FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33...5 Counter Insurgency:
Narrative – the central mechanism, expressed in story form, through which ideologies are expressed and absorbed.
Civil Considerations – How the manmade infrastructure, civilian institutions, and attitudes and activities of the civilian leaders, populations, and organizations within an area of operations influence the conduct of military operations
The Army/Marine Corps new manual on Counter-Insurgency introduces analytical tools for the analysis of a civil population so that military power can be effectively used as a part of an overall national effort to achieve and maintain peace in a given region or conflict. This is the first time that an effective doctrine has been created to maximize and integrate a nation’s resources in conflict resolution outside of a theocratic Bamboo or Iron Curtain, or Terrorist training camp. It is the product of thousands of combat veterans from the conflicts of the last twenty years and picks up the dropped doctrine learned at a terrible cost in Sunny South Vietnam. And it goes far beyond the titled “Counter Insurgency” and is applicable to war in general, including how to avoid it, end it, and make a lasting peace.
The manual introduces such tools as population support overlay, ethnicity overlay, perception assessment matrix, social network analysis, activities matrix, and association matrix which will be added to the existing tools of IPB (Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield) regarding trafficability, fields of fire, range fans, and the like from direct combat.
In reviewing these innovative tools and given my checkered careening through life, I another set of tools to be added to allow the commander to analyze the passion of politics and war as it effects both or all sides of a conflict. These tools are based on the works of Eric Berne, father of Transactional Analysis, and author of the best selling book “Games People Play” with a small twist on these I have been working on since reading the book Berne wrote the year before “Games People Play”, called “Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups” in 1963.
This latter book was written with the objective "to offer a systematic framework for the therapy of ailing groups and organizations." In this book, Berne discusses the structure and dynamics of groups, classification of groups, the analysis of transactions, an overview of games, group psychotherapy, and other subjects. There is one copy left at Amazon.com. I got the other one.
Berne introduces concepts such as the sources of authority that are part of what FM 3-24 calls the “narrative” of a culture, group, or organization that define and transmit purpose and manner of group dynamics. Sources of authority can be formal, such as the US Constitution, or informal such as the “American Way of Life”, Mom and Apple Pie, and heroes and gods such as John Wayne, George Washington and Jesus Christ. Likewise, the Islamic culture has its formal and informal structures of authority including legends and religious doctrine and Islamic society has its narrative in terms of values, norms, as expressed by its heroes.
As a former Psyops officer and lobbyist on Capitol Hill, I have been working on a general theory to integrate Transactional Analysis (TA) into propaganda production and analysis and which fits into the concept of a narrative as defined in FM 3-24. As in TA, Eric Berne divides the unconscious ego state of mind just below the conscious into three parts: Parent (P), Adult (A), and Child (C). These three states have little to do with relative age or maturity, but of three different ways of dealing with the past, present, and future.
The Parent is a compendium of values, behaviors, and attitudes learned or born that regulate proper behavior to maintain the social, personal and family life. Its primary focus is survival of the species as expressed in a given culture. It is the part of the ego that gives permission or authority to act. It excites action more than passion. It acts as if instinctive and is evoked by such things as danger to the family or children, and is culturally sensitive. It is evoked by symbols of authority such as the Bible, Koran, Torah, or Constitution.
The Parent has two sides, protecting and nurturing the child and the future of the family. In the human species, the Father is the Protector, and Mother is the nurturing, at least on the surface. This dualism of purpose is at the center of values of social status.
The Adult is a computer. It does not emote. It is Mr. Spock on the Enterprise.
The Child is the seat of passion and is the center of where a person feels his or her place in life is. As Eric Berne wrote, it is either OK or Not OK, the title of another of his books. An OK Child is at peace with himself/herself and, given the inexperience of most parents, few of us get out of childhood without a few dents. It is the Not OK Child that is the source of all evil and distress throughout human history. And as those of us with children of all ages, some never grow up.
The Child is the best and worst part of life without which there is no joy or anger. Boys have their toys whether it is a Lego or a Lamborghini, girls have dolls or diamonds. And the big part of it is sex, be it fun or fear. And as we go through life, we like to play like we did as children of the roles of our family and local society. I played Cowboys and Indians before that became Politically Incorrect, and today’s children of all ages duke it out with the forces of evil on X-Box or PC.
The Child in any species represents the future of the family and society. It is the focus of parental efforts, and judged by the success of successive generation.s
In the roles we play on X-Box or life, our basic framework is define largely by our perceptions of the original nuclear family we grew up in consisting of Father, Mother and Child in which the Parent of TA is divided into the nurturing side (Mother) and protective side (Father). When the nuclear family is threatened, the Mother grabs the kids to nurture them while the father grabs his club, cannon or laser to defeat the dinosaur or demons or the bully next door.
If a child’s real parents were dysfunctional, the child will adapt normally to a crazy world which, taken out of the original context, is dysfunctional. The dysfunctional Parent or Child can be characterized in two types of persona, Heroic or Villainous and from two angles, yours and the other guys. One wishes to play the role of the Heroic and blame the other as Villainous. And there is a dynamic between the three parts of the Child, the personas adopted and the angles portrayed.
It’s called the Karpmann or Drama Triangle and consists of the role of Victim, Rescuer and Prosecutor. The typical victim is the Innocent Helpless Child which requires the Rescue by a Heroic Mother or Father against a Villain. A typical Villain is one which combines all the characteristic of a dysfunctional Mother, Father and/or Child: The Bitch, Bastard and/or Brat. The Bitch manipulates, the Bastard beats, and the Brat is, well, a brat … avaricious, vicious, greedy, savage and mindless.
The Heroic counterparts of the Father include Crusader Rabbit, Dudley Doright, John Wayne, Chow Yung Fat, the US Cavalry, and/or the Marines. The Heroic counterparts of the Mother include Mother Theresa, Harriet Nelson (of Ozzie and Harriet fame), or the Virgin Mary. The Child is, well, a child …innocent, pure, and helpless.
These relations taken around the Triangle have one important part that gives life its spice, and it is called the Role Switch. The Not OK Child might start out as a victim who would justify adoption of a Bastard or Bitch course of action to achieve justice, but these would be cloaked as the position of Protector by attacking a perceived Bastard. Thus a criminal thinking himself put upon by injustice would seek balance by robbing a store, which would get himself arrested and get to play the role of victim again. The prosecuting attorney gets to persecute (batter) the Brat, in order to protect the victim (store owner and the public in general) while the defense attorney gets to portray the prosecuting attorney as a Bastard or manipulative Bitch in order to protect his helpless Innocent Child. Source: Law and Order, Perry Mason, CSI, Sherlock Holmes, Captain Kirk, et al.
Any given group will have its own variation of the game system between Hero, Villain and Child as a part of its system of authority and roles played within the group and with relation to other groups. The Jihadi takes his parental source of authority as the Koran as seen as the pure truly Fatherly persona, which gives Heroic permission to act as Bastards against the Infidel Bastards and Bitches.
And so starts the story which follows the standard Hollywood formula as embellished by Joseph Campbell. But that is another story.
Narrative – the central mechanism, expressed in story form, through which ideologies are expressed and absorbed.
Civil Considerations – How the manmade infrastructure, civilian institutions, and attitudes and activities of the civilian leaders, populations, and organizations within an area of operations influence the conduct of military operations
The Army/Marine Corps new manual on Counter-Insurgency introduces analytical tools for the analysis of a civil population so that military power can be effectively used as a part of an overall national effort to achieve and maintain peace in a given region or conflict. This is the first time that an effective doctrine has been created to maximize and integrate a nation’s resources in conflict resolution outside of a theocratic Bamboo or Iron Curtain, or Terrorist training camp. It is the product of thousands of combat veterans from the conflicts of the last twenty years and picks up the dropped doctrine learned at a terrible cost in Sunny South Vietnam. And it goes far beyond the titled “Counter Insurgency” and is applicable to war in general, including how to avoid it, end it, and make a lasting peace.
The manual introduces such tools as population support overlay, ethnicity overlay, perception assessment matrix, social network analysis, activities matrix, and association matrix which will be added to the existing tools of IPB (Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield) regarding trafficability, fields of fire, range fans, and the like from direct combat.
In reviewing these innovative tools and given my checkered careening through life, I another set of tools to be added to allow the commander to analyze the passion of politics and war as it effects both or all sides of a conflict. These tools are based on the works of Eric Berne, father of Transactional Analysis, and author of the best selling book “Games People Play” with a small twist on these I have been working on since reading the book Berne wrote the year before “Games People Play”, called “Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups” in 1963.
This latter book was written with the objective "to offer a systematic framework for the therapy of ailing groups and organizations." In this book, Berne discusses the structure and dynamics of groups, classification of groups, the analysis of transactions, an overview of games, group psychotherapy, and other subjects. There is one copy left at Amazon.com. I got the other one.
 |
| The Soldier as Parent, Nurturing and Protecting |
Berne introduces concepts such as the sources of authority that are part of what FM 3-24 calls the “narrative” of a culture, group, or organization that define and transmit purpose and manner of group dynamics. Sources of authority can be formal, such as the US Constitution, or informal such as the “American Way of Life”, Mom and Apple Pie, and heroes and gods such as John Wayne, George Washington and Jesus Christ. Likewise, the Islamic culture has its formal and informal structures of authority including legends and religious doctrine and Islamic society has its narrative in terms of values, norms, as expressed by its heroes.
As a former Psyops officer and lobbyist on Capitol Hill, I have been working on a general theory to integrate Transactional Analysis (TA) into propaganda production and analysis and which fits into the concept of a narrative as defined in FM 3-24. As in TA, Eric Berne divides the unconscious ego state of mind just below the conscious into three parts: Parent (P), Adult (A), and Child (C). These three states have little to do with relative age or maturity, but of three different ways of dealing with the past, present, and future.
The Parent is a compendium of values, behaviors, and attitudes learned or born that regulate proper behavior to maintain the social, personal and family life. Its primary focus is survival of the species as expressed in a given culture. It is the part of the ego that gives permission or authority to act. It excites action more than passion. It acts as if instinctive and is evoked by such things as danger to the family or children, and is culturally sensitive. It is evoked by symbols of authority such as the Bible, Koran, Torah, or Constitution.
The Parent has two sides, protecting and nurturing the child and the future of the family. In the human species, the Father is the Protector, and Mother is the nurturing, at least on the surface. This dualism of purpose is at the center of values of social status.
The Adult is a computer. It does not emote. It is Mr. Spock on the Enterprise.
The Child is the seat of passion and is the center of where a person feels his or her place in life is. As Eric Berne wrote, it is either OK or Not OK, the title of another of his books. An OK Child is at peace with himself/herself and, given the inexperience of most parents, few of us get out of childhood without a few dents. It is the Not OK Child that is the source of all evil and distress throughout human history. And as those of us with children of all ages, some never grow up.
 |
| Which one will raise a family? |
The Child is the best and worst part of life without which there is no joy or anger. Boys have their toys whether it is a Lego or a Lamborghini, girls have dolls or diamonds. And the big part of it is sex, be it fun or fear. And as we go through life, we like to play like we did as children of the roles of our family and local society. I played Cowboys and Indians before that became Politically Incorrect, and today’s children of all ages duke it out with the forces of evil on X-Box or PC.
The Child in any species represents the future of the family and society. It is the focus of parental efforts, and judged by the success of successive generation.s
In the roles we play on X-Box or life, our basic framework is define largely by our perceptions of the original nuclear family we grew up in consisting of Father, Mother and Child in which the Parent of TA is divided into the nurturing side (Mother) and protective side (Father). When the nuclear family is threatened, the Mother grabs the kids to nurture them while the father grabs his club, cannon or laser to defeat the dinosaur or demons or the bully next door.
If a child’s real parents were dysfunctional, the child will adapt normally to a crazy world which, taken out of the original context, is dysfunctional. The dysfunctional Parent or Child can be characterized in two types of persona, Heroic or Villainous and from two angles, yours and the other guys. One wishes to play the role of the Heroic and blame the other as Villainous. And there is a dynamic between the three parts of the Child, the personas adopted and the angles portrayed.
It’s called the Karpmann or Drama Triangle and consists of the role of Victim, Rescuer and Prosecutor. The typical victim is the Innocent Helpless Child which requires the Rescue by a Heroic Mother or Father against a Villain. A typical Villain is one which combines all the characteristic of a dysfunctional Mother, Father and/or Child: The Bitch, Bastard and/or Brat. The Bitch manipulates, the Bastard beats, and the Brat is, well, a brat … avaricious, vicious, greedy, savage and mindless.
The Heroic counterparts of the Father include Crusader Rabbit, Dudley Doright, John Wayne, Chow Yung Fat, the US Cavalry, and/or the Marines. The Heroic counterparts of the Mother include Mother Theresa, Harriet Nelson (of Ozzie and Harriet fame), or the Virgin Mary. The Child is, well, a child …innocent, pure, and helpless.
These relations taken around the Triangle have one important part that gives life its spice, and it is called the Role Switch. The Not OK Child might start out as a victim who would justify adoption of a Bastard or Bitch course of action to achieve justice, but these would be cloaked as the position of Protector by attacking a perceived Bastard. Thus a criminal thinking himself put upon by injustice would seek balance by robbing a store, which would get himself arrested and get to play the role of victim again. The prosecuting attorney gets to persecute (batter) the Brat, in order to protect the victim (store owner and the public in general) while the defense attorney gets to portray the prosecuting attorney as a Bastard or manipulative Bitch in order to protect his helpless Innocent Child. Source: Law and Order, Perry Mason, CSI, Sherlock Holmes, Captain Kirk, et al.
Any given group will have its own variation of the game system between Hero, Villain and Child as a part of its system of authority and roles played within the group and with relation to other groups. The Jihadi takes his parental source of authority as the Koran as seen as the pure truly Fatherly persona, which gives Heroic permission to act as Bastards against the Infidel Bastards and Bitches.
And so starts the story which follows the standard Hollywood formula as embellished by Joseph Campbell. But that is another story.
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