Psychological WarfareLinebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
History
Psychological Warfare
Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
Psychological warfare
In this situation Ramón Magsaysay, as Secretary of Defense, developed
some of the most provocative and audacious anti-guerrilla operations of
the postwar period. To meet the Communist claim that the struggle was
one of the landless against the rich, he offered all surrendered Huks
resettlement in a new land project; he visited the project himself
frequently enough to make sure it remained a valuable demonstration
area. To allow the common people to help the Government, without their
suffering from Communist reprisals against themselves or their
families, he disseminated secret methods whereby the people could
communicate with the Government forces. He established a psychological
warfare office under Major José Crisol. This office was doing as good a
job of tactical PsyWar with leaflets, mimeographs, loudspeakers, light
planes, and other field and headquarters equipment as any army
installation which the author has seen. Most of the doctrine and
procedures for the operation of the office were American, but the
content of the materials was Filipino. Catholicism, Filipino patriotism,
Malayan nativism and peasant common sense were some of the factors used
to underscore the Philippine Army's appeals. In the following three
years the Huks shrank seriously although the danger could not be said to
have been eliminated altogether.
=Indochina and Political Warfare.= With devotion, often with heroism,
frequently with brilliance, the French military forces in Indochina
fought a Communist-captured nationalist movement known as the Viet Minh;
they fought despite the accompaniments of a wretched and vacillating
home policy, incredibly poor psychological relationships with the native
élite, and security situations which pass all American belief. (One
Vietnamese recently told the author that the pro-Communist Viet Minh
soldiers fought as long as they could against the French and then came
back to French territory to eat good food, visit their families, rest
and relax before returning to the field to murder more French sentries,
blow up more French patrols, or attack more French outposts.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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