richard Sutter, and myself in 1977.
After seeing the recent film Star Wars, we played with a modification of its name as a futuristic replacement for the somewhat bland Army designation "Psychological Operations".
An avowedly science-fictional treatment of MindWar, complete with a caricature of Sutter at its helm, appears in my Star Wars story The Dark Side, available at www.xeper.org/maquino *
Colonel Vallely sent copies of it to various governmental offices, agencies, commands, and publications involved or interested in PSYOP.
He intended it not as an article for publication, but simply as a "talking paper" to stimulate dialogue.
In this it was quite successful, judging by the extensive and lively letters he received concerning it over the next several months.
That should have been the end of MindWar: a minor "staff study" which had done its modest job.
With the arising of the Internet in the 1980s, however, MindWar received an entirely unexpected - and somewhat comic - resurrection.
Allusions to it gradually proliferated, with its "sinister" title quickly winning it the most lurid, conspiracy-theory reputation.
The rumor mill soon had it transformed into an Orwellian blueprint for Manchurian Candidate mind control and world domination.
My own image as an occult personality added fuel to the wildfire: MindWar was now touted by the lunatic fringe as conclusive proof that the Pentagon was awash in Black Magic and Devil-worship.
Now that this absurdly comic opera has at least somewhat subsided, I thought that it might be interesting to make a complete and accurate copy of the paper available, together with an Introduction and some historical-hindsight annotations to place it in reasonable context.
After all it did - and perhaps still does - have something worthwhile to say.
Within the U.S. military, PSYOP has habitually been relegated to a back-seat as a "force multiplier".
The principal strategic decisions are made in consideration of traditional political and military interests and goals.
Only then is PSYOP invited to the table, to help achieve already-agreed-upon missions more efficiently.
MindWar reverses this sequence.
Psychological means for achieving victory essentially through convincing the enemy that he really wants to bring his national policies into harmony with ours - are fashioned in support of basic political goals.
The use of "ordinary" military force (bombs, bullets, etc.) is regarded as a "last resort" in circumstances wherein MindWar by itself fails.
The advantage of Mind War is that it conducts wars in nonlethal, noninjurious, and nondestructive ways.
Essentially you overwhelm your enemy with argument.
You seize control of all of the means by which his government and populace process information to make up their minds, and you adjust it so that those minds are made up as you desire.
Everyone is happy, no one gets hurt or killed, and nothing is destroyed.
Ordinary warfare, on the other hand, is characterized by its lack of reason.
The antagonists just maim or kill each other's people, and steal or destroy each other's land, until one side is hurt so badly that it gives up [or both sides are hurt so badly that they agree to stop short of victory].
After such a war there is lasting misery, hate, and suffering.
The only loser in MindWar are the war profiteers: companies and corporations which grow fat on orders for helicopters, tanks, guns, munitions, etc.
Consequently what President Dwight Eisenhower referred to as the "military/industrial complex" can be counted upon to resist implementation of MindWar as the governing strategic conflict doctrine.
That's the MindWar prospectus in its most simplified form.
While in the 1980s I had no reason to think that this paper had had any official effect upon U.S. PSYOP doctrine within or beyond the Army, it was with some fascination that I saw specific of its prescriptions applied during the first Gulf War, and recently even more obviously during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In both instances extreme PSYOP was directed both against the object of the attack and upon U.S. domestic public perception and opinion, in 2003 to the extent of "embedding" journalists with military units to inevitably channel their perspectives and perceptions.
The impact of even these minor techniques of MindWar was remarkable.
A psychological climate of inexorable U.S. victory was created and sustained in both the United States and Iraq, which accelerated that victory on the ground.
Somewhat less positively, the failure of MindWar in this instance to be guided by only the most rigorous principles of truth and ethics has just as inexorably led to a substantial post- victory evaporation of that euphoric climate.
Therein lies the Achilles' heel of MindWar.
Invoking as it does the most intense emotions and commitments of its audiences, it must deliver the goods as they are judged by the target audiences.
If the ethical values of those audiences are not respected - if MindWar is used only in the service of ulterior motives and objectives - the resulting "disintoxication"can be socially shattering.
In 1987 I wrote a more extensive research paper for the National Defense University concerning the ethics of PSYOP.
Particularly if MindWar is actually to be employed as a feature of U.S. foreign policy, I cannot stress too strongly the need for its subordination to the strictest and most enlightened principles of humanity as discussed in that paper.
Psychological Operations: The Ethical Dimension is also available for download at www.xeper.org/maquino
Now let's take a look at the 1980 MindWar paper itself.
In addition to its original footnotes (which generally identify quote-sources), I have added a few new ones to highlight/critique some of its themes.
These new footnotes are identified by "[MA2003]" at their beginning.
source
Ask in the comments if you don't know who is who.
This series of posts will insure that these free thinkers' works live on in living memory.
If only a few.
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