Lt. Col. Jim Channon proposed the First Earth Battalion in his 1978 army manual “Evolutionary Tactics,” envisioning an army unit with a humanitarian allegiance to the planet first, with minds focused by meditation and a calming presence in crisis zones. He thought psychic powers would be pretty helpful, but at the heart of it was inspecting Asian studies of battle art like samurai serenity and martial arts’ respect for the environment.

Channon is now running with that notion in his latest vision for the military, Operation Noble Steward, suggesting an aid-driven military channeling the Marshall Plan’s humanitarian efforts in Europe following World War II. He believes our generation will face increasing climate change disasters and global poverty, suggesting that the military should mobilize the way for the incremental use of national service groups.

Even in 1978 Channon believed the military’s long–term ability to keep peace depended on preserving environmental sustainability, and even helped Ted Turner’s staff write the cartoon “Captain Planet” in the 1990s.

“It’s clear that nations fight wars increasingly for economic reasons but once the environment becomes a top priority, that won’t be the case,” believes Channon. “There’s got to be a shift from national security to natural security.”

In the coordination of America’s military outlined in his Noble Steward proposal, each branch of the military could protect its corresponding area of the biosphere. The Navy would provide ships and materials to preserve overfished coral reefs and ocean resources. The Army could help bring volunteers to rebuild farms and plant smart forests, and so forth.

“The Army and its ground mobility are ready to be activated in a week, so they’re the launch force and then the second wave could be Americorps, followed by high school or college volunteers,” he said. “When you build a smart force it works by itself for a long time. I recently taught Noble Steward as a class for hand-selected future generals from thirteen different nations. They’re excited about doing things that make a guaranteed difference. It’s hard to make a difference every day in the Middle East.”

Channon spent years developing strategies, innovating war games and designing field packs at Fort Lewis. But “The Men Who Stare At Goats,” focuses on some of the more comical suggestions from “Evolutionary Tactics,” and misses most of his main ideas.

Jeff Bridges acts in the film depicting Channon’s 1975 assignment from Task Force Delta to explore human potential in California to refresh the Army’s philosophy after the Vietnam War. In the movie, along with hot tubbing with New Age enlightenment seekers, Channon also looked to academia and Olympic athletes to train a soldier more prepared for modern battlefields. The film’s comedic psychic soldier characters are trained by driving blindfolded and doping with LSD. While Channon appreciates the comedic license and new found attention for the First Earth Battalion, he said the battalion stayed as a working mythology and never materialized as an active unit.

“The occasion of trying to kill a goat is such a small issue,” he said. “Ideas like telepathy and walking through walls were included in the manual not because I knew they were possible, but 10 percent of the ideas were built in to inspire people to reach for things. The generals wanted to launch a creative campaign, and while it was a difficult decision I decided to keep the First Earth Battalion as a concept for people to look to for new ways of thinking.”

The First Earth Battalion presentation he made to the Army outlined a kind of Shaolin warrior monk with heightened combat awareness and a code of ethics for more effective teamwork with other officers and civilians. Some illustrations in his manual portray soldiers entering villages with flowers and proposed calming “paranormal” mind tricks like “the sparkly eyes technique.” Channon said the goal of successful non-lethal warfare was to keep soldiers alive.

“Concepts like foresight and the ability to drop a yak at 100 yards have been around in Eastern teaching for centuries,” he said. “In Vietnam I had people who were very aware with a heightened foresight for traps and enemy movements, and I didn’t even know what to call their sensitivity. There are people who act in a stealthy and highly leveraged way and they process things faster, which enhances their situational awareness. I call the ideas proposed for the First Earth Battalion ‘paranormal’ because meditation was out of the ordinary for the Army in 1978. But the Pentagon has had a meditation room for 30 years now.”

Channon now lives in Hawaii and he recently instructed more creative military supply efforts for units bound for Afghanistan. He sees the strategic legacy of “Evolutionary Tactics” in today’s military and believes once Middle East wars wind down and the military’s budget increases it will again search for new ideas as it did at the end of the Vietnam War.

“General McCrystal’s guidance for Afghanistan is ‘reduce the casualties,’” he said. “For an army to say that is – in the oldest sense of the word – an oxymoron. That’s part of what I call the combat of the collective conscience. I see a great likelihood that insurgencies and warlords in impoverished regions will increase everywhere with growing global problems. Armies are going to have to be geared to support displaced people.”

For more information on the real “Men Who Stare at Goats” and their proposals like Operation Noble Steward, visit www.firstearthbattalion.org to view Jim’s You Tube videos. As Jim says, “Go planet.”

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