>Win the Mind – Win the Day
When Bombs Are Not Enough
By Richard Lei December 10, 2001
A famously hard-bitten Green Beret, Col. Mike Kirby, glowers down on a conference table full of Army commanders here as they plot their next attack on the Taliban and al Qaeda. Kirby growls a key message: "Better go PSYWAR on that."
For the leaders of the 4th Psychological Operations Group considered among the Army's most intellectual warriors Kirby is a hero. Never mind that he's a Hollywood construct: a character played by John Wayne in the 1968 agitprop classic "The Green Berets." An enlarged photo of the Duke in uniform and a snippet of his dialogue hangs on the wood-paneled wall in tribute to one of the military's rarely glamorized special operations units.
The weaponry of the psyop soldier includes radio transmitters, loudspeakers and music, from classical to heavy metal. These elite airborne troops don't drop bombs on the enemy – they drop leaflets and crude cartoons urging surrender. They parachute in, offering bribes, hoping to rat out evildoers like Osama bin Laden. They set up battlefield copy centers to crank out pro-American handbills.
"No one else does what we do," says Col. James A. Treadwell, who commands the 4th Psyop Group, a 1,200-member unit whose slogans include "Win the Mind – Win the Day" and "Verbum Vincet" ("The Word Conquers"). Schooled in marketing and advertising techniques, they are a brainy subset of the "snake eaters," as the brawny commandos based here in the scrub pine and strip-club wilds of Fayetteville are known.
Wearing a maroon beret that designates him as a qualified paratrooper, Lt. Col. Kenneth A. Turner sounds like a typical "psyop-er" they don't go in for menacing nicknames as he patiently explains "the distinction between dissemination and communication." When he talks about a target, he means an audience.
Turner, 42, commands a dissemination battalion. He speaks French and holds master's degrees in international relations and military arts and sciences. Like others here, he considers psychological operations an art with a practical application. If you can demoralize the enemy and promote defections, the fighting ends sooner – thereby minimizing casualties.
"Stop fighting for the Taliban and live," urges a leaflet designed here. "Drive out the foreign terrorists," says another.
"That's what we're all about: influencing people to take certain behavioral actions that accomplish our national goals," says Turner.