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SYMBOLIC ACTS AS PSYOP*

BY ROBERT T. HOLT AND ROBERT W. VAN DE VELDE

A simple symbolic act (propaganda of the deed) will often carry a message that will have greater impact in influencing people's thinking and behavior than an elaborately planned propaganda campaign.

Meaning, of course, can be "transferred" through various types of action. Indeed, all foreign policy operations have a symbolic impact over and above their physical impact. But we are not imperialist enough to claim, therefore, that all foreign policy acts belong ultimately in the bag of techniques to be used in psychological operations. There are, however, instances when physical operations are important primarily for the meaning they convey rather than for the change in the material world which they bring about. Some of the Commando raids in France and the Low Countries in 1942 and 1943 were of primary importance not because of the physical damage that was done or because of the information gained about German defenses. But they suggested to the German High Command that an invasion was in the offing and thus tied down troops which could have been effectively used on the eastern or Mediterranean fronts. They also perhaps encouraged the captive populations to resist and harass their German masters. The Doolittle raid on Tokyo in 1942 is another example. The impact on meaning throughout the world was far greater in its implications than was the damage done to Tokyo.

There are also a number of peacetime examples of activities whose symbolic impact is of primary significance. The Moslem festival of Id al Adha is the time when thousands of Moslems journey to Mecca. In 1952 Id al Adha fell on Friday the twenty-ninth of August, but Mecca's gates were to close on the twenty-seventh. Less than a week before the gates closed, there were more than 4,000 pilgrims stranded in Beirut 800 miles from the holy city. All had air tickets but the local airlines simply could not handle a fraction of that number before the deadline. After some amazingly fast and thoughtful work by the American legation in Beirut and by the departments of Defense and State in Washington, the Air Force rushed fourteen C-54's to Lebanon and began to airlift the pilgrims into a city only 40 miles from Mecca. Flying around the clock, they made it possible for all the pilgrims to get into the holy city before the gates closed. The story of the airlift "magic carpet" was told in the Moslem press throughout the world, and the United States received favorable editorial treatment in a press that had been noted for its hostility.'

Although military aircraft were used, one could hardly argue that this was a military operation. It was an operation that indicated to Moslems in

*Extracts from Strategic Psychological Operations and American Foreign Policy, University of Chicago Press, 1960, pp. 31-33. © 1960 by the University of Chicago. Published 1960. Second Impression 1964. Reprinted by permission of the University of Chicago Press, and the courtesy of the author.

Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, and Afghanistan that the United States, a foreign policy giant in the world, would keep an eye out for the “little guy" and was willing to help him if he got in a tight spot. It is difficult to conceive how much propaganda, rumor, and personal contact would have been necessary to get this message across in the absence of the airlift. Its impact was primarily symbolic. On the other hand, although the Berlin airlift had tremendously important symbolic effects throughout the world, one cannot say that its primary purpose was psychological. Once the Allied decision to stay in Berlin was made, the airlift became a necessity for circumventing the Soviet blockade.

In these kinds of physical operations it is extremely difficult to draw a clear line between a psychological operation and a military or economic one. But it is important to recognize that some desired changes in the apparent world can most effectively be provoked by a physical operation and that some of these techniques ought to be at the disposal of those responsible for psychological operation.

NOTES

W.E.D., "Operation 'Magic Carpet'," A Psychological Warfare Casebook, edited by William E. Daugherty and Morris Janowitz (Bethesda, Maryland: Operations Research Office, The Johns Hopkins University, March 1958), pp. 337–342.

THE OLDER VIETNAMESE AS A COMMUNICANT*

BY THE JUSPAO PLANNING OFFICE

A person with prestige among members of an audience, or one who speaks with recognized authority, has an advantage in persuasion. Age is one relevant factor to prestige in communication, older persons generally tend to be more influential than younger persons advice, with some exceptions, is often sought from older persons.

Age commands great respect in Vietnam. The aged are honored members of the family, the village, and society in general. Traditionally they are entitled to the best food, the best clothing, the best treatment, and deserve honor on all occasions. In old Vietnam elderly men invariably were the heads of their households. This great respect for the aged continues today to a large degree in the rural areas of South Vietnam. In the cities of the South young people are breaking away from family control. In North Vietnam Young people are being taught to turn against the family and parental authority.

Undoubtedly the most important force for harmony in traditional Vietnamese society-one which remains strong today-was family loyalty.

*Excerpts from "The Older Vietnamese as a Communicant," JUSPAO Field Memorandum No. 27, October 4, 1966.

Upon the kinship system rested the entire society, which fostered and cherished it. The basic social unit was the large household of an older man and wife, their married sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren. While today this extended social unit is less common, family ties still reach out as they have for thousands of years in Vietnam even beyond the large family to a far wider group of relatives. Traditionally, the family system was strengthened by the pattern of landholding. Most land was owned in small family parcels-only in the last century did large plantations develop. The Vietnamese farmer-family traditionally raised or made nearly everthing it used.

To build upon this foundation of family life, the Confucian philosophers found their mortar in hieu [or filial piety]. Taking for their premise that feelings of love and respect for parents were innately ingrained in people, they built an entire system of social relations. A proper son, one who cultivated his natural feelings of respect for his father, would as a consequence be a useful member of the community and a dutiful subject of the king. The most important religious ceremonies in Vietnam are rites for family ancestors in which feelings of filial piety are manifested by veneration of departed ancestors. This is the so-called "ancestor worship" which strongly influences Vietnamese thought patterns. The belief is that each person is a link in the endless chain of humanity. One's family therefore includes not only those alive tooday, but past generations and even the unborn to come. A person's fate upon death-whether he becomes a good spirit or a demon-depends not only on his behavior during life on earth, but also on the solicitude with which his descendants honor him. The highest achievement of hieu is to serve the dead as though they were the living. This attitude has the effect of inculcating a strong sense of timelessness which stresses the importance of those who have gone before, of elderly people, alive and even dead.

There are certain countervailing factors with respect to Vietnamese youth. One is the normal "war between generations" in which neither the old nor the new generations knows quite what to make of the other. Another factor, for Vietnam, is a byproduct of the modernization process in which a society finds that its traditional virtues are breaking down because, particularly to the young, they seem no longer adequate guides to behavior. This manifests itself in such phenomena as the "Saigon cowboy," brother to the American [hippie]. A more fundamental countervailing factor is the age median in Vietnam. Vietnam is a young nation in terms of age distribution. Half the people are eighteen years of age or under (as compared with the U.S., itself a relatively youthful nation, where half the population is 25 years of age or under.) And finally there is among Vietnamese city youth a widespread and deeply ingrained suspicion, distrust and cynicism for elders, particularly for elderly politicians. Youth here tend to believe that all Vietnamese who have engaged in political activity during the past twenty years or so, have been tainted and compromised and are unworthy of respect or even attention. This

amounts almost to a prejudice since little effort is made to distinguish one individual from another; the condemnation tends to be a blanket one.

The Communists have asserted that the Vietnamese family system is the source of great social injustice in Vietnam and note the Vietnamese proverb: The son of the emperor is crown prince, and the son of a temple guard spends his life sweeping banyan leaves. The Communists argue that the system causes sons of influential persons to get preferred treatment in business or appointment to high position in government, which discriminates against those whose families are not affluent or politically powerful. While there is something to this assertion-just as it has some validity in the United States-on balance it appears that the Communist attack on the concept of hieu has not profited them. As one Vietnamese noted: "Hieu is like a gulf stream, on the surface a merely peaceful concept like other traditional streams of thought in Vietnam. In reality however it is strong enough even to resist tyranny." Most Vietnamese were horrified by the Communists' so-called "denunciation movement" in North Vietnam in 1953-54 in which children were encouraged to denounce their parents to the state.

An elderly traditional-minded Vietnamese is impressed most by [individuals] who combined the traits of dignity, humility, wisdom and selfcontrol. Such[individuals] always are calm and unruffled. They never lose their temper. They never shout. They always have a wise and philosophic word to say about events and people. . . . He will impress a Vietnamese as a man of eminent character and honor. . . . It is not that Vietnamese are not materialistic, for they are. But they still do not have the same attitude toward progress as do Americans. This is not because they are against progress, but because they conceive of it-and indeed the whole universe-in different terms and using different concepts.

To the elderly Vietnamese the best and proper behavior consists in knowing and understanding the world, and having understood it, adjusting intelligently to it. To a large degree this means learning how to accept the blows of a capricious fate with decorum. The wise man does not try to change his universe, he adapts to it. Bend as does the bamboo in the wind, say the Vietnamese....What Vietnamese see as suppleness we see as duplicity, what they see as tranquility of spirit we see as lack of concern. And what we see as resolution, the Vietnamese see as intractability; what we see as boldly meeting challenge, they see as disrupting of the harmony of the universe.

If you treat elderly Vietnamese with genuine consideration for their feelings, if you behave toward them at all times as if they were dignified persons worthy of respect, if you simply practice good manners, you cannot go seriously wrong. But this behavior in the final analysis is a

function of your underlying attitude toward the Vietnamese. Vietnamese are unbelievably sensitive to whether or not a foreigner likes them as a group. If you do, they will know it, and make all sorts of allowances for your unintentional errors or even your loss of temper. If you don't like them, you will never be able to hide that fact.

AN UNKNOWN WARRIOR*

BY EDWARD J. CLARKSON

Rallies of returnees engaged in direct contact with families and friends of known guerrillas have unmatched potential for reaching insurgent ranks with propaganda messages and appeals.

Individuals who have served the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese Army in South Vietnam may join the Government of Vietnam and be welcomed as citizens of the Republic of Vietnam, so states the Chieu Hoi policy of the government of Vietnam.

This policy was adopted by the government early in 1963. Americans, who had gained experience working with and observing defection programs in the Philippines (HUKS) and in Malaya with the British, suggested a similar program and assisted in establishing it.

The rationale is that an enemy force can be weakened by creating opportunities for defection. If the enemy soldier has no alternative to remaining, the enemy force is strengthened. But if an attractive visible alternative exists, the enemy's problems are compounded to a point where almost anyone is suspect. Such a pattern imposes on the enemy a requirement for additional manpower to observe their fellow soldiers.

The Chieu Hoi program aims at projecting the government to the people in a confident and humane light, reversing the process whereby the enemy, having gained a recruit, claims his family's loyalty as well. It provides the family with a means to appeal to him to return home, as the returnee is offered a personal amnesty and a means to return to normal life away from deprivations and hardships of guerrilla existence.

The task of informing and persuading the Viet Cong and their comrades to rally is called the "inducement phase." Inducement is accomplished primarily by the use of airdropped leaflets; by aerial broadcast from low flying planes, and by appealing to units and individuals, by name, if known.

Possibly an even more effective method of inducement [than airdropped leaflets and aerial broadcasts from low flying planes] is direct personal contact. This is accomplished by armed propaganda teams, composed of former Viet Cong who volunteer to go out into insecure territory and VC-terrorized areas to tell the people of the Chieu Hoi program. Gener

*Excerpts from “An Unknown Warrior," Marine Corps Gazette, LIV (August 1970), pp. 38-43. Reprinted by permission of the copyright holder, the Marine Corps Association, publishers of the Marine Corps Gazette, professional journal for Marines. Copyright © August 1970, by the Marine Corps Association.

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