Posted by
L Gravel on Wednesday, October 25, 2006 12:06:30 AM
I stumbled across a paper by the Institute of World Politics (by way of the
Competitive Enterprise Institute) entitled
Ridicule: An instrument in the war on terrorism. Included is this anecdote re: the American Revolution:
Despite their far superior training, discipline, skill and firepower, the British were unprepared for irregular combat with the colonists. The Americans were guerrilla fighters who had the bad form not to stand in formation on a battlefield and to shoot at enemy officers.
The British handily won the first engagement, the Battle of Lexington in April, 1775, but suffered heavy losses during their march from Concord back to Boston with Americans shooting at them from behind trees and rocks. Bostonians jeered. Among the many poems and ditties circulating around Boston after the opening shots of the war at Lexington and Concord was this one:
How brave you went out with muskets all bright,
And thought to befrighten the folks with the sight;
But when you got there how they powder’d your pums,
And all the way home how they pepper’d your bums,
And is it not, honies, a comical farce,
To be proud in the face, and be shot in the arse.[16]
Such mockery stung: the British army at the time was the finest, most experienced and most formidable in the world, its officers and men proud of their history, in their view, of gentlemanly warfighting. The practically un-trained, mostly un-uniformed, often un-disciplined, frequently uncouth, and generally low-class American riffraff, in British eyes, were no worthy adversary at all.
I add this: I remember how Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf in a briefing ridiculed Saddam Hussein during Gulf War I.
Wikipedia has the quote:
As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist, he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he's a great military man.
I loved it when he said that. Anyway, the IPW paper concludes:
Ridicule is a powerful weapon of warfare. It can be a strategic weapon. The United States must take advantage of it against terrorists, proliferators, and other threats. Ridicule is vital because:
* It sticks.
* The target can’t refute it.
* It is almost impossible to repress, even if driven underground.
* It spreads on its own and multiplies naturally.
* It gets better with each re-telling.
* It boosts morale at home.
* Our enemy shows far greater intolerance to ridicule than we.
* Ridicule divides the enemy, damages its morale, and makes it less attractive to supporters and prospective recruits.
* The ridicule-armed warrior need not fix a physical sight on the target. Ridicule will find its own way to the targeted individual. To the enemy, being ridiculed means losing respect. It means losing influence. It means losing followers and repelling potential new backers.
* To the enemy, ridicule can be worse than death. At least many enemies find death to be a supernatural martyrdom. Ridicule is much worse: destruction without martyrdom: A fate worse than death. And they have to live with it.
P.J. O'Rourke, call the Pentagon.