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March 09, 2006
That's how to fight insurgents!
In an essay by Wretchard over at the Belmont Club, comes this discussion of the techniques used by American Cold Warrior Col. Edward Lansdale against the Huks in the post-war Philippines.
One psywar operation played upon the popular dread of an asuang, or vampire.... When a Huk patrol came along the trail, the ambushers silently snatched the last man of the patrol.... They punctured his neck with two holes, vampire-fashion, held the body up by the heels, drained it of blood, and put the corpse back on the trail. When the Huks returned to look for the missing man and found their bloodless comrade, every member of the patrol believed that the asuang had got him and that one of them would be next.... When daylight came, the whole Huk squadron moved out of the vicinity.
[...]
The army unit captured a Huk courier descending from the mountain stronghold to the village. After questioning, the courier, who was a native of the village, woefully confessed his errors in helping the Huks. His testimony was tape-recorded and made to sound as if his voice emanated from a tomb. The courier was killed. His body was left on the Huk-village line of communications. Soldiers in civilian clothes then dropped rumors in the village to the effect that the Huks had killed the courier. The villagers recovered the body and buried the Huk. That night army patrols infiltrated the cemetery and set up audio-equipment which began broadcasting the dead Huk's confession. By dawn, the entire village of terror-stricken peasantry had evacuated! In a few days, the Huks were forced to descend the mountain in search of food. [owing to the disappearance of the support village] They were quickly captured and/or killed by the army unit.
Aside from the fact that Lansdale's tactics sound like something out of a Mission Impossible script, they are both incredibly effective and guaranteed to offend the sensibilities of 21st-Century Metrosexuals, who always prefer to believe that killing is so primitive.
Better feng shui would solve so many more problems.
Wretchard notes -- or is it one of his commenters? -- that such tactics would have caused a firestorm of controversy even back then amongst the American public; their successful use was due to the public remaining unaware of what it took to defeat the enemy, in this instance through the skillful use of both violence and psy-ops. Restrictions on media access -- as well as the belief by American journalists that they were Americans first and foremost -- helped keep these tactics covert.
In this, we can see how the media's ability to instantaneously transmit from the field cripples our ability to fight as hard as we must in order to prevail. This also means that, because we must fight in a more "sensitive" fashion, more Americans will die.
Which makes the assertion that the Left "supports the troops" not just laughable, but despicable.
Posted by Mike Lief at March 9, 2006 07:45 AM
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