Back when I was a transition student, waiting to enter official Air Force technical training, I pulled some hours in the base protocol shop. I wasn’t too excited about the job, until I found out that we’d be working with base public affairs. PA was actually my first choice on my “dream sheet” for assignment selection. I was kind of bummed when I didn’t get it, but that quickly turned to relief when I started learning more about the career field.
One thing I learned to hate about the way Air Force personnel handled the media was their fierce determination to be as rigid and uninformative as possible in press releases. Here, I’ll give you an example:
COMBINED AIR OPERATIONS CENTER, Southwest Asia – A U.S. Air Force F-16CJ Fighting Falcon dropped precision munitions near Al Nussayyib, Iraq Sept. 25, killing Abu Nasr al-Tunisi and two other Al Q’aeda in Iraq operatives.They were killed when the aircraft, assigned to U.S. Central Command Air Forces, dropped two laser guided 500 lb Joint Direct Attack Munition GBU-12 bombs, destroying the terrorist safe house where the three were meeting
“Air power is crucial to setting the conditions for stability in Iraq,” said Lt General Gary L. North, Combined Air Forces Component Commander.
He continued with, “Air power overhead provides capability to the fight with precision targeting which was used on Tuesday to ensure these individuals could no longer target innocent Iraq citizens.”
You could pratically write a formula for these obtuse canned statements. Acknowledge the overall mission, define impact, and outline your contribution to the overall good. I remember a colonel calling my friend (a PAO) into his office and delivering a 30 minute ass-chewing over an article in which the colonel felt he was misquoted. Turns out he wasn’t misquoted, my friend had simply used the parts of the interview that were pertinent. He had quoted the boss word-for-word. Probably left out the part where “Air power is crucial to setting the conditions for stability in Iraq.”
It’s as if John Madden is doing the war’s play-by-play: “scoring is the key to winning, Al.” Ugh.
It’s not all PA’s fault. Somewhere along the line Air Force senior leadership developed this universal lame-speak. Listen to a dozen colonels talk and 11 of them will give you quotes that are so similiar and ambiguous you could interchange each quote to fit a different news story.
Distant from the fight and hated for a controversial acquisitions program, I’ve always felt that the Air Force is the most disliked service in the Armed Forces. Image is a huge issue with the force right now, and our Public Affairs methodology isn’t helping.
I wish the Air Force would shoot straight in these interviews. Talk like men, talk like leaders… instead of talking like robotic bureaucrats.
Take my man General Mattis, for example. When asked in an interview if there would be an increase in the deployment schedule, the hard-charging Marine general replied:
You know, we are at war and the enemy gets a vote in this thing. If the enemy makes a press, a full-court press, and we have to react, we would shrink the dwell (the time troops spend between deployments). It’s whatever it takes. But we, what we will not do is permit the enemy an initiative that we don’t check him on.
“Full court press” and “check him.” You’ll never hear an Air Force officer talk like that, not anymore at least. But that’s how Americans communicate, that’s what America understands. No wonder the public doesn’t know what’s going on over there. We’ll never win the political side of this fight if we keep using this stiff, alien “take me to your leader” dialect.
The Air Force had a General Mattis once. An unapologetic warrior, disdained for his bluntness but so damn alpha-male that you couldn’t help but to want to follow the man. A cigar-chomping sonuvabitch who fantasizes about slaying his enemies and made batsh*t crazy claims like we’ll “bomb them back to the stone age.”
Put me in charge of Air Force Public Affairs, and my first order of business would be to open the Curtis LeMay School for Public Speaking.
And sadly, the General is using yesterday’s terms. If targeting isn’t precise, it isn’t targeting – it’s an advance by fire. Also, “target” is not synonymous with “attack,” or “terrorize.”
Sounds like the General needs to return to Charm School, or get the Joint Staff memo on the Terms of the Day. My two cents…
A lot of this robotic speak began in the late 80′s early 90′s when most of the Vietnam era airmen started retiring. I remember when we were directed to quit refering to the Mess hall as a “mess hall” and call it a “dining facility”, Barracks as “dormitorys” and the worst of all, the infamous “cockpit” should be reffered to as a “aircrew compartment” there was a lot of puke to clean up after that one!
It is a top end problem, the Generals and others who talk the talk and walk the walk are held back. We had a saying when I was in, There are some officers and NCO’s who are put in a locker with a sign on it that reads “in case of war break glass”.
Amen, John…although I’m retired AF, sign me up for the first class at the Curtis LeMay School for Public Speaking!
preach it brother! Although language isn’t the only thing wrong with the air force these days. I can’t stand the way air force officers interview, it sounds like everything they say was first put up on a powerpoint slide and approved by a group of officers.
This is one reason why Al Queda is winning the information war. We just don’t connect with the global populace. We don’t make our case in terms the world understands. We fail to define the threat clearly. Let me rewite the message: “We wasted three terrorists from the sky wth a couple of 500lb bombs down the chimney. Air power worked.”
See? Much clearer. More punch. More effective public speaking. And people like it.
The Air Force used to be a service that took horrible casaulties during WWII and Korea. They prided themselves on free-thinking, courage, and their distance from “Big Army.”
Now it’s just a giant corporation, more interested in planning meetings, sensitivity training, memos, and mission statements. It’s a bunch of lawyers, accountants, and businessmen in uniforms who run around calling themselves warfighters and insisting that Air Power can win COIN ops.
I never noticed the public affairs speak until John pointed it out, but it’s just another indication that the Air Force has completely lost its warrior spirit and its way. I’m glad I got out when I did.
I was stationed at Clark AB in the PI during Desert Shield. The Double Deuce with the big “Elephant Cage” out behind the 13AF hospital.
There was an article in the Stars & Stripes talking about the “probable” upcoming war. An Air Force colonel was one of the people interviewed for the piece where he talked about the Iraqi military.
His money quote? “We’re going to have to kill a whole lot of them to get their attention.” I think my reaction was, “F**k yeah!”
Every other Air Force officer quoted in any artical seemed to talk nothing but “centers of gravity” and “AirLand Battle”.
It’s as if the Air Force is afraid to publicly let on that they kill people and break their things!
Hey, doubletalk is nothing new to the AF. A hilarious example (in text form) of “What the Captain means is…” from Vietnam can be at
I once stumbled across one of the audio recordings of it on the Internet. If you have never heard it, you should try to find a copy!
Sorry. The URL did not come through the first time. “What the Captain means is…” can be found at http://www.colorado4x4.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=877857
VN Vet, this is a link that contains both the hysterical “What the Capt means…” AND another VN era comm log of an F4 flight serving their nation, titled “Sharkbait 21″ (scroll down).
Absolutely hilarious!
http://www.pprune.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-206962.html
I think the reason for the carefully worded, non-spontaneous, toe-the-party-line statements is that Air Force leaders (probably correctly) consider most of the MSM to be an enemy. They are acutely aware that anything they say wrong can be taken out of context and used to make the Air Force in general and themselves in particular look stupid, reckless, bloodthirty, irresponsible, and evil. There really is a Charm School that teaches newly-minted generals and SES civilians how to talk to the media, BTW: it is a week long course taught by SAF/PA in the Pentagon using the Air Force TV studio there to simulate a press conference, a talk show, a surprise “ambush interview”, and other scenarios. The brass are taught to stay on message above all else–do not take risks in front of the camera.
Lets see When Lemay was Air Force Chief of Staff:
-He could smoke cigars.
-There was no “PT” uniform.
-People acutally went to the clubs to meet women.
-An diveristy was just a word in the dictionary.
As they would say in the New Navy-”No chance paddles!”
John,
BullShit! There are plenty of Colonels in USAF that will tell you like it is…but we’ll never get promoted past that rank.
Former Tech is right the Big Blue has become a big corporation… Even AFSOC is getting “blued” … I guess it is time to retire
An Air Commando Colonel
Cite, John, cite … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h67k9eEw9AY
The REMF’s are now setting “policy”. With ever increasing veneer, to be sure. But “killing” is too final for the average Citizen to accept as The Job. We’re too soft: it will be our undoing. This stateless mufti enemy we now face has NO such compunction.