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Thanks

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Yes, maybe I am getting into the “perfect is the enemy of the good” department. We can do right in the present, but not by repaeating the same mistakes or misrepresenting the historical record or by assuming that our perceptions of the Iraqi situation are more valid than those of Iraqis themselves. Anthropologists could and should have a big part to play in ameiiorating the mess we’ve made in Iraq, but it requires a deeper analysis of Iraq as well as the structures within American society and governance that have led to the diastrous situation we find now. And from all I’ve seen and read, embedding anthropologists with the miltary is not the answer. Maybe some of the interesting discussions and interventions on this blog can help delineate a better way. Assuming that one knows what Iraqi “culture” is all about, or assuming that one knows what a democratic society is or looks like or entails, without a deep and critical inquiry into what has happened and why is what I find troubling.

An Iraqi friend who was tortured by Saddam’s regime and initially excited by the US liberation of Iraq said that “Saddam stuffed our mouths with cotton so we could not speak, then the US came and took the cotton out of our mouths, but then they put it in their own ears.” We have not really heard the Iraqis. We have not really understood what they’ve experienced and we have not, as a whole in the US, done any sort of serious accounting of the way our own arrogance has blinded us, or how insidious racist assumptions about Arabs and Muslims influence the government, media, and even the scholarly community.

I’ve written a few pieces about this and would be happy to share them off line.

Cheers

Laurie

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And as for ranting, well, maybe in the US, where “harmony ideology” (see Nader) prevails, ears turn off when people “rant”, it’s not the case in other parts of the world. Active debate, and yes, the expression of emotion about political and socioeconomic issues, is not a bad thing. The fact that it has been pegged as such here in American may account for the political anemia and low tide of public discourse and participatory politics. If we ever saw something in the US Congress approaching the debate during “Question Time” in the UK parliament, it would be bracing and tonic. Being “nice” in politics leads us to Nancy Pelosi (nice face lift she got btw) saying “impeachment is off the table” because they want to play nice with a regime that is actively eating away the rule of law like a stage four cancer. So I will rant and defend anyone’s right to rant.

More thoughts about the role of the Western Left in liberating the unwashed Arab masses: It’s an idea that can easily become new form of moral colonialism and exacerbate the problems of dependency among human rights organizations in the Arab world,eloquently diagnosed in the pages of Middle East Report by law professor Abdullahi an-Na‘im in 2000:

‘What I call dependency is the idea of generating pressures in the
North to persuade governments in the South to protect the rights of
their people, because that is not how human rights are protected in
the North itself. There, human rights are protected by local constitu-
encies organizing around their own priorities, enlisting political sup-
port within the own communities, and pressuring the own govern-
ments, legally and otherwise. . . . The problem is that this approach
disregards the fact that human rights dependency is possible be-
cause of other dependencies. . . . Human rights dependency legiti-
mizes other dependencies and perpetuates dependent relationships.
. . . The problem is our failure to appropriate the human rights
paradigm for our own objectives. ‘ (pp. 20–23, 46–47)

There is a left in the Arab world. There was a lot of opposition to Saddam in Iraq. The US asked Iraqis to rise up against Saddam in 1991, they did and the US turned its back and tens of thousands were slaughtered by Saddam. Then we instituted the sanctions, which devastated the middle classes and made any political organizing against Saddam secondary, or tertiary, to just having food to eat each day and not having any medicines or decent health care or working infrastructure. So, that was a way the Left (Clinton’s administration) tried to take down a dictator.
To say that what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan is what is important, and addressing the derelictions of democratic duty here at home is beside the point just misses the point I’ve been trying to make in a number of posts here. Frustrating. Makes me want to rant….

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The war in Iraq was illegal. The war in Afghanistan probably wasn’t, and had some justification given the relationship between Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But George Bush and members of Congress deserve impeachment for the Iraq war and Gitmo, and some of them should probably be tried for war crimes.

But that is neither here nor there. Those things don’t matter as much as what is going on in Iraq or Afghanistan now. We have an obligation to them for having taken the actions we did.

Lastly, in our freaking out over this stuff, we shouldn’t forget that whatever the US guilt in this matter is, neither Saddam Hussein nor the Taliban were admirable or desirable. Tyrants, dictators, and oppressors deserve to be taken down. I had thought that was a basic tenet of the left.

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Maybe we should start at home first and establish a democratic government in the US that reflects the will of the people. It’s quite arrogant to think we Americans (anthropologists, soldiers, politicians, journalists) can go around the world “setting up democracies.” Democracy is something you DO, not something you have or export. I’m amazed I don’t see more of my anthropological colleagues out there asking why health insurance for children is something that can be vetoed with really not much complaint or questioning. While anthropologists rightly decry the misuse of their profession in the battlefields, why are they not also raising hell about the huge amounts of money being flushed down the toilet that is this war? Why are we not concerned about the troops who return after a brutalizing three or four tours of duty, suffering from PTSD, lacking jobs, their finances dried up, and meanwhile Blackwater employees, who, as it turns out, are free of any sort of usual legal jurisdiction, make something like 8 times the salary of an enlisted man or woman? The rot and injustice in the US stinks to high heavens, and the thought that we are afraid of what Al-Qaeda could do to us, while not noticing the damage we have and are doing to ourselves, would be funny if it were not so very sad. An anthropology that has nothing to say about any of this is, in my view, more dangerous and twisted than an anthropology that embeds itself with a military that is conducting the stupidest war since Viet Nam, and in violation of international treaties.

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http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/toc/anthro/36/1

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Let’s hope none of our colleagues were involved in posting it – that would be really disappointing.

Laura

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Just had to chime in here – Given that it is anonymous, it’s a bit of a stretch to say that the spoof pledge was created by “military anthropologists” or anthropologists “working in our military and CIA.” Of course, it is possible, but it may also have come from any number of other, non-anthropological audiences who read the original pledge. Journalists, members of the military, people who work with intelligence agencies, policy makers, and legislative staffers have all read the ordinal NCA pledge. As within anthropology, the reactions were mixed, with many people (like me) wishing that the original signatories had more clearly articulated their ethical and political concerns. Some in these audiences found the underlying assumptions of the NCA pledge to be demeaning and insulting, although the people to whom I spoke recognized it was not intentional. All this to say, I doubt we ever will find out who really posted this thing. There simply are too many possibilities.

Several people you are classifying as “military anthropologists” have already denounced this spoof, calling on the authors to identify themselves and, preferably, remove it. While we all recognize the need to take our lumps where humor is concerned, it’s safe to say that the overwhelming majority of us find this sort of thing inappropriate at a time when parts of the discipline are trying to understand one another.

(I have been an occasional reader here for some time, but have not posted before. So, by way of introduction, I am Kerry Fosher. I just left Dartmouth Medical School, where I was a Research Asst Prof to take a position as the command social scientist for Marine Corps Intelligence. I am helping them create a program to improve analysis through a more sophisticated understanding of social science concepts and theory. And, yes, this was an extremely complex and problematic choice for me. I’m happy to discuss that if anyone is interested, but it’s not relevant to this thread.)

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The latest New York Times features an article titled Army Enlists Anthropology in War Zones. It describes a new program called Human Terrain Team, which assigns anthropologists and other social scientists to U.S. combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan. …

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