Patterns of Conflict Slide 125

Patterns of Conflict

Patterns of Conflict Slide 125

Quantico Transcription

I haven’t changed the left side, just called them “negative factors” and
“counterweights.” Initiative, internal drive to think and act. Adaptability. Harmony. Then you've got a negative aim as well as a positive aim, and now you can see it from both sides of the argument. We want to get the negative on our adversary and we want the positive on our side, obviously. That's what— the guerrillas where they see it, that’s what instinctively they're doing all the time. Trying to build up the negative atmosphere on their adversary and trying to build up a positive atmosphere in their system. Remember what Napoleon said: the moral is to the physical as three to one. They understand that, whether they know those numbers or not, and they’re using that in a very powerful way.

Okay, it's 10:00 o'clock. So I think we ought to stop it tonight. I guess we're going to have to get together and take the synthesis later on, we spent a lot of time on it. The rest of the stuff goes fast if we can set that up, Mike, if we want to set that up, because I’m going to be here for a while.

Wyly: Okay.

Boyd: So we've done the hard part, and the rest of it goes very rapidly. And so all we have to do now is do the synthesis, the application, and the wrap-up. And that goes very rapidly. Because now what I'm going to do, I’m going to pull all these things we've looked at, we’re going to pull it all together. What are we really talking about?

Any questions before we leave tonight? We took a lot of time, we made those digressions, but I think they're important because we're trying to address certain issues. People want to get to it, and I feel that, okay, if we want to get to it, we're going to get to it. It takes time.

Wyly: You're suggesting we do it next week sometime. I don't see how we can do it this week. [cross talk] Nobody probably wants to, so we'll set it up.

Boyd: If it’s okay with you. So we can get the synthesis and the wrap-up.

[multiple audience members talking over each other]

Audience: One of your wrap-ups has to be how we adapt this to a nine-month curriculum for a 35-year-old major.

Audience: It’s bigger than that, because we're talking about forged leadership from the corporal to general. So the whole profession—

Boyd: So you want the lowest guy all the way up to the commanding general to have these attitudes.

Audience: Corporal to general. We’ve got to cover the whole spectrum.

Boyd: They're all part of the team.

Audience: Yes, sir. It’s a long term— we do a pretty good job— private to generally, really—

Boyd: Not corporal, private. I want to go through private all the way up to the commandant.

[Cross talk]

Audience: We do a great job on the corporal and below level. It's when we get to our lieutenants that we don't trust them and we don't give them the leeway for initiative. In boot camp, they get the esprit, the trust, the initiative—

Boyd: You need to educate all your people, not just a piece of them. To play the game. Because you really want to build up this whole organic philosophy, so you can operate as a family. Just like a family— really like a family. We say we operate like a family, but a lot of it is hype, it’s not quite there. But you really want to operate like a family, and you're a very large family. But then you want the whole family’s got the fingerspitzengefühl. You understand what I’m saying? You want to get them all that fingerspitzengefühl.

Audience: But on a larger scale than what we were talking about, we’re talking about this idea of warfighting, [35:00] the concept and repeated application in peacetime so it becomes the fingertip,inherent. We’re missing the procedures to do that in wartime, but in peacetime, here’s the idea. To repeatedly do it, to practice in peacetime what we want to do in wartime. The trust.

What's missing from my mind are the education and training tools to take this—

Boyd: Oh yeah, and we're going to have to develop that so you can get that, so you can inculcate it, and it becomes a natural part of the whole system then, that's what you're really saying. You want to make it very natural. Not some foreign substance.

Wyly: We were talking about, I just use the Germans as an example, here you have a society, that for a number of reasons, placed a high value on education. And we don’t do that. And I think therein lies the difficulty. If education comes naturally, and it’s something we know how to do, that would make the job a little bit easier. But it's not, it’s not. We give out the quotas and sometimes it’s not through a whole lot of education.

Boyd: [laughter] Yeah, but that's done all over. It’s unfortunate. You know, that’s why the sergeant’s comments are quite applicable. The military’s not the only one that has this problem. You look at industry, industry’s got some horrible problems.

Wyly: Absolutely. It’s a society-wide problem.

Boyd: We've got a big problem. Somehow we got to pull it together. We’re having problems around the world—

Wyly: I was saying to this gentleman here during the break, I think maybe the Marine Corps has a better chance of solving that problem than any other segment of society. I just think maybe that, idealistically I think that. I see we've got some control over our future. The other services are too big, the rest of the society is too chaotic.

Boyd: In a sense, somebody going to have to set the example. If somebody doesn’t set the example, the rest aren't going to do it anyway.

Audience: Sir, I'm trying to think of an example where a military organization could function, at least for some period of time, by using the menace and uncertainty and mistrust. Can that be done? I guess one example, and I know it's not a good example, maybe Shaka Zulu, and the way he brought the Zulu tribes together by just killing anybody that screwed up, and driving them to the point of utter fear and exhaustion. Yeah, he was successful against the British for quite a few years until he went bonkers, and his brother-in-law put a spear through him.

Boyd: Well, if he's done that, what kind of a culture do you have in order to do that in, and did we misread that? Is that what we're saying, because he's the enemy, and he's a bad guy, so we want to constitute all evil in him and we want to constitute all the good in ourselves. I'm very worried about that, having seen that happen before. Since he's the enemy, goddammit, he's all evil. He's done everything wrong and we’re pure and all that.

Audience: Well, the Soviets and the KGB and the way Stalin—

Boyd: I'm not saying he didn’t do that. Well, Stalin was a son of a bitch. Yet we ascribed to him during World War II, we’d call him “Uncle Joe” and all that stuff. In the meantime, Christ, he claimed he made Hitler look like a piker. He cleaned out twenty million people. Hitler only pumped out only around, other than the war, about six million or so.

Audience: So how can a military function based on, at least in part, menace and uncertainty and mistrust? What you’re telling us tonight, it can’t be done—

Boyd: Remember— wait a minute, I'm going to come back to that. Remember, when Hitler invaded Russia, what happened then? Remember, they wanted to be on Hitler’s side. They all went against Stalin because of that, and then Hitler became, behaved even worse than Stalin did, so therefore it became a Great Patriotic War. You go read the history. They were signing up— so what happened, they said Christ, this guy’s even more menacing than Stalin, we’ll keep Uncle Joe, at least he's one of us. You read that. For the early part of those campaigns, they were welcoming the German invaders. Finally, we’re going to get rid of this goddamned yoke we’ve had over our heads.

You've got to be very careful when you examine them. That’s what I’m saying. Don’t look at it, don't isolate them in context, understand the culture and try to examine it from a total situation standpoint. And so, maybe, what’s his name, Shaka, I haven’t studied the Zulu but maybe, you know, remember, you can’t just look at the Zulu, you got to look at the British, how were the British behaving toward them, and even though Shaka’s ideas and actions might seem stringent, maybe what the British were doing to them were even more uncomfortable than what he was doing. Therefore, they could accept his measures, because it was at least for the Zulus rather than for some foreign interloper, so to speak. I mean, I don't know but I would look at that carefully.

[40:00] I can't answer that, because I’m totally unfamiliar with that. Any other questions?

Audience: Colonel Wyly, is there any other option besides next week? None of us will be here—

Wyly: Well, it depends on how long Colonel Boyd's going to be here. I don't think you’ve really decided on when you're going back. I see Friday as an option, I think normally—

Boyd: What about tomorrow night?

Wyly: We may not be back.

Boyd: You think the commandant’ll keep us there?

Wyly: I don’t know, but sometimes he gets wound up—

Boyd: He’s the commandant. If he wants us to stay, we stay.

Wyly: I just hate to make a commitment for tomorrow night, with that in mind. I really hate to do it for tomorrow night.

Audience: Sir, how long will it take for the wrap-up?

Boyd: What, this here? Jesus, you’ve got me very nervous. I was supposed to do this in two nights. I'm afraid to make a prediction about that. Normally the wrap-up would take about 45 minutes, but I'm afraid to say that. I think we’d better allow for two hours.

[non-pertinent cross talk about meeting the next night] [41:56]
[End of Tape 4, Side 2]

[Begin Tape 5, Side 1]

Boyd: It can have a protracted character, on the other hand, it may not be. Now one of the reasons why they say that is, well, look at the Philippines. I already put the dates up there, 1946 to 1954, and as the gentleman back there pointed out, we had the Malayan campaign. What was that? Eight or ten years also, in Malaya. But really, they finally figured out what to do and the last couple of years, they went pretty good. It was because the dummies in the beginning couldn’t figure out what the hell to do. Magsaysay came on board, he said, “I got the picture.” He cleaned it up real fast. And they were on the verge of defeat, too. Of course, it’s not so cleaned up right now, it was sort of a temporary respite, because now they’re back in trouble, again.

Audience: But you know, two years of [unintelligible] of conflict, for two years, that could be a protracted war for us, based on how the public views it.

Boyd: You trumped me. I said, you trumped me. And I agree with you. When I say, you trumped me, in a sense you’re right. In other words, our “two-year war” that’s not— that’s too long.

Audience: So how is our military [unintelligible]?

Boyd: But see—but that’s—whose fault is that? You made a good point there. Whose fault is that if they think it’s too long? Whose fault is that?

Audience: United States government.

Boyd: Goddamn right, it’s our fault. Whether we’re in uniform, or in other parts of the government, to make sure that people understand that you can’t do it any other way. So the fact

that we let them have that perception, it’s the government’s fault. If they look in the mirror, he’s

the son of the bitch. Government guy looking in the mirror, he should look, there’s the son of the bitch that did it, and he’s the one. That’s him. See, because I think you could put out a
compelling message on that. Of course, you got to know what the message is, how to handle it and all that stuff. But you don’t know what you’re doing, you can’t put out the message.

Audience: What’s the message?

Boyd: Well, what’s at stake in this whole thing? And the fact you just can’t run a goddamn— a thousand-tank operation through some jungle somewhere, a blitzkrieg operation, or leave the perception in their mind that it’s strictly going be a high-intensity conflict like we had over in Europe, and we’re going to win the goddamn thing. European scenario.

Audience: I guess, my question was more, I understand that. But getting the American people, I mean, just— I think we’re still singeing from Vietnam and anything that’s more than a weekend long like Lebanon, when you’re in an op before the press can still be—

Boyd: Why? Why?

Audience: Just because of how—

Boyd: Because we haven’t got the message out, and I blame it on ourselves.

Audience: Well, I say, this is—

Boyd: You got to blame it on yourself. If you don’t do anything, what? If you don’t blame it on yourself, you’re not going to change. It’s important you blame it on yourself because you say,

“Goddamn, we’re dummies. Let’s get the damn thing straightened out.” It forces you to do things

that you wouldn’t otherwise do, and come to grips with the problem.

Audience: I think we realize that—

Boyd: See, now what you’re doing is, you’re making yourself come to grips with the problem.

That’s my opinion on it.

Wyly: I’d take it a step further. It’s not just that we have not gotten the message out. That thinking that you just described, that we could take a bunch of tanks down there and roll them through Nicaragua, or wherever, and drop a lot of bombs, and then when the war— I find that mentality still exists within the military at very senior levels. At very senior levels. So not only have we not gotten the message out, but we haven’t learned how to do it.

Boyd: Not only haven’t you gotten the message out, you haven’t even gotten it in within the services. Not only out, but not even in.

Audience: Well, you could win the war in Nicaragua in a couple of weeks, with a bunch of tanks

to show intent. That’s not what the problem is. The problem is, what’s involved in national level

that’ll sound good.

Wyly: Yeah, Nicaragua is the wrong—

[Cross talk]

Boyd: Nicaragua’s the wrong one. Yeah. You’re right.

Audience: So the point is, that we really need to explain to people, after we’ve learned it ourselves, is that we’re talking ten, twenty years. We started dealing with the Salvadorians, sir, we wanted to hear a three-year war, they said ten. Well, now we’ve been committed since ’80, basically, and it’s almost ten, and Duarte gets on TV three months ago and says, “Well, thirty-five, forty.” Really, it’s a permanent commitment. We haven’t convinced ourselves that, but if we ever do that—

Boyd: But if you have a permanent commitment, you also got to know how you’re committing

yourself. And because we didn’t know how to commit ourselves, and our leaders in many areas—maybe some of them were malicious, but many of them weren’t—in a sense, they were lying to the American people. Sometimes they didn’t even know they were lying, and their guys looked at them, and they got madder than hell.

[multiple audience members begin talking over each other]

Audience: They were two factions, essentially. One that wanted to put U.S. guys on the ground, and one that wanted to do what we’re doing. Show up to this country, within the limited context of their capabilities. They still think that helicopters’ recon is the answer. The point is, that I don’t think you’ll ever sell that you’re, you know, politics being what they are. You’ll never sell the American public on a forty or fifty-year commitment at X millions of dollars, that they don’t understand.

Audience: Depends on the level of how you approach it.

Boyd: That’s right.

Audience: What does that commitment entail? If it means putting in some advisors, as we did in Vietnam initially, they might buy off on that if you really hit them with the rationale for it.

Audience: But it’s much more than that now—

Audience: And convince them of it.

Audience: It’s equipping them, it’s arming them, and it’s to this tune of seventy, one hundred million dollars a year.

Audience: [05:00] Well, what was the initial—

[Cross talk]

Audience: No. I don’t agree with it.

Audience: What was the initial cost of Vietnam, putting in the gaps? What did that cost us?

Audience: I don’t know. But what I’m saying is, you’re not going to put U.S. guys on the ground and you advise them—places like Salvador, or [unintelligible], and you have to equip them, and you’re going to have to continue to arm and supply them. That costs a lot of money.

Audience: Well, if we’re not willing to do that, we’ll lose it. The military can sell that message.

Audience: There you go.

Boyd: Let’s kick off and get back to that. I’ll get back to that. I got some things that you mentioned, I’ll get back to it. Let’s get back to [unintelligible] otherwise, we’re going to miss something. Okay. We’re up to the synthesis now.