Again, that's all a comment on the war itself. That doesn't say anything about whether said psyops tactic is useful or not. He assumes it is a last gasp measure, when we have no idea if it is or not.
The tactics don't seem very muddled... no-fly zone air campaign, and bombing certain structures. The strategy behind it certainly can be.
Agreed. But that doesn't really say anything about tactics.
I'm being a bit asinine here, but tactics, strategies and goals are all three different things. People tend to use the three interchangeably.
Perhaps you'd like to define them all for us so we can start to have a properly structured, precisely calibrated discussion.
Then maybe you clould explain to us how tactics can be effective at all without clear strategies and militarily achievable goals.
Goal - Long term, overall vision. ie. (I want my company to achieve 20% more profitability by 2020.)
Strategy - The key ways you intend to realize that goal (ie. draw in more female clientel, appeal to younger demographics, etc etc)
Tactics - How you intend specifically to carry out those strategies (ie. purchase more books catering to women, update the store's layout to look more modern, etc etc)
That's the basic understanding I have of the three. usually, if it involves a clear, concrete action, it's a tactic. Sending out messages for leaders to quit would be a tactic, in order to accomplish a longer-term strategy (perhaps, in this case, to lessen morale among the Libyan military) to achieve an overall goal (help the rebels, we'll say.)
Ultimately, without a good strategy or goal, even the best tactics will have limited impact.
But if you're upset with the goal, or strategy, why make a comment on a particular tactic? If he doesn't like the psyops tactic deployed, by all means comment on it. But the journalist does so from a position of ignorance; he assumes/implies that asking their leaders to quit is the best idea the military has. He says nothing to the historical efficacy of psyops, and whether or not he disapproves of the tactics as a whole, or of the tactic in this particular situation.
I'm all ears.
The whole thing seems like a bad idea to me.
U.S. President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.
Obama signed the order, known as a presidential "finding," within the last two or three weeks, according to four U.S. government sources familiar with the matter.
Such findings are a principal form of presidential directive used to authorize secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA and the White House declined immediate comment.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Pre...415/story.html
I'm certainly not a walking dictionary on the effectiveness of psyops, but here are some examples from previous wars/confrontations/etc.
Here's a good article from Time about Psyops, which mentions the leaflet tactic.
From the link:
Military psyops has always been as much art as science. American armies have used psychological operations since the Revolutionary War. Psyops leaflets were passed out to British soldiers at the battle of Bunker Hill promising free land if they defected. Over the years, it gained a reputation as a black art, the stuff of Tokyo Rose and Nazi propaganda. But today's psywarriors are like Madison Avenue advertising executives — except they wear combat fatigues and jump out of planes.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...#ixzz1I7VsVm8T
So, the journalist suggesting that this is some sort of "last-ditch effort" doesn't quite ring true to my ears.
Whether THIS particular tactic (suggesting military leaders give up) is effective, I don't know. From reading the article, I'm assuming the journalist doesn't either.
Here's an example of TTP (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures).
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-302.pdf
Check Chapter 7 for a listing of different tactics. Of them, "surrender appeals" is explicitly listed under section 7-20.
Not too hard to find, if the journalist spend a modi of time/effort researching it.Surrender Appeals
7-20. Surrender appeals are most effective against hostile forces that are degraded or surrounded or that have been exposed to other conditions that affect their will to fight. By inducing surrenders, the TPT can assist the supported commander by reducing the number of hostile forces he may have to face. Coordination must be conducted with the supported unit before executing a surrender appeal. The supported unit must be prepared to handle all hostile personnel who surrender. The members of the supported unit must also ensure that they adhere to any statements made to the TA.
So then, based on these criteria, how effective were our appeals to Qaddafi's generals to surrender likely to be? Isn't it just possible that Wired's spit take was essentially correct?Surrender appeals are most effective against hostile forces that are degraded or surrounded or that have been exposed to other conditions that affect their will to fight. By inducing surrenders, the TPT can assist the supported commander by reducing the number of hostile forces he may have to face. Coordination must be conducted with the supported unit before executing a surrender appeal. The supported unit must be prepared to handle all hostile personnel who surrender. The members of the supported unit must also ensure that they adhere to any statements made to the TA.
The journalist didn't seem to be talking about 'effectiveness' in this one instance, though. He seemed to imply that, by using surrender appeals, that US forces were out of other good ideas. The reality is most likely that the surrender appeals are not some last-gasp idea, but one tactic working in concert with others to demoralize the enemy.
As far as how good is it working, well that depends on how you define it. If you want to know how many enemy commanders actually surrendered, probably poorly. (Of course, the article doesn't ask nor answer that question.) But has it demoralized the combatants? Hard to say right now.
And even if it HASN'T worked, that doesn't mean it's useless to try. It's relatively cost-effective, and the negative consequences of it not working are limited. (The only real drawback is that it motivates the enemy to fight back harder.)
Again, if you re-read that article, surrender appeals and the like have worked before in history, and for quite awhile. I'm not sure about surrender appeals to higher echelon types, but it works well against those in the lower rungs of the military.
That's not really an answer to my question, but I appreciate the reply nonetheless.
Short answer: If you're just looking at "how many generals surrendered" as your metric, then probably not very effective. (I doubt the govt will release numbers, especially so early into the conflict.)
That said, I still don't think the article was well-written. The authors implication was that such psyops showed desperation on our part, which is misleading.
It's a blog post. Calling it an article is a bit grandiose, and your charge that it is misleading rests on your own invidous gloss. What you call an imputation of desperation could just as easily be called one of cluelessness or stupidity.
Except its not. Its a low cost tactic used by the military. You know I hate this action just as much as anyone out there, but that doesn't mean LNGR is wrong in his critique of the post.
Doesn't mean he's right either. If the strategy sucks the tactics are out to lunch too.
The conditions (as outlined by LnGrrR upstream) likely to make the tactic effective arguably do not exist yet: Qaddafi's troops are not surrounded, not demoralized and are not significantly degraded relative to the insurrectionary forces they face. Moreover, those forces are weak, disorganized and are not a credible authority to which Qaddafi's generals could surrender.
That said, the Wired bit wasn't great analysis by any stretch, but deapite its flippancy it's plausibly correct. Before we have degraded or demoralized Qaddafi's troops, showering them with leaflets urging them to surrender amounts to a Hail Mary at best and at worst, only steels the resolve of the enemy.
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=214560"The so-called humanitarian raids have killed dozens of civilian victims in some neighborhoods of Tripoli," said Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, the Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli.
That's a fine analysis, and if the author had said that, I wouldn't be complaining. Arguing that the tactic is being used ineffectively in this instance (ie, they aren't demoralized so it isn't working) is a decent argument. Saying "Our best solution is to just ask them to surrender? How dumb are we?" is not a good argument.
Edit: Just noticed, but the author gives some inkling that troops are already demoralized in the article.
Say this for the war, which NATO will soon run in its entirety: it appears to have given the rebels some oomph. For the first time since Gadhafi went back on the warpath in mid-March, they’ve retaken the eastern city of Ajdabiya, which loyalists attacked for over a week, and now claim to control Sirte, Gadhafi’s hometown, further west. Al Jazeera reports that Gadhafi’s forces, weakened by heavy coalition airstrikes, aren’t fighting: a “column of military vehicles including truck-mounted anti-aircraft guns” was spotted falling back “in the direction of Tripoli.”
Last edited by LnGrrrR; 03-31-2011 at 11:52 AM.
The problem is that it seemed to me the author implied the tactic itself was a weak one, not just in this instance, but as a tactic by itself. (Ie. Said tactic is useless/desperate in any situation.)
There are various tactics that ones uses to compete any strategy. Why focus on a relatively low-cost one? Why not critique the way that they are running the no-fly zone, for instance? I'd say that has much more bearing on the outcome of the situation.
Interesting that you didn't bold THIS part of the article...
Also on Thursday, British Foriegn Secretary William Hague said the defection of Libya's former Foreign Secretary Moussa Koussa to Britain would encourage others close to Muammar Gaddafi to abandon the Libyan leader.
War sucks
Yeah I really went out on a limb on that one
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