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Iranian PSYOP??
By John
By PSYOP COP
I’ve been keeping an eye on the news concerning Iran and the Kurdish region in northern Iraq. It seems that the Iranians are trying to take care of some business on their side of the border reference the Kurds. It only reinforces my opinion that we should give the Kurds their nation and help them foment trouble in northern Iran and Syria, while leveraging them hard to lay off of claims in Turkey. I believe it can be done.
As Crapgame said in “Kelly’s Heroes,”: “Make him a deal… a DEAL deal. Who knows… maybe the guy’s a Republican.”.
This little tid-bit from Reuters…
...makes it appear that the Iranians have been engaging in a little PSYOP of their own. Now, hold your horses. The Iranians are probably not readying for an attack (just yet). This is probably designed to instill fear in the Kurdish population and give them a moment of pause. There’s apparently no evidence on the leaflet as to who the source is, so this would be classified as grey PSYOP.
“Grey PSYOP?” you ask.
There are three types: white, grey, and black. The types mainly deal with their source. White PSYOP can be directly traced back to its legitimate source. For example, I hand an Iraqi kid a leaflet reading, “don’t throw rocks at American troops.” This product would have a product number on it (a bunch of letters and numbers that mean something to PSYOP’ers but are gibberish to everyone else). You know who made it by looking at it.
Grey PSYOP is product whose source is unknown. Usually, this is not nefarious in nature and we (the Americans) engage in grey PSYOP all the time. For example, if I disseminated a product that had a message that read, “support the Iraqi government” but had no product number on it, that could be considered grey PSYOP. Basically, the target audience doesn’t know who made it.
Black PSYOP is fun, but also illegal (well, for us anyway… you know how it is… the bad guys get to have ALL the fun). Black PSYOP is produced so that the target audience believes the source is someone who it is not. For example, say I go into a Sunni area one night or early one morning and I spray-paint, “Sunnis suck” on the homes and walls in the area. Sunnis wake up, see the graffiti, and think, “damn Shi’ites… let’s go kill them.” That’s black PSYOP. Now, this is a simple example… you can actually get far more creative than this, but ummm…. yeah, it’s illegal and the official line of the United States government is that it or its representative do not engage in the dissemination of product whose origin is implied (or stated) other than what it really is.
Don’t ask me why it’s illegal. I’m not a lawyer. I’m just PSYOP Cop.
Here endeth the lesson.
PSYOP COP is a VMI alumnus with experience in the Army's psychological operations field.
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Comments
Disagree. Even after abandoning them to Saddam following Desert Storm, the Kurds have stood faithfully by us. And, they have shown a much better propensity towards self-governance than the Iraqi Arabs in Baghdad have.
One thing is for certain, if we abandon the Kurds to the Iraqis once we leave (and, eventually, we WILL leave), then the Kurds will break away on their own terms, not ours. That would be decidedly bad, primarily because of the Turkey thing.
There are not many "good" solutions left in Iraq... in fact, there might not be any. Empowering the Kurds and winning a TRUE ally in the region (rather than what is and will become a Shi'ia-dominated, Iranian-friendly gov't in Baghdad) is the best path to follow, in my opinion.
"yeah, it’s illegal and the official line of the United States government is that it or its representative do not engage in the dissemination of product whose origin is implied (or stated) other than what it really is."
Not withstanding that little period where US military agencies were feeding articles into the major Iraqi newspapers? Which might not be bad, had they identified the source as such, but when the same phrases were used in multiple news stories, oh, that's sloppy.
And I'm sure you meant "stabilize the region between Northern Iran and Syria" as opposed to "foment trouble." I'm just reading an account of Halabjah, did not know how much the Iranians had pushed into/around that town in the 1980s. I'll bet the Kurds and Iranians could make a deal as to border issues.
I see more and more people thinking ahead to Plan B, break Iraq up. I hope US policy makers are doing seriously planning for this contingency. And by serious I mean how do we allocate the oil between the three?
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PSYOP Cop forgets to mention that black PSYOP is only illegal for the US military. There are certain agencies within the US government that regularly practice black PSYOP. They are the ones that hand you a business card that just has a name.
"...we should give the Kurds their nation and help them foment trouble in northern Iran and Syria, while leveraging them hard to lay off of claims in Turkey. I believe it can be done."
Any alliance with a Kurdish state would essentially end our alliance with Turkey (for what that's worth) and with the Turkish military (which is a big deal). The formation of a Kurdish state will lead to real military conflict between the Turks and the Kurds. The Kurds will not abandon their Turkish claims, its a historical fact. The general borders of the proposed Kurdistan have remained the same through decades of Turkish and Baathist oppression. Now that there power is clearly on the rise, they're not going to reduce their goals. And even if the Iraqi Kurds revoked their claim (which they won't), Turkish Kurds aren't stupid. They can compare their quality of life with the quality of life in southern Turkey, and they know they're better off with self rule.
And the Turks are not going to allow a sovereign staging ground for crossborder attacks, just because the US says so. They will cross that border, long before the Iranians and Syrians are ready to respond. And regardless of how good people think the Peshmerga are, the Turks have the best professional military in the Islamic middle east.
Mike,
Do you think there is any way to handle the Turk-Kurd problem? It seems to me that this conflict is inevitable. And we aren't going to stay in Iraq forever.
Yeah, Mike, I know... it's a damnable situation. And maybe a deal wouldn't be able to be brokered.
The simple fact though is that it's going to happen even without forming and backing a Kurdish state, so what to do... what to do...
I was listening to the radio this morning and someone was playing back VP Cheney when he was SECDEF under Bush 41. Anyway, he was explaining why we didn't fully invade Iraq when Desert Storm was over and one of his points was SPECIFICALLY the Turk/Kurd situation.
I fear this one is going to get ugly.
It really is a mess. We've got two "allies" that are only alligned with us to an extent. There are vagaries in the Kurdish mindset that really make me nervous as far as backing them goes. Personally I'm in favor of continueing the balancing act as long as possible. The status quo sucks but the options I think are worse. Besides, the Kurds can essentially be the US's Hezbollah (or could serve that purpose). If we decide that we do want to seriously destablize that region, we can pour funds into the Kurds secure in the knowledge that the Kurds have enough regional enemies that they are the group least likely to turn on us. Just the threat of up arming the Kurds gives us infleunce over the Turks, Iraq, Syria and to a lesser extent Iran. If we could ever actually get the Kurds to be more pliable, we could really exert some leverage in the northern middle east.
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"I believe it can be done."
Famous words. Often followed by "it's too late to turn back now".
I believe one day conservatives will think before they act. But then again, that probably won't happen either.
How much success have we had in the past with empowering terrorists and having them limit their actions against OUR enemies? Sooner or later they turn against our allies and ourselves.