2/28/2013

Day-034-My time with the special forces




As a child I enjoyed playing war-games. Why this is so is another story. This is about how I ended up with the special forces and the things we did as 'force multipliers'. The term special forces is a description for people who when combined become from a strategic perspective capable of performing very complex mostly covert missions behind enemy lines. 

We confuse the enemy, disrupt communications and are often capable of altering the scene on the battlefield. The strength is not firepower per definition. Its firepower combined with stamina, consistency, originality, surprise, speed, intelligence, psychology, know how and strategic overview. Manipulators capable of disturbing the so called 'normal' flow of things. 

Units are a combined gathering of talents and although composed out of specialists everybody in the unit is more or less capable of performing al tasks creating a bit of redundancy and resistance to failure. There is an aura of specialness but in reality it's simply a clever combination and form of people management. The rest is made in Hollywood by Mad Men, as we all know.

So a relatively small group like this can become very influential on the battlefield. Maybe that's why I enjoyed playing war games as a child. The hide and seek, improvisation, creativity and physical challenges. 

There is however a big difference between this playfulness and the hars reality of a real special forces unit. The mission objectives are always dictated by global politics and that means I will eventually be bound by rules of engagement. These rules can drastically reduce my options within my unit's missions on the battlefield. That's why we are trained to not ask questions but to execute. That's what we do. We execute and we will try to do that as efficient as possible and to the best of our abilities as a team. Time is money in the business. 

The whole honor thing is absolute hollywood bullshit. We get medals but are not allowed to wear them in public. We do not die for king and country. We die for our brothers on the team because we are are trained like that. If you spend more time with your buddies than with your wife and kids the bonds get very intimate and strong and you don't let your buddies down. The mission always comes first. Business before boobs.

The rush of executing highly complex missions under great pressure and being able to get this done as a team is addictive. The specific demands create a lot of adrenaline and that makes it very addictive. To get to a certain level requires a lot of training where one will make long days a lot of days. Hard to chew at times but getting the business done under the nose of the enemy under extreme stress is an overwhelming experience. Outsmarting the enemy is eventually what it's all about.



Being in a special forces unit has it's privileges. We operate in the system but always behind the scenes. So like our uniforms we are not bound by the regular rules and scrutiny of the company's doctrine. Our outfit is mostly mission specific and so is the equipment we use. Anything as long as we get the fucking job done fast and effectively. And although we are relatively expensive to operate the choice to use a good spec ops team mostly has a high return on investment.

The downside of being an operative in the business is that we don't have long careers. Most operatives do business between 21-40 years of age. After that it becomes very hard. So either you have some incentives going or you land yourself an intelligence or consultancy job. So like a professional soccer player you have to plan your career carefully otherwise you end up with a lot of specific experience that will be kind of worthless in normal life. 

It's really hard to adjust to 'normal' life if you are used to being in the company. It's an addiction and a lot of guys become very depressed and have a really hard time integrating back into normal life. Apart from living with the permanent imagery of the worst shit this world has to offer also few outside the company understand what is going on in the shadows of this world. And almost nobody gives a shit. That's why we don't care about politics or queen or country. In the end it doesn't matter because a bullet is a bullet wherever it lands. 

Every innocent person that dies because we have more firepower is our responsibility as a society but no one seems to realize that our presence in the world is a representation of us as a society that means everybody! The strange thing is that people are often very curious about the work we do and how we do it but they never seem to be interested in the nitty gritty. The why we are here in the first place and who deploys us.

Only the haters, the conspiracy theorists, and activists seem to have something to say but most of them bark up the wrong tree collectively. I cannot say all I want to say here because most of it is classified and boring to be honest but if there is one thing I have learned in al those years it's that we are all responsible for what happens in the world by our daily acceptance and allowances. 

It's all economics that decide where and if we operate. The global future of our deployment is decided by consumers today because the world has become geo political. Buying my daughter a teddybear means I have blood on my hands these days.

We have so much money to our disposal and battlefield strategies are not rocket science. We have become so methodical that there are often multiple scenario's unfolding simultaneously which makes it even harder for the enemy to counter what we do. But routine also leads to more collateral damage because routine leads to mistakes. Decision makers start operating on their emotions and are often manipulated by higher forces. Democracy as such does not exist. Killing people is eventually self interest period.

Most of my colleagues work for private companies that make shit loads of money operating on the edge of and often above the law. The mission objective is always the same. Create chaos and confusion. In that way we create an alibi for intervention. That intervention means running the show so someone else can profit from it. By profit I mean money. 

If intelligence does it's work, if strategy does it's work, if counter intelligence does it's work, if aggression does it's work, if all work together, executing missions, launching campaigns, guerrilla tactics, acceptable loss, ammunition, e-warfare. We talk about targets, strategic plans, central command, our mission objectives, return on investment and winning wars. Sound familiar?

To take it back to playing war games as a kid. I wanted to win and I wanted to 'feel' special. I ended up in marketing and advertising operations because that made me sort of special. One of the creatives. The ones that are special. 

The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. Not fond of rules. No respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy. While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

You see, before you know I'm quoting an Apple commercial. I probably felt so desperately inferior that I had to prove something to myself so I ended up working in advertising and marketing. Mainly advertising though and being responsible for creating imagery. The suits that are worn by the corporate story. I'm one of those guys that say  Zero sugar but keeps his mouth shut about the aspartame. That's the deal. It's up to you to prove me wrong but you won't. 




The fact I choose to burry myself in the corporate clusterfuck put me in some rather special ops teams and often gave me an insiders view on how easy it is to manipulate the masses by sending one of the teams to execute some creative strategy. It's amazing to see how creative people get If you paid them to do so. Investigate and you will find that a warroom is exactly the same as the boardroom. No difference whatsoever. Generals become CEO's, CEO's become politicians, Politicians become CEO's and we are al shareholders by allowing this bullshit to run reality as it unfolds.

Next time you watch the news and you hear whatever spokesperson talking about whatever, just pay attention to the words they choose. They will speak the battlefield language because marketing is war and we all commit to our duty on the battlefield. Over and out.



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