Patterns of Conflict Slide 144

Patterns of Conflict

Patterns of Conflict Slide 144

Quantico Transcription

And this I call a “theme for vitality and growth.” Remember, we had the “theme for disintegration and collapse.” Now we got a theme for—juxtaposing it, for vitality and growth. Unifying vision. This kind of a thing. Now the Marxist stuff, they had one there for a while, but since then, their systems been tested and it’s not holding up. And that was the theme that the world was going to march to. A unifying vision. They were trying to show the flaws in the other systems. You develop that, you better be sure you have that looked at pretty carefully.

In other words, you’re trying to really build up a super-organic whole. On the other hand, you got to be very careful. You make it too rigid, then you lose these things.

Well, here’s the ingredients needed to pursue that vision. Insight, initiative, adaptability, harmony. Those kind of ingredients. Now too often, when people build a unifying vision, they lose this. In the U.S., we’re the other way. We tend to have this [references left side of slide, “unifying vision”], and not this [references right side of slide, “ingredients”]. They’re sort of opposite—they’re sort of in tension with one another. You go one way, you tend to lose the other. You go the other way, you tend to lose the other. So there might be some times you’re like, this is more important, you might lose a little bit. And other times, you want to play this. This is less important. So you’re always trying to work that balance. It’s an endless game, always trying to work that balance.

Now there was one time when we sort of had the good balance. When was that? I mean, talking about a time of real crisis. World War II, because we had Hitler out there, you see. So we got everybody unified, we can use him as the basis, he’s the evil, and therefore, we can still have these two things together. Go ahead.

Audience: That’s easy to understand, because we were threatened. We were hit at Pearl Harbor and things like that. But when you take a look at Vietnam, or even the present situation—

Boyd: Note what you just said. No, wait—let’s stop. I’m going to let you pick it up. What’d you just say? Go back up what you just said. Very important what you just said.

Audience: When we were directly threatened.

Boyd: You were hit at Pearl Harbor.

Audience: Yes.

Boyd: So what happened?

Audience: Well, we hit back.

Boyd: We used that as a basis to unify. In other words, these guys doing that. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. That’s why you got to be very careful about being heavy-handed. So if you do something like that, you can unify your adversary. And that’s particularly important in guerrilla war. That’s why I said, note what you just said. The Japanese unified us. Before that happened, we had “America First” units, we had the German-American Bundt, that—all that stuff. If you look back in history, I was a young kid at that time and I remember that. And as soon as they did that, the whole country unified. Goddamn it, if they’re going to play that kind of game, we’re going to kick them in the ass and win this thing.

Audience: With our [unintelligible] situation is not—

Audience: —country that ever consistently worked. I think in our society—

Boyd: Say again.

Audience: In our society, what I can see, you look at the history. To unify us, as a society, the way you’re talking, is an attack on us. It was on our soil—
Boyd: What you’re really saying, in a sense, we need a kick in the ass.

Audience: That’s right.

Boyd: Yeah. Unfortunately.

Audience: Short of that, doesn’t give us that unifying threat.

Boyd: That’s tough. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.

Audience: Vietnam, Grenada, none of that—
Boyd: But some way, if you know how to play the moral and mental game, and show people are really undermining you, and you really are in that crisis, if your people are clever enough, you can do that. Maybe not to the extent because of a Pearl Harbor, but it’s sufficiently enough so you can play the game. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. But if you don’t know how to do that, and a guy says, “Fuck them. We’re going to bomb them back to the Stone Ages,” you lose it all. You lose it all.

Audience: It’s not the same. In my battalion, you can almost see it. With what happened with the Stark, in the Persian Gulf, and then shoot-down of the Iranian airliner, I’ve thought many times to myself, if we had shot down that airliner just five years ago, seven years ago, I think that the whole reaction of the country and the media would have been completely different. And yet so, when that happened, basically, the attitude of the American—
Boyd: Why’d we get away with it?

Audience: [40:00]I say, I think because relating it to the Stark, short time earlier. Look, out of everything that’s happened—
Boyd: Not only that, and the way the Iranians were behaving, and sinking those ships, and shelling those ships, that just warned everybody off and so they, the people, said, “Okay. We shouldn’t have done it.” You remember, people thought we shouldn’t have done it.

Audience: Right.

Boyd: But it was a goof, and it wasn’t intentional. Where if you were saying it was done in peacetime, they’d want to see generals fired and politicians fired. You’re right.

Audience: They were shooting at America.

Boyd: That’s right. But see, the circumstance, it was a different environment. In other words, it wasn’t really morally justified, what we did. But it was recognized as a goof, there wasn’t an intent to do it. They could get away with it. That’s my point.

Audience: Absolutely. Absolutely. If we had said—

Boyd: And we didn’t want to do it. It’s obvious the guy that did that, didn’t want to do that. It was a goof. Just like the Iraqi guy, pumped—at least, we think he pumped one into his cutter. I mean, we didn’t like it. We were supportive. I mean, so the guy goofed, he got—he probably looked at the scope, “God, I’ve got a big goddamn Iranian target out there, let me launch one.”

Two, I mean.

Audience: But I think if the same situation had happened—

Boyd: Because remember, they pumped two missiles into the Stark—

Audience: The late ‘70’s, even. Even though it was a goof. I don’t think it would’ve been accepted by the American people. I think we would still be beating up, because of the times.

Boyd: But because of circumstances. See, that sets the moral climate, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. But in that case, we weren’t attacking Japan or Germany and that. When they made an attack on Pearl Harbor, they just unified the nation.

Audience: Got a lot of national resolve when those hostages were taken by the Iranians—

Boyd: Yeah, the Iranians helped us out there, too.

Audience: That’s right. And the press. But I think, unless you have something like that, you’re being some of our Central American [unintelligible].

Boyd: Yeah, but let me show you. That’s why I want you to hear my strategy brief, I address a lot of those things more specific and in the very way. I show you how to use those mismatches, but use it to your advantage. There’s mismatches there, and how you use those, you could lever the situation. But it also demands a certain way you have to behave, and if you don’t behave right, you could lose it all.

Audience: Do you agree that it’s got to be in spite of what the politicians are doing to each other?

Boyd: Well, the politicians can undermine the whole thing if they do some dumb things. So they have to be careful, and people have to say, “Listen, tiger, that doesn’t help us.” Why is Jim Wright in trouble right now?

Audience: I think he’s in trouble because they went after Pamela Small?

Boyd: Well, that’s one reason. That’s part of it. I’m sure that’s it. Look, why do you—I told you the other night. Why are these guys in trouble? You know what happens if—see, right now, we got a huge national debt. I mean, it’s going in—what do you call it? The deficit financing. We got our trade balances going to hell. We’re paying these huge things. Our standard of living is going to hell for a lot of people. Maybe in the military, you’re better off and some of the guys, the rich people are better off. There’s a lot of people out there are not doing well. They’re on fixed incomes and everything’s sliding away from them. They’re even getting less income. I mean, I’m out there and I’m watching. I’m not in the Washington area inside the Beltway, Christ, smoking a cigar, having a nice glass of wine and living a good life, or a Washington Post reporter, who does all his goddamn work out of the press room up there and Christ, he’s got a nice word processor and all that, and Christ, the editor, kiss his ass in order to get a good story and give him a good salary. And they do all their work inside the goddamn Beltway. And they’re not sensitive to what’s going on. There’s people who are horned off.

And that 51% pay raise, it outraged the whole—I was down in Florida, and man, they were sore. They would have strangled some of the guys if they could have gotten a hold of them. Why do you think that Congress gave it up? They really wanted that pay raise. They knew they were in trouble if they went for it. And you know what they said down there? They said, “When they start delivering the goods, getting rid of the debt, and doing what they’re supposed to, then we can talk about pay raises.” In fact, you know what they said, they said, “Wait, we ought to give them a 51% pay cut.” We’ll give them the money based upon what they do. They haven’t been doing anything, except grabbing money for themselves.

And if the goddamn job is such a poverty job, why is everybody fighting to retain their seat? Remember that 99% re-ran. And if it’s such a goddamn—but why are they fighting to retain that

seat in Congress? Couldn’t be too bad, or at least they like being poor. I mean, you should have seen. I saw them talk to. Their people said they were out—it was terrible, they were outraged. Boy, they were really sore. And then you got these idiots in the Post, David Broder and the rest of them, “Well, they deserved it.” And boy, is he getting one hundred fifty or two hundred thousand dollars a year. He doesn’t know what the hell’s going on out there. He’s comfortable inside the Beltway.

I’m just picking on The Post because they’re inside the Beltway. They’re not the only— See, that’s —we’re getting down to some very fundamental things. And that’s why they’re mad at Jim Wright. If they were picking the pockets and all that, yet the other people were doing very well, they say, “Oh, well, life goes on.” But not only are they playing that game, in the meantime they’re hosing others, and the other people are getting screwed in the process. Say, “Oh, no.”

Then it’s too much.

Audience:[45:00] Politicians sort of have an innate guerrilla ability to flow like water themselves.

Boyd: Well, they sure did flow on that one, didn’t they? And I forgot the pay raise.

Audience: Depending on the national sentiment, the American people adopted an attitude that the politicians immediately shook.

Boyd: I think they thought they could get that 51%, and the American people would just sit there with little grumbling, and get away with it. Well, it blew up in their face. They didn’t do just a little grumbling. They raised a fuss. You heard about the letters? “You go for it, we’re going to throw you out.” That’s the constituents on it. “You go for that, and you vote for it, we’re throwing you out. You’re not going to be re-elected, we guarantee.” And one guy said, “Holy Christ. I want to be re-elected.” He forgot that pay raise.

Audience: Another source of resentment is the back-door approach that they took, which they know is—

Boyd: Which is a filthy approach.

Audience: Right.

Boyd: So they didn’t have to take any—

Audience: If I don’t vote, then it happens.

Boyd: Yeah. They don’t have to vote. In other words, they didn’t even take responsibility for it. They couldn’t even put it up front. They tried to do it under the table, so to speak. Not only did they want to get 51%, they knew they wouldn’t get it if they had it up front, so therefore, they tried to sneak it in under the table.

[46:11]
[End of Tape 5, Side 1]

[Begin Tape 5, Side 2]

Boyd: They’re holding their constituents in contempt by doing that. And so they reacted. Now they’re afraid to vote anything. Because there’s people out there waiting, “let them come in again, we’ll beat up on them again.” You know, because they know they’re going to probably come in for 20% or 25%, they said we’ll go after them one more time. Because now they’re sensitized, you understand? They’re out there, sensitized out there. Okay.