MindWar is the art of seeing a conflict objectively and of manipulating all actors within it to a desired long-range symbiosis. Your successful handling of the situation would not have been judged simply by your blowing the enemy fleet to bits. According to MindWar, you should have taken steps to halt the incident in place and learn enough about the aliens to form an estimate of their civilization's probable future relationship with the Empire. Only then would you have been in a position to decide upon truce, a simple repulsion engagement, or - if necessary - thorough extermination (Aquino - The Dark Side, 157).
Mind War - The term is harsh and fear-inspiring, and so it should be: It is a term of attack and victory - not one of rationalization and coaxing and conciliation. The enemy may be offended by it; that is quite all right as long as he is defeated by it.
MINDWAR IS THE DELIBERATE AGGRESSIVE CONVINCING OF ALL PARTICIPANTS IN A WAR THAT WE WILL WIN THAT WAR.
It is deliberate in that it is a planned, systematic, and comprehensive effort involving all levels of activity from the strategic to the tactical. It is aggressive because opinions and attitudes must be actively changed from those antagonistic to us to those supportive of us if we are to achieve victory. We will not win if we content ourselves with countering opinions and attitudes instilled by enemy governments. We must reach the people before they resolve to support their armies before our combat troops ever see them on the battlefields.
Psychological warfare is the coordination and use of all means, including moral and physical, by which the end is attained - other than those of recognized military operations, but including the psychological exploitation of the result of those recognized military actions - which tend to destroy the will of the enemy to achieve victory and to damage his political or economic capacity to do so; which tend to deprive the enemy of the support, assistance, or sympathy of his allies and to acquire, maintain, or to increase the support, assistance, and sympathy of neutrals.
MINDWAR is the strategy to which tactical warfare must conform if it is to achieve maximum effectiveness. The MINDWAR scenario must be preeminent in the mind of the commander and must be the principal factor in his every field decision. Otherwise he sacrifices measures which actually contribute to winning the war to measures of immediate, tangible satisfaction(6).
Under existing United States law, PSYOP units may not target American citizens. That prohibition is based upon the presumption that "propaganda" is necessarily a lie or at least a misleading half-truth, and that the government has no right to lie to the people. The propaganda Ministry of Goebbels must not be a part of the American way of life.
...and so it must be axiomatic of MINDWAR that it always speaks the truth. Its power lies in its ability to focus recipients' attention on the truth of the future as well as that of the present. MINDWAR thus involves the stated promise of the truth that the United States has resolved to make real if it is not already so(7).
Unlike PSYOP, MINDWAR has nothing to do with deception or even with "selected" - and therefore misleading - truth. Rather, it states a whole truth that, if it does not now exist, will be forced into existence by the will of the United States. The examples of Kennedy's ultimatum to Khruschev during the Cuban Missile Crisis and Hitler's stance at Munich might be cited.
"The terror of the Roman name will be such that the world shall know that, once a Roman army has laid siege to a city, nothing will move it - not the rigors of winter nor the weariness of months and years - that it knows no end but victory and is ready, if a swift and sudden stroke will not serve, to preserve until that victory is achieved." - Livy
...The MINDWAR operative must know that he speaks the truth, and he must be personally committed to it. What he says is only a part of MINDWAR; the rest - and the test of its effectiveness - lies in the conviction he projects to his audience, in the rapport he establishes with it.
We have covered the statement of inevitable truth and the conviction behind that statement; these are qualities of the MINDWAR operative himself. The recipient of the statement will judge such messages not only by his conscious understanding of them, but also by the mental conditions under which he receives them(8).
At the root of any decision to institute MINDWAR in the US defense establishment is a very simple question: Do we wish to win the next war in which we choose to become involved, and do we wish to do so with minimum loss of human life, at minimum expense, and in the least amount of time? If the answer is yes, then MINDWAR is a necessity. If we wish to trade that kind of victory for more American lives, economic disaster, and negotiated stalemates, then MINDWAR is inappropriate, and if used superficially will actually contribute to our defeat.
In MINDWAR there is no substitute for Victory(10).
-Michael Aquino, excerpted from "From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory" (1980)
http://www.xeper.org/maquino
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