Miller - Fighting words persuasive strategies for war and politics

My interest in military rhetoric grew over the course of four stints as a journalist embedded with U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. My thanks are gratefully tendered to the men and women of the USS Kitty Hawk (Persian Gulf, 2003), Third Battalion, Eighth Marine Regiment (Fallujah, Iraq, 2005), 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 4th ID (Baqubah, Iraq, 2006) and most recently in Afghanistan with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), (Paktia Province, FOBs Salerno, Lightning, Boris and Fire Base Shkin, 2008.) As I noted in another forum, this is very much their book. I only took notes.

None of this would have been possible without the support, trust and love of my family. To my wife Alyson, and children Eli, Caroline, and Pesha, I can only offer this expression of love and gratitude, a miserable token in exchange for all that they have given me.

I wish to thank Ellen Ratner of Talk Radio News Service, Inc., for sponsoring these assignments. I am likewise grateful to William M. Fowler, Jr., Distinguished Professor of History at Northeastern University, and a colleague at the New England Quarterly, for his generosity with sources and advice. History cannot be written without libraries or librarians, and my thanks to the staffs at Harvard Universitys Houghton Library, and of course, the great Widener; thanks, too, to the staff of the Concord (Massachusetts) Free Public Library.

Over the years the house of Savas Beatie has published a string of award-winning, narrative military histories and reference works. Whatever the merits of my book, it is certainly cut from different cloth, and I am grateful to Theodore P. Savass willingness to lend his firms imprimatur to this effort. I also wish to thank editor Robert Ayer, whose advice, comments, and corrections helped convert often formless, beat-missing prose into something coherent. Also, my thanks to Sarah Keeney, marketing director at Savas Beatie, for all of her good work in positioning this title for maximum exposure.

I would like to add a few words about the man to whom this book is dedicated, my father, Samuel H. Miller. He was for many years a volunteer speaker-fundraiser for the United Jewish Appeal, raising money for Israel at times when that countrys existence was genuinely imperiled. (I have especially vivid memories of his exhortations during the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars.) Successfully persuading people to give their money may not be as difficult as asking them to give their life, but it is still very difficult.

But there was much more to my father in this connection. For sixty-four years he has worked for the same mid-western real estate company. His job is land acquisition, and during the course of six decades has often represented his company at hundreds of public zoning meetings. His purpose was always the same: to persuade voters or their elected representatives to approve land use changes for company projects. As a boy it was my occasional privilege to accompany him to these meetings.

For good and bad reasons, people often fear change, and these assemblies could be extremely contentious. These were the days before the stultifying hand of political correctness had begun to pinch robust (and often brutal) public expression. To a young boy sitting anonymously among the audience, this unbridled exercise of free speech could be frightening. However, I was always reassured by my fathers ability to read his audience, empathize with its concerns and speak to its members in their own language whether that was the commonsense speech of blue-collar workers or the arcana of zoning experts. Before these meetings, my father would brief me on the projects, the opposition, the politics, and the case that he planned to make. Afterwards, he would discuss how the meeting had gone and why this or that persuasive strategy had failed or succeeded. It is a great blessing to note that as my father prepares to enter his tenth decade of life, he is still called upon to grace a dais and say a few words. To me he will always remain the master of persuasive strategies.

Finally, I wish to thank Hakadosh Baruch Hu, who has preserved me to this very moment and has blessed my life with the people and institutions that I have just acknowledged.

Guard your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit.

Psalm 34:13