America's New War: Psychological Warfare
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Part of the war on terrorism like any other war involves propaganda, information. Among other things, the Bush Administration is considering using the Voice of America to broadcast messages to the Afghan people. More on that from Donna Kelley in Atlanta. Donna, good afternoon.</s>DONNA KELLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron good afternoon to you, and in this current crisis the U.S. may be using some old tricks to garner new objectives. The Bush Administration is preparing to launch a possible media campaign in an attempt to convince the Afghan people that U.S. military action will be targeting Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, not the innocent people of Afghanistan. Psychological warfare is when one side uses brains instead of bullets to affect the moral of troops and citizens with an intended outcome. You may have heard of the infamous Tokyo Rose radio propaganda of World War II. This sultry, Japanese radio propagandist taunted our troops in the Pacific by mixing the era's most popular tunes, while telling the American troops they'd lose the war, and their wives back home. In Afghanistan, it's really not clear what role psy ops, or psychological operations, could play. Some tactics, like air dropping leaflets, would clearly have limited value in a country with a 29% literacy rate. Elsewhere, some psychological operations have a mixed reputation at best. You may remember in 1989, when U.S. troops laid siege to capture Panamanian general Manuel Noriega. One of their weapons was American soldiers showing reporters a portrait of Hitler hanging in dictator Noriega's home. A U.S. army colonel later admitted psychological warfare experts had planted the fuhrer's portrait and a voodoo altar to be shown on TV. During the Gulf War, an Iraqi government propaganda broadcaster nicknamed "Baghdad Betty" warned American soldiers that Bart Simpson -- that cartoon character of course -- is making love to your wife. The use of underage, illustrated cartoon characters did not work and clearly caused no anxiety within the ranks of American troops. Joining us now from Little Rock, Arkansas is General Wesley Clark, He is a CNN military analyst and he is the former NATO Supreme Commander in Kosovo. General Clark, nice to see you again. GEN. WESLEY CLARK</s>FMR. SUPREME NATO COMMANDER: Nice to see you too, Donna.</s>KELLEY: Let's talk about these operations, what do you think could work in this situation? If the literacy rate is low, leaflets may not be effective.</s>CLARK: Well they may not be. You have to find some way to reach the target audience if the target audience is the Afghan people, then there are still radios in Afghanistan. You have to be able to get on that radio frequency. You have to override whatever broadcasts are there, I guess. And you have to put out information that will influence them. Normally we find the best influence is the truth, and it is not only the easiest to portray, but it is also the most convincing. Particularly in a place that is starved for news as Afghanistan must be today.</s>KELLEY: A couple of points that we found, speaking of broadcast, General, let's take a look at those, the U.S. message is going to try to emphasize over the next couple of weeks, as they try to intensify the message on radio and television. Any U.S. action against terrorism is not an attack against Islam or Muslims. The brand of Islam practiced by Osama Bin Laden and his followers is an aberration from mainstream Islam. The United States is one of the biggest aid donors to Afghanistan. And the United States understands that the greatest majority of Afghan people are not harboring Bin Laden. Effective, how do you get that across then?</s>CLARK: I think they are very important messages. It depends on, as I said what the target audience can say. One of the most important ways to get this across in a country like Afghanistan is word of mouth. And if this message, these four messages, these themes get picked up by the mullahs in Pakistan and passed back into Afghanistan, word of mouth, that's probably as effective as we can get. They can be broadcast by radio, dropped by leaflets, they could be said by other nations on their own short wave radio broadcasts from their own home. It would be great to have Islamic nations broadcasting the fact that they supported what the American activities were. And that they did not view American actions as actions directed against Islam. So it will be variety of voices, a variety of means against the messages that are targeted there to go to the Afghan people. But it is very important to reinforce these messages from as many different venues as possible. And then see you got to see what the results will be. .</s>KELLEY: And sometimes they've even used pictures on leaflets to try and help, and certainly in their language. Quickly, General if you can, tell us while you are trying to get messages across, in this case, what about that might be used against U.S. troops. What's the training to go against that, to counter Psy ops?</s>CLARK: Well, the messages coming against the U.S. troops will be difficult for anybody there in Afghanistan to project, because they didn't know where the troops are or what they are receiving. But they would probably be sending message against the American people at home. It would be to make us doubt the urgency of the cause or the rightness of it, or portray the wrongs that supposedly have been done to Islam in a way try to try to change the terms of the conflict. So that it would appear we weren't going after terrorists but that we were instead trying to go after a group of people for their religious beliefs. .</s>KELLEY: General Wesley Clark, our CNN military analyst, not to have you with us. Thank you very much. Aaron, back to you.</s>BROWN: Donna, thank you, General thank you, too. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com