Selling War: A Critical Look at the Military's PR Machine
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Selling War: A Critical Look at the Military's PR Machine
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Overview
Alvarez couples his experiences as a public affairs officer in Iraq with extensive research on communication and government relations to expose why communications failed and led to the breakdown on the ground. A revealing glimpse into the inner workings of the military’s PR machine, where personnel become stewards of presidential legacies and keepers of flawed policies, Selling War provides a critical review of the outdated communication strategies executed in Iraq. Alvarez’s candid account demonstrates how a fundamental lack of understanding about how to wage an information war has led to the conditions we face now: the rise of ISIS and the return of U.S. forces to Iraq.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781612348179 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Potomac Books |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 384 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Steven J. Alvarez retired as a major from the U.S. Army Reserve after serving twenty-four years in the officer and enlisted ranks, on active duty and in the National Guard and Reserve. A recipient of the Bronze Star and the Combat Action Badge, during his military career Alvarez served as the commander of an Army public affairs detachment as well as the public affairs officer for several general officers and presidential appointees, including David Petraeus. In the private sector Alvarez works as a freelance writer and public relations professional.
Read an Excerpt
Selling War
A Critical Look at the Military's PR Machine
By Steven J. Alvarez
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Steven J. AlvarezAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61234-817-9
CHAPTER 1
Insulation
May 13, 2004: Attacks in Baghdad increased to 130 this week, up from 81 the previous week.
— Office of Security Cooperation (OSC) unclassified intelligence report
My son walked next to me and held my hand as the creamy, sweet smell of jasmine drifted by us on a warm breeze. Occasionally, he glanced at me, mostly after thunder rumbled in the distance, well beyond the Spanish moss-covered oaks that canopied our neighborhood in central Florida.
"Don't be scared," I told him. "It's just thunder." But nonetheless we quickened our pace, his hand firmly clasped in mine, as the thunder roared again, closer this time, louder than before, shaking the ground beneath us. Then something I couldn't see began to pull at my leg almost like a cramp, and I heard a voice that was definitely not the soft voice of my two-year-old boy.
"Steve, get up!"
I looked around, and it was still just me and Duncan standing underneath the tall oaks. The tugging on my leg continued, but when I looked down, nothing was there. Then an extraordinarily loud sound enveloped me. Boom! A young man suddenly appeared and hovered over me. He was agitated. For a second I didn't know where I was or who he was, but as I rubbed my eyes I realized I was back in the shitty reality I had volunteered to join.
My roommate, John, a young Army Reserve lieutenant, was yelling at me. As I departed the clarity of my dream and entered the fog of war, his voice got clearer.
"Steve! Wake the fuck up, man!" John yelled. "Dude, get up! We're getting hit!"
Our camp along the banks of the Tigris River in the Green Zone was getting pelted with rockets and mortar rounds, and he had been tugging on my leg, trying to wake me. The thunder I had heard in my dream was in reality explosions from insurgent rounds angrily closing in on our officer quarters.
I was exhausted, a uniformed zombie propped up each day by the hope of our mission and propelled by shots of espresso and dozens upon dozens of cups of coffee and chai tea. Once as I waited for a helicopter at a landing zone (LZ) at Camp Liberty, desperate for a pick-me-up in the energy-sapping three-digit heat, I emptied a pack of freeze-dried coffee into my mouth and added a few gulps of water that had warmed in my canteen after a daylong trip to eastern Iraq.
My team had been working an aggressive media campaign for three weeks, sleeping about four hours per night, if we were lucky, and I was skipping meals, thinking about taking up smoking again after eighteen years, not calling or writing home, and putting my nervous system through hell with a steady drip of caffeine that kept me moving. When I was at the office I was often pinging off the walls. When we traveled my right leg twitched nervously, continuously, as if I were quickly stepping on a bass drum, keeping a steady beat of activity that was driving my dick into the dirt. That night the insurgents literally could have dropped a bomb on me and I would have slept through it.
John and I ran outside to watch the nearby British compound take a beating. The compound was just a few yards from our hooch, and the place had a pub and was one of a few mental-health havens within the Green Zone. Temperate British soldiers and overpaid American civilians enjoyed pints of ale and escaped the seemingly inescapable feeling of perpetual Groundhog Day syndrome common to those who spent their entire war tours under the long shadows of high concrete blast walls at the fortified Baghdad compound. A few of us congregated amid the camp's confusion, and we watched, stupefied, as the indirect enemy fire worked its way closer and closer to us. In between the mortar rounds, rockets exploded loudly around us, some closer than others. The rockets were being fired indiscriminately, and many simply whizzed overhead and impacted deeper inside the Green Zone, but the mortars were being slowly and deliberately directed toward our camp.
A small crowd of U.S. officers, including three West Pointers who moved closer from the other side of the camp to get a better look at the incoming rounds, all watched the attack like spectators. This was new to me even though I was a career officer, and there was something captivating and mesmerizing about people trying to kill us. Given the decades of training I had received, I think I would have had more common sense and an overwhelming drive to flee for my life, but no shit there I was, out in the open, watching the attack, failing to take cover, and getting sprinkled with a light dusting of powdery sand that had been pulverized by the exploding rounds.
For many that night the attack would be the closest they'd ever get to the enemy. For hundreds of thousands of "fobbits," as we were affectionately dubbed by the guys operating outside compounds known as forward operating bases, it would be the only way many remembered they were actually in a war. We were all morbidly fascinated by the attack. We had that luxury, unlike the soldiers who patrolled the streets of Iraq "moving to contact," militaryspeak for soldiers looking to brawl with the bad guys. They used themselves to draw the enemy out of hiding.
While there was a chance of getting killed or wounded by a random mortar round, rocket, or occasional suicide bomber in the Green Zone, most informed, professional, and pragmatic soldiers knew that the real threat was beyond the reinforced walls of the compound, and improvised explosive devices, known as "IEDs," were the leading killer of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
There was a threat inside the Green Zone, and during my time in Baghdad several people died from lucky-shot mortar rounds, rockets, and even suicide bombers inside its walls, but given the fact that it had been raining mortars on us nearly every day for a month and only a couple of people had been killed, the real threat was outside the Green Zone's walls. Statistics showed the danger was elsewhere, and I suppose those figures gave us a false sense of security that night, but I think for most of us it was fascinating to be on the working end of a weapons platform. That changed when a round landed several yards from us.
"Get the fuck down!" John yelled as a round came screaming at us. We all hugged the ground as the round exploded, and a dusty cloud tinged with a burned gunpowder-like odor enveloped us. Another round came screaming in, and we finally did what we should have done minutes earlier: we ran for cover. An enemy spotter, it seemed, had our position locked.
I don't remember breathing, and my feet were heavy as if they were buried in wet sand. I couldn't move fast enough, although I knew mentally all pistons were firing and telling my body to run faster. As I ran away from the corner of the camp's perimeter, the rounds seemed to follow us. I was lost as I made my way, weaving in and out of the warren of trailers, trying to find someplace to put some concrete between me and the sky. The incoming shrieking rounds propelled me. I felt if I could outrun the sound, I would be okay. I looked around as I sprinted to find no one near me; everyone had gone different directions. I have never felt so alone. It felt like I had gone the wrong way, as if there was a right way to run. As I moved I got my bearings, and I made a beeline to the only known hard edifice in the compound, a blown-out building one hundred meters from our trailer. It seemed as if it was twenty miles away. In the distance the rounds menacingly kept announcing their departure with a sound familiar to magic acts. Foom! Then almost magically, the rounds would explode in our camp. Off in the distance the CPA's loudspeakers warned, "Take cover! Take cover!" although the rounds had now been falling for several minutes.
It was the early summer of 2004, and there were no bunkers to protect coalition personnel from enemy mortar rounds and rockets. We had air-conditioning and running water in our quarters, but no bunkers to protect us from indirect fire. At least we'd die cool and clean, we always joked, but the fact that we had creature comforts instead of personnel protection measures was an indicator of how mismanaged U.S. priorities were in Baghdad. The camps were basically trailer parks. Each trailer, if you were not a general officer or high-ranking civilian or if you didn't have connections, was shared by at least four personnel. The trailers were divided in half by a common bathroom; two people occupied each side of the trailer, and four people used one bathroom.
Living conditions were good, and we had electrical power and heated potable tap water most of the time, although I do remember taking one shower that coated me with a slimy film and made me stink of fuel. My guess is that a contractor likely hungover from the previous night's partying at Saddam's pool mistakenly filled a fuel tanker with water, or vice versa, and dispensed the tainted water into the potable-water reservoir camp residents used for personal hygiene. I figured the fuel-enriched water would kill any Iraqi critters that had set up their own camps on my body, so that day I simply stayed away from smokers. In hindsight I think I lucked out. Somewhere, I thought, there was a convoy in Iraq with sputtering engines caused by water in their fuel systems, something that likely pissed off a group of soldiers who got attacked due to the slow speed of their convoy. I happily smelled like a gas station attendant for a day.
Home life in Baghdad wasn't tough at all. We had new furniture and beds, including televisions with DVD players. Toward the end of my tour we were even given satellite television connections. Things were certainly much worse elsewhere in Iraq, and the steady nightly flow of medevac helicopters mercifully ferrying wounded troops into the Green Zone's military hospital was proof of that. As they came in over the river on their flight path, sometimes their prop wash would churn up dust and vibrate our tin living quarters and remind me just how much worse it could be for me. Even if we didn't have bunkers and sandbags, I wasn't going to bitch. I could be sleeping and shitting in a hole somewhere, or, worse, I could be sent home in a body bag to fill one.
Our camps were comfortable but impractical and evidence that the U.S. government was catering to civilians who shared battle space with military folks. Somewhere along the way someone had forgotten that we were in a war zone. As civilian personnel flooded Iraq, camps in the Green Zone were built to house them. But the trailers provided as living quarters and as offices were nothing more than aluminum sheds. Having spent time in the field in military tents, I loved the sheds. They kept heat and cool in as needed and were comfortable, but they didn't keep anything else out. In fact, once as my interpreter sat at his desk working on his computer, an AK-47 machine-gun round came slamming through the roof and bounced off his desk, ricocheted off of some lockers and the floor, and bounced into his hands.
"It is Allah's will I didn't die today, Captain," he said happily.
"No, you're simply a lucky motherfucker," I told him. I've since heard that story told many times by Iraq war veterans. I guess I was successful in telling at least one story in Iraq or there were many more lucky Iraqis who dodged a bullet.
Months after I arrived and after months of constant indirect fire attacks, someone, thankfully, finally found the wisdom to insulate our trailers with sandbags in 2004. Although I was thankful for the protection, I'm certain the sandbags could have gone somewhere else where insurgent activity was much worse. The bags weren't placed on the rooftops because the tin sheds couldn't support the weight of sandbags, but they did place them high around the walls, which was better than nothing. Later, thick concrete bunkers were placed around the camp so we could run into them should we come under fire. One was thankfully placed right outside our trailer not more than ten feet from my door, right near the spot where I was a spectator with the other dumb ass officers. Attacks would become so regular that many soldiers would grab their laptops, music players, and handheld video games as they ran to the bunkers. They grabbed anything to help pass the time as we waited for the "all clear" from the loudspeakers under twenty-four inches of reinforced concrete. It was like waiting for a train or for the rain to stop. We were simply killing time while insurgents were trying to kill us, but most of us didn't romanticize it. Attacks were inconvenient and annoying, but a part of life in Baghdad. While the attacks were frequent, they were ineffective, and the odds were great that a person could spend several years inside the sprawling Green Zone and never get hit or even near an attack. My odds that night were simply not the norm.
The night I was dreaming of my son, we had nothing but half-demolished concrete-block buildings to flee to and the moon's warm glow to find our way there in the dead of night, but at least we knew where the mortar rounds were landing and logic dictated we'd run the opposite way. When I reached the virtual safety of the building, another round launched across the Tigris River. Within seconds it screeched down almost atop us. I jumped into the building headlong through a jagged hole that used to hold a door. Iraqis had long since looted the windows, doors, and frames in the days following the invasion. The round exploded within a few meters of us.
I looked up from the smoky rubble, and there were two senior noncommissioned officers sitting calmly in the dark, smoking cigarettes. Early on in the attack as they evacuated their trailer and ran for cover, they had seen me and other staff officers, mouths agape as the mortar rounds rained down in the camp next door. They had watched us almost buy the farm. I wondered instantly why we had more rank. It seemed to me the Army had commissioned the wrong people.
"Hi, sir," he said, smirking. "What the fuck were you guys doing out there, sir?" he asked sarcastically, the cigarette dangling from his toothy grin.
"Sightseeing," I answered as I finally took a breath. I realized just how stupid my actions had been. I was disoriented from the fatigue, still asleep when John dragged me outside, and I guess I made myself vulnerable because I needed to see what had pulled me away from my family and brought me six thousand miles to Iraq. To this day I can't definitively say why I stood there and watched the mortar rounds come in, but I can say with no hesitation that I was never again a spectator.
We huddled closely into the small space of the shattered building, and I thought about how good their cigarettes smelled and wondered when the attack would end and how many more attacks I would have to endure. I had been in Iraq a few weeks, and while I had heard car bombs, mortar rounds and rockets exploding, and small-arms fire in previous weeks echoing in the distance, this was the first time the war had gotten close to me.
At the time I was working in Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace, an immensely disgusting display of wealth and opulence within the Green Zone, so I felt doubly safe and disconnected from harm inside of our marbled military headquarters. Because of this insulation I was still not yet used to the incoming fire, but in the coming months I would grow accustomed to it and eventually become numb to its sound as it angrily fell to the earth in search of a target. It would become a part of daily life sometimes for weeks at a time, and we treated it like inclement weather. We would don our flak vests and helmets and go about our business as calmly as one opens an umbrella or puts on a coat. It was part of the elements in Baghdad. The attacks were more inconvenient than they were dangerous. Maybe that's what I convinced myself of as I walked passed coalition soldiers cannonballing into Hussein's pool as other soldiers who couldn't resist the palace chow hall's three hot meals per day bronzed their bellies on lounge chairs. It was almost as if there were an invisible bubble over Saddam's pool. Nobody there ever felt like they'd get killed, or maybe they just didn't give a shit.
The mortars that night stopped firing shortly after a U.S. Army Apache helicopter flew overhead and headed off toward the Baghdad skyline. A soldier, moments later, walked up with a smoldering piece of rocket he had found a few feet from us, and we all looked at it as if it were an ancient relic. We were fascinated by it and pushed and shoved each other like kids trying to see something at show-and-tell. I didn't feel like a professional soldier. I felt like an amateur, a moron, someone just making believe he was a soldier. We had heard the mortar rounds coming in, but in between the mortar volleys the enemy had also fired rockets at us that made no sound as they came to the earth until they exploded.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Selling War by Steven J. Alvarez. Copyright © 2016 Steven J. Alvarez. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,1. Insulation,
2. The Coalition Provisional Authority Days,
3. The Iraqi Face,
4. The Blog of War,
5. David versus Goliath,
6. Iraqi Media Team,
7. Training the Iraqi Ministries,
8. Arab Media,
9. Al-Jazeera,
10. Fallujah,
11. Public Affairs,
12. Western Media,
Epilogue,
Notes,