Swiftboat Veterans for Truth and Viagra: Hard Messages to Soft Audiences

Many pundits are calling the current Presidential election with too much confidence.  Politics in America is war limited to words, but it is war. And the outcome of war often turns on surprise: hitting the enemy hard from a place no one saw coming.  From the arrows at Agincourt defeating the French knights to the Scipio beating Hannibal and the Carthaginians at Zama, surprise wins.  And this fall, a surprise no one sees coming may make one of the candidates a winner.  In my view, a surprise attack on John Kerry led to his defeat in 2004.  

More than a decade ago, I was watching a TV and a commercial for Viagra came on the screen.  I was not paying attention until the warning about side effects came on.  Then I could not stop laughing.  I called a couple of friends who were in advertising and we laughed more. 

Until that moment, every drug commercial used an auctioneer for the mandatory health warning at the end of the ad.  In this commercial, the side effects in the middle of the commercial in a deep, slow voice. 

“For an erection lasting more than four hours, seek medical help.  Prolonged use may cause blindness.”

Brilliant!!!

Tell a guy who can’t get hard that he may have an erection lasting four hours!  At four hours and one minute that guy will walk into the Emergency Room and let the whole world know he has had a woody for 241 minutes—and counting.

Most Viagra customers are older.  They are old enough to remember being warned as I was in the 1950s that masturbating will make you go blind.  Here is a drug that will make a limp guy hard for four hours AND make you blind.  It must be great stuff. In reality, going blind or a 4-hour erection are much less likely than winning the lottery, but they remind Viagra customers of the days when they were young and the problem they had was being hard all the time!

The commercial won a national Addy Award, the advertising equivalent of the Oscars, as it should! 

What does Viagra have to do with Swift Boat Veterans forTruth—the ad campaign that torpedoed a Vietnam War veteran and let two guys who ducked Vietnam War service win the election?  Those ads told a public that was mostly ignorant of military life that John Kerry was a terrible candidate because he lied about his war record.  In 2001, American soldiers went from Zeroes during the Vietnam War and to Heroes that were defending us from terrorism. By 2004 soldiers were the most trusted people in America. 

This Swift Boat ad campaign would have been met with derision in the decades right after World War 2, when every American family had a soldier in it and everybody knew many soldiers.  Fifteen million soldiers served in World War 2.  And some of them told lies so fantastic they would make Mark Twain blush.  I went to Basic during the Vietnam War and heard some of the most incredible lies I have ever heard from my fellow basic trainees. 

What the Kerry haters really wanted to say was way too complicated and controversial for 30-second TV ad.  They wanted to say Kerry turned on his fellow soldiers when he returned from Viet Nam.  With Jane Fonda in Paris he came way too close to consorting with our enemies.  I have hated John Kerry since he testified before Congress in 1970 and I think of him as an unconvicted traitor. 

Attacking Kerry for his real crime would have failed. Jane Fonda is an icon of film.  And for many people, Jane Fonda did nothing wrong.  So the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacked Kerry first as a liar.  The attack worked.  From the first moment I heard that campaign, I knew they were attacking Kerry in a way that most of the public would understand rather than attack him for what most veterans were really angry about. 

Both ads worked because they took amplified minor facts to achieve a major goal:  selling blue pills and defeating John Kerry.  The number of Viagra users who have actually had an erection lasting four hours would fit in a Boston Subway car.  The ones who have actually gone blind could fit in an old-fashioned phone booth. 

As to liars in uniform, the majority of the military consists of men under the age of 24, far from home, insecure and trying to blend with an intensely macho group.  Some of the more incredible lies I have ever heard, I heard in a barracks. 

So both campaigns used facts that would reach their audience to get attention.  Once they had that attention, then they could add in all the other information they really wanted to convey. 

Viagra marketers told their attentive customers how to get the drug through their doctors.  The doctors warned the patients of side effects that actually might happen.  Swift Boat Veterans for Truth amplified every misdeed of John Kerry through and after his service in the Vietnam War.  By the time of the election two guys who stayed home from the war were Heroes and the actual combat veteran was a Zero.

In mass communication, starting with the most important message is often the worst strategy for getting your message to your audience.

Viagra made the rare side effects the center of their message when some bright ad writer realized the warning was just what the audience wanted to hear.

Like the smart guys who sent the murderer Al Capone to prison for tax evasion, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth hit Kerry from an angle he never expected to deny him the biggest job in the world.   

Mission Accomplished.

Need a Fitness Plan? Ask Someone Who Is Out of Shape

The day after my unit arrived at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to train for deployment to Iraq, we took an Army Fitness Test.  Forty-two of the 110 soldiers in the unit failed the test.  I volunteered be the sergeant in charge of getting those men and women in shape. 

Our commander was a 25-year-old Lieutenant who scored nothing but maximum on the fitness test.  He could see that pre-deployment training for the soldiers who failed was a medley of pizza, beer and video games.  He lined up the forty-soldiers and introduced me as the remedial fitness training sergeant.  One line in his introduction I will never forget:  “Sergeant Gussman is older than every one of your mothers and he scores in top ten percent of the fitness test.  You are even half his age and you all flunked.”  He went on to remind them about their commitment to Army values, their enlistment and other ways in which they were utter failures.

Our company had fitness training every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 530am and ruck marches, the confidence course and other training on Sunday.  Remedial fitness was at 7pm on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. 

For the 90 minutes I had the out-of-shape group, they did aerobic exercise.  They ran the track, ran on machines in the gym, used the stair stepper and other aerobic machines.  Most of them flunked the run.  Most of them were overweight.  Even the ones who flunked the pushups and situps would be better if they lost weight so I my program was keep your out-of-shape soldiers moving and away from video games.

Which led me to discover another big difference between out-of-shape people and avid athletes.  During the two months we were at Fort Sill, nearly every one of the soldiers who failed the fitness test came to me privately to tell me about a diet or a fitness plan they were sure was the key to getting in shape. 

I listened to a couple of these, but by the third, I could see only faith in fast answers.  They were the fitness equivalent of poor people that buy lottery tickets: they don’t want to do anything as boring as saving so they take whatever money they can scrape together and buy lottery tickets—and get more poor.

By the fifth one of these earnest conversations, I reminded the fat boy in front of me that he was half my age and he flunked a test I could pass.  Shut up and get back on the track was my answer to his question of could he do his own program.

In contrast to the out-of-shape people who know the perfect exercise plan, the serious athletes I know are searching for a better plan.  A bicyclist I know who wants to do an Ironman asked me if I had a coach.  He wanted to know which Ironman plan I followed.  This guy who had recently ridden more than 100 miles in six hours, can easily swim two miles in just over an hour, and did a marathon in under four hours was asking for training plans.  And he was searching the web for coaches and training plans. 

In one of the sad ironies of life, the only people who are sure about their training plan are the people who can’t live up to whatever low standard they set for themselves.  The people already exercise 20 hours a week are the ones who are looking to make those hours more productive. 

Book 10 of 2016: Does Altruism Exist?

Does Altruism Exist? Great topic, not so great book.  I read this book for the Evolution Table discussion group at Franklin and Marshall College.

Every other week, the discussion turned to soldiers and first responders.  Why do soldiers throw themselves on grenades and face withering fire to rescue a comrade?  What led hundreds of police and fire fighters to enter the doomed towers on September 11, 2001?

This book by David Sloan Wilson has no direct answer.

We read this book because it was written partly as an answer to the Fall Semester book:  “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins.

Dawkins says altruism has no place in a discussion of genetics.  Wilson says altruism has a genetic basis and that evolution favors altruism in the struggle between and among groups. 

I thought Wilson made a convincing argument, but each week we discussed another chapter.  And each week the biologists, physicists, psychologists and other researchers in the discussion poked holes in Wilson’s arguments.  Interestingly, they poked more and bigger holes in Wilson’s arguments than they did in those of Dawkins the previous semester. 

If you read just these two books to decide whether you think Evolution is driven by individuals only or occurs among groups, then Dawkins will win.  Of the two, I am much more convinced by Dawkins.  I say this as a Believer, knowing that Dawkins dismisses all belief.  Evolution is biology, so on the strictly material level, it is interesting to know how and why growth and change occur, which they do everywhere, and all the time.  I have no trouble imagining Evolution as a predator, killing the weak and perpetuating itself through strength and power.

That puts nature below spirituality and puts sacrifice above and apart from mere nature.  For me, the weakness of Wilson’s argument is his attempt to put a scientific dimension on a metaphysical dimension of life.  Mother Teresa is best explained by her passion to honor her Lord and Savior.  Mere genetics does not lift lepers from gutters. 

Soldiers are trained to save their brothers and sisters on the battlefield while destroying the enemy.  But bravery either in rescue or fighting is something beyond mere genetics.  Wilson says as much, but is not convincing.

First Names with Everybody! Civilian Life Has No Rank

The Hierarchy of the Ancient Greek Army

Not much different in Modern Armies

The next time I see General Perry, he will be Scott.  I just sent a message to my company commander in Iraq and called him Bryson.  My former Brigade Commander and Command Sergeant Major are now Dennis and Dell.  

For one thing, I am older than all these men and women.  For another, I am really a civilian.  

Someone asked me yesterday if I could get called back to service.  At my age, and since I am not collecting a retirement, the nation would have to recall every reservist, every retiree, and re-institute the draft before I could be called back.  I am as thoroughly civilian as I could be.  So all of the men and women I served with are Andrea, Chris and Bob.  They just lost that other first name: Captain, Major or Sergeant.

In 1980, when I left the Army and got a civilian job, the transition from business hierarchy to flat organizations was already in full swing.  When I was a high school kid, the boss of the warehouse where I swept floors was Mr. Rodman.

My first job after the Army was with the Elizabethtown Chronicle.  The editor was Julian, not Mr. Richter.  One the dock at Yellow Freight, we were on a first-name basis with all the supervisors. At Godfrey Advertising the owner was Denny.  I worked for a global chemical company in the late 90s. The CEO of this billion-dollar company with operations on five continents was "Bob."

When I re-enlisted in 2007, I had no trouble reverting Sergeant and Caption and Sir instead of first names.

But now the switch in the other direction will be fun.  Even the generals I know are younger than me, so they are now Walt, Scott, John, etc.  

More of My Favorite People from the Aviation Ball

Sgt. Maj. Dell Christine who got me out of the motor pool in Iraq and set me up 

taking pictures and writing about soldiers.  Most of the great stuff I have had a chance to do in Iraq and after is because of Dell Christine.

LTC DeVincenzo Fellow Lancastrian and first-rate Chinook Pilot.

Very dry sense of humor.

Jeff Huttle, one of the best First Sergeants I have ever served under and now a great Sergeant Major.

Serious athlete and life-long aviation guy.

My wife Annalisa talking math at the Aviation Ball!

May the Fourth Be With Me: Today I Am a Civilian

Today at a minute after midnight I became a civilian.  I do not have enough years to retire, so I my enlistment expired and my Army career ended.

Cinderella, One Minute After Midnight

Like Cinderella at one minute after midnight, the party is over and I am just another former soldier with uniforms in my closet and memories.

In the sticky way that social media softens the line between life events, my Facebook page is full of birthday greetings from soldiers, along with family and friends who wished me well in serving in the Army.  So I had one last Happy Army Birthday courtesy of Facebook.

From now on, I will be posting as a civilian, a former soldier who served during the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Afghanistan War and in the Iraq War.

Sadly, the only war we won that I served in was the Cold War.  The others, we lost.  But like so many successful armies, the reason we lost the wars since World War II is partly because of winning that war.

Winning makes people and countries think they are in control.  In the wake of World War II, we made compromises and mistakes that led to the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and to the terrorism we live with now.

I enlisted during the Vietnam War knowing how terribly unpopular the war was, but I was enlisting to get a better job, not for any great purpose.  And I had a vague idea that the military would help me to grow up.

When I re-enlisted in 2007, I had a vague idea about serving my country, but it was also an adventure.
And now the coach is just a pumpkin again.  So I will have to find the next adventure.

Aviation Ball Photos--Some Really Great People I Served With

Tim Blosser and his friend Jen.  Tim and I deployed to Iraq in 2009-10. 

He makes as many bad jokes as I do.

Pilots and commanders from the deployment in 2009-10 and after.

Four really great soldiers.

Delta Company's long-time first sergeant Gary Williard and his wife.

The McCrackens, Melanie and Mike, maintenance leaders in Delta.

Darren "Doc" Dreher and his wife Kate.  More deployments as a 

Blackhawk pilot than I can remember.  Great guy.  We argued politics through the 

whole deployment. I am his favorite Liberal. 

Mr. Smith and his wife.  Dry sense of humor.

Real aviation expert.

Adding Army Information to Wikipedia

Yesterday I went to a monthly open workshop on how to contribute to Wikipedia.  The organizer of the workshop is Mary Mark Ockerbloom, the Wikipedian-In-Residence at Chemical Heritage Foundation, the place where I used to work.

This month, with Mary's help, I contributed to three Army-related pages.  My first question was whether I could add all the information I compiled in spreadsheet about all the tanks in service around the world.  I got the info from a Wikipedia page, my spreadsheet just made it possible to sort it and get totals.  As it turns out, it is not possible to add spreadsheets to a Wikipedia page, but I could add a one-paragraph summary of the data with a link to my blog post offering the spreadsheet to anyone who wants it.

And I did just that.  Here's the page listing all of the main battle tanks by country.  Scroll to the end of table and just after tanks in the Army of Zimbabwe is the paragraph summary I added.

By the way, I just love the data on that page.  Particularly that Mali has just one tank, a 50-year-old Soviet-built T-55 tank.  Imagine the pressure on the guy in charge of that one tank.

Mary also helped me to add the video I did comparing C-Rations and MREs to the Wikipedia pages on C-Rations and MREs.

I'll be going back next month to learn more about adding photos to the Wiki Commons.

Blog Milestone: 250,000 Page Views

Milestone

Yesterday, Blogger told me this blog went over 250,000 page views, or about 35,000 per year.

Still the most popular post ever is about the trailers we lived in at Camp Adder with 2,750 views

With CSM Kepner a close second at 2,650.

Recently, the most popular post is about the new Russian T-14 Armata tank.

And for the past several months, I have had more page views of posts about the Cold War than about my recent service in the Army.  I will keep writing about the Cold War after my enlistment ends.  I will also be writing about things I could not write about as a soldier.  On May 4th I will be a civilian, not a retiree.  So I will be free to talk about the Army as I see it.

Let me know what you think.

Nearly 100,000 Tanks in Service Around the World--Most are Russian

Recently, I wrote an article about the new Russian T-14 tank as a real innovation in a world that is moving away from armored forces.  While writing the article I found a Wikipedia page listing all the tanks in service around the world by country.  While the page is useful, it can't be sorted.

So I made a spreadsheet with all the tanks by country so I could sort it and add up numbers.

The first number is the total of all tanks in service or in reserve for all armies in the world:

99,534 tanks

Wow!  The world is not building a lot of new tanks, but there are a lot in service. 

Wikipedia lists 142 countries with armies.  Of those, 28 have no tanks, leaving 114 countries with armored forces.  From Afghanistan with 771 tanks to Zimbabwe with 77 tanks, it is clear that Russian-made tanks are the backbone of the world's armored united.  Of those 99,534 tanks in service around the world, Russia made 54,853.  

Of the 114 countries with tanks, 49 have Russian-made T-55 tanks for a total of 13,776 tanks.  Fewer countries have the T-72 tank, but including Russian reserves, there are 20,478 T-72s in service.  These are by far the tanks in widest use around the world.

By comparison, the world's number two tank maker is the United States with 15, 538 tanks in more than 20 countries.  About a third of American-built tanks in world service are M48/M60 variants, mostly M60A3s.  The rest are the M1 Abrams in its various forms.  

M1A1 Abrams

The next biggest tank maker is China with 10,902 tanks in service in fewer than 20 countries.  But the Chinese tanks owe a lot to Russian design.  

Chinese Type 69 owes a lot to Russian design

Germany is the number four supplier of tanks with 4,395 Leopards in many variants in service in more than a dozen countries.  

In yet another example of the 80/20 rule dominating all of life, the top four tank-making countries made more than 95,000 of the 99,000 tanks in service in the world.  France and Great Britain are the next leading suppliers with a dozen other countries making tanks for their own use including Israel, Taiwan, Japan and Thailand.  

The two countries that have the most serious on-going development of tanks are Russia and Israel.  The T-14 Armata and the latest Israeli Merkava show these two countries as the most committed to the future of armored warfare. 

Israeli Merkava

The smallest armored force in the world is Malawi with one T-55 tank.  The largest is Russia with almost 22,000, or about one in five of all the tanks in the world.  

One reason countries keep tanks is that they have no scrap value. Armor costs more to melt than the value of the recovered metal.  When I was a tank commander in the 70s and 80s, we used old M47 tanks as targets.

I cannot post a spreadsheet on blogger, but if you want a copy I would be happy to send it.  Email me at ngussman@yahoo.com if you want a copy.

Many Tanks...

Мой первый блог Сообщение на русском языке (My first blog post in Russian)

I just finished my fourth semester of Russian language at Franklin and Marshall College.  The final project was a 600-word article.  My general topic was politics, so I wrote about the new T-14 Armata Russian Tank and its political dimension.

If you read Russian, here it is.  If you don't read Russian, most of the content is in English in this previous post.

Редакционная статья

Новый Русский Танк Угроза Соседям

Сержант Нил Гуссман, Армия  CША

В прошлом году русская армия показала миру совершенно новый танк на параде победы России во Второй мировой войне.

Новый танк, Армата Т-14, представляет собой настоящий прорыв в технологии танка.  В течении следующих  пяти лет Россия  будет строить более двух тысяч  новых танков для своей армии.

Когда Россия производит новые танки она говорит  миру что танки становятся центральным стратегическм  оружием для будущих сражений. США и другие западные армии медленно удаляют танки из своих военных планов.

С 1976 по 1979 год, когда я был командиром танка в армии США в Европе, мы тренировались бороться  против вторжения советских войск. Советская Армия имела больше людей, больше танков, больше самолетов.  Война никогда не произошла, но мы считали что это произойдет. И мы готовились к отчаянной борьбе. 

Наши танки были лучше, но у Советского Союза было гораздо больше танков. Почти все что мы знали о советских танках мы узнали из отчетов 1973 года арабо-израильской войны или войны Судного дня.

Один из этих докладов дал  статистику по травматизму  в зависимости  от места нахождения в танке:

•          Командующий 60%

•          Канонир 25%

•          Погрузчик 10%

•          Водитель 5%

Другой способ проанализировать эти цифры: 95% ранений происходит в башне, 5% в корпусе.

В  Т-14 членов экипажа в башне нет. Трое членов экипажа сидят в корпусе танка.  Т-14 первый танк с дистанционным управлением башни.  Конструкция Т-14 обеспечивает защиту экипажа намного больше, чем у других танках.

Две основные причины использования танков в современной войне:

1. Борьба с другими танками.

2. Прорваться через линию фронта чтобы атаковать линии снабжения.

Создавая новые и лучшие танки, Россия заявляет, что будет бороться   танками.

Русская армия планировает сражаться в таких местах где  легко можно транспортировать большое количество танков. Это означает вдоль своих границ или в соседних странах. Отправлять танки через океан медленно и дорого. Россия рассчитывает бороться в местах где грузовики и поезда могут  транспортировать танки.

Я считаю, что строительство 2000 новых танков говорит что Россия не собирается  вести войну с Америкой, но собирается воевать со  своими соседями. США планирует вести войну с террористами. Большая современная танковая армия может атаковать соседние страны или защищать Россию от Китая.

Т-14 сравнивается с другими передовыми танками в статье  Regnum.ru веб-сайта. Они опубликовали большую статью  Сергея Кузьмичева о Т-14 .Он говорит что Германия и Франция планируют построить современный танк, но он не будет готов в течение многих лет. США не имеет никаких планов для  строительства нового танка. Китай разрабатывает новый танк, но его новый танк похож на западны танки  20 лет назад. Только у Израиля есть танк который соответствует Т-14.

Т-14 далеко впереди других крупных стран в области технологий. Почему бы Россия тратит так много денег чтобы сделать лучший танк в мире? Потому что Россия может продать танки в страны, которые покупают российские танки. Россия делает танки, которые находятся в армиях во всем мире.

Россия делает танки чтобы иметь сильную армию. Россия также делает танки чтобы продавать в другие страны. Википедия перечисляет танки всех армий мира. Список включает в себя тип  и страну, в которой были построены танки.

Почти во всех странах есть танки и большинство стран имеет танки сделанные в России. Потому что Россия имеет так много "клиентов", новый Т-14 также  является оружием маркетинга. Россия делает новейшие поколения танков. Наций которые покупают российские танки покупают новейший танк с новейшей технологией.

Лучший танк в мире российский танк Т-14. Это также принесет  Россие большой доход от стран мира которые покупают Т-14.