Matt Armstrong, MountainRunner, has posted a great piece on the relationship between the US military Public Affairs and Information Operations communities..
In "Planning to Influence: A Commander's Guide to the PA/IO Relationship", United States Marine Corps Major Matt Morgan analyzes restraints on effective information activities within the Marines, but it speaks to the whole of Defense communications. Adapted from the executive summary of his masters thesis at Marine Corps U., it is a must-read for anyone interested in the subject. Matt couldn't get it published when he wrote it two years ago so today it is posted here with his permission...
Comments
I just came across this and find it very interesting as an Army public affairs officer. I have been looking at primarily Army and joint doctrine, and was unable to find anything outlining the duties and responsibilities of an IO officer in peacetime at a CONUS location when not planning for an exercise or contingencies. There is a lot of contradictory information in the governing regulations and there are also a lot of missing pieces. Any insights?
Maybe the "kids" at Abu Graib did it, maybe they didn't. Most likely they were order to. A Brigadier General was running the show. They had an BDE CDR, BDE CSM, BN CDR, BN CSM, Co CDR,1SG, PL and PSG... Not to mention other staff officers and NCO's etc. The only reason they are in jail is political. They served as the cannon fodder for the leadership. You cannot tell me that the leadership did not know. Most likely they ordered it or at least a version of it. But hey, they are just junior NCO's and privates, who cares.
Of the pictures I saw, I saw nothing that leads me to believe that much more was done than we do in our prisons here in the US. If all these Junior NCO's and Soldiers deserve to be in jail, then there leadership and NCO support channel should be sitting next to them.
Matthew, thanks for the reasoned response. I understood your intent, thus my comment that it was a good post, <i><b>but</b></i>...
It sort of echoed your own point that the best IO program can be undone by a misstep.
Agree that 'following orders' is not a defense for the events at Abu Gharaib. I would submit however that Sanchez' pressure on the Intel folks to "get more intel" was shortsighted, counterproductive and just dumb on his part; I further suggest that the entire chain of command involved was derelict and effectively got away with it -- and I'm particularly incensed that the MP Battalion Commander, CSM, Company commander and 1SG were allowed to skate. Those kids, from Fredericks down were doing stupid stuff because nobody checked on 'em.
I do agree with your earlier point that poor training was a significant contributor and with your current point that the incident created problems that compound the difficulties of your current job among a great many other bad and lasting effects.
The rest of comment, re: effective communication, strategic communication and the amalgamation of PA and IO I had and have no quibbles with -- though I do believe Galula is vastly overstated and over rated -- and I have had a first edition of his book for almost 45 years.
Ken- My intention was not to be glib. My interest here is academic, not patronizing. I probably erred in posting that on my way out the door last night and did not review it for the tone you read.
My larger point, however, is that actions are more important that words--and this is the critical failure of our nation's strategic communication efforts. That is, attempts o align the way we explain, justify, frame or mitigate our actions relative to the actions themselves in the face of public scrutiny is inconsistent. We are perceived as saying one thing as standing for another.
As for Abu Ghraib, I am currently posted with Detainee Operations in Iraq, and I can tell you that the actions of a few individuals lacking in character (regardless of the non-defense that they were 'following orders') opened a strategic chasm we are still working to bridge. Again, our actions v. our words; and my reference to Galulas point that as the counterinsurgent we are tied to our past.
It is also my belief that if you think effective communication is about "running a successful PR campaign" you are constraining your thought. Too many discuss strategic communication planning as a replacement term for "PR campaign." But that language is inconsistent with the larger idea of campaigning as it relates to the elements of national power. Strategic communication must be derived from the larger strategic vision--whereas an information campaign involves an operational action designed to achieve one or more objectives identified in the strategic plan.
By the way, Galula's experience is based upon far more than his experience in Algeria. Recall that he also had experience with Mao's propaganda machine--which was really quite masterful given his brutality (ala AQ). So I will continue to point to Galula's observations of the insurgent's use of propaganda as useful in the context of counterinsurgency.
Also, I would like to make clear that I am not defending our larger strategic communication efforts, especially as they relate to Iraq. The CG understands its importance, but I dont think the people he has doing it are doing it well. As arifJAA alludes to in his post, we are not doing a very good job of integrating the military, diplomatic and economic interests in our information planning. There are bright spots--but they are mostly three-point attempts by a solid shooting guard and we are lucky when his shots go down. We have no game plan.
Finally for Schmedlap: You are proof that at the tactical level the warfighters have the lead. You and the PA chief were doing EXACTLY what I advocate at all levels of war. The principal reason I wrote this paper was to demonstrate to commanders that the policy which effectively segregated PA and IO activities was unjustified and created unnecessary risk in a warfighting domain that has become critical to winning on the modern battlefield.
SF/M
Matt,
I did a mercifully short stint as an IO planner on a battalion staff. I had a PA NCO who worked about 10 feet away me. Our BN averaged about one raid per night. If a raid got something noteworthy, the PA NCO typed up a press release immediately with every bit of unclassified information that we could muster. I screened every release to ensure it complied with our OPSEC concerns (I maintained a substantially longer EEFI list than what was dictated by higher). While he did the press release, I was on the phone with the PSYOP folks, requesting influencing messages delivered via several means that they had available (obviously much of this was coordinated prior to operations, in anticipation).
There was much more to it, but for the sake of brevity and OPSEC I will leave it at that. Does this sound like an adequate level of coordination, or are you suggesting more? We used PA to inform and PSYOP to influence (for the most part). I don't really know what further coordination we could have made, but I'm certainly open to suggestions and criticisms since I was not and am not an IO guy.
Let me first say I appreciate the comments and hope the dialogue on this subject continues.
To address Schmedlaps note: The requirement for PA to maintain institutional credibility is often (mistakenly) held out as a justification for preventing PA/PSYOP coordination. My argument is that PA does not suffer a loss in credibility by simple association with PSYOP. In actual operations, quite the opposite is true. PA must coordinate with IO planners and POTF operations in order to ensure consistency. When we lose that consistency, then we risk our credibility by creating operational seams between the functions. Do not read this argument backward. I am not saying that PA gains credibility by association; I am arguing that it preserves credibility through coordination.
arifJAA: I do not believe you can compare the insurgent and the counterinsurgent when it comes to information operations. I agree with Galula in that the insurgent has no responsibility and can "lie, cheat, exaggerate... he is judged by what he promises, not by what he does." The counterinsurgent, on the other hand, "is tied to his responsibility and his past, and for him, facts speak louder than words. He is judged on what he does, not on what he says."
AQ media cells are well organized and their message development is effectively quite centralized--even if product development and dissemination is decentralized. Further, their foot soldiers (such as Takfiri enforcers in Iraq) communicate thru their actions. They do not need message consistency, and they do not need to preserve their credibility. As you note, they have none.
While I do agree we need to turn over more responsibility for communication to our troops, I do not think it ends with letting them all have blogs. Rather, it requires we train them in such a way as to ensure they communicate effectively thru their actions. Abu Graib is just one example; I bet those kids had some killer web pages--but what they say is far less important in terms of strategic communication than what they did.
SF/M
Regarding the credibility of PA and whether it is tainted by its association with IO, specifically PSYOP, I don't quite understand the author's argument. If I am reading it correctly, the structure of his argument is: PSYOP is credible, PA works with PSYOP, therefore PA retains its credibility when it works with PSYOP.
Certainly credibility is useful for PSYOP, but the fact that PSYOP needs credibility does not mean that PSYOP is successful in retaining it or that anything that operates in conjunction with PSYOP must, by extension, be credible. But, again, I don't know if I am comprehending his argument.