A couple of things wrong with your examples. This isn’t the 1960′s, and the policy makers are not requesting this information, those carrying out policy are. Actually, everyone is seeking out this info., and they aren’t doing it for no reason.
There was once slavery in the country, but we no longer live in that country.

There is also a serious lack of logical reasoning in many of these posts. A single HTT member has been charged with manslaughter, what is an anthropologist? Can you say “stigmatizing pollution?” We would recognize that immediately in any other context, and be smug about it, but some how it doesn’t apply to this situation.
The DOD is a huge gov’t bureaucracy, full of waste, fraud and abuse. So, are most university systems, and pretty much any of the organizations we work for. One thing has nothing to do with the other.
A priest molested a kid, therefore the Pope and Church are evil. A cop killed a civilian, therefore we shouldn’t have police.
This is really irrational.

General McCrytal has stated that his number one current goal is to reduce civilian causalities as much as possible, and ya’ll seem to want to reduce his ability to do that.

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While there are many distinct stances represented in the discussion of HTS in this forum over the last several months, these kinds of discursive contradictions–we cry out at the loss of life among HTT members killed in the field, after having criticized their venality for accepting substantial hazard pay as part of their employment–arise over and over again.

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Heavens, no. If you have a chance to take in a Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) meeting, you will find yourself meeting hundreds of people who have made anthropology relevant in all sorts of practical ways. And, hey, I would no more push someone needing a job to work for HTS than I would have pushed my daughter to fly helicopters for Blackwater (from whom she had, and turned down, a nice 6-figure offer).

bq. I doubt it, but if it is, then there simply is no more room for anthropology.

No more room for anthropology, or no more room for an idealized cartoon of what anthropology might be in the best of all possible worlds? It seems to me that what critical historians of anthropology have revealed through there work is that, whatever anthropology might be, it has never been that. Its roots are deep in imperialism, its classics mostly worked produced in colonial situations. And even in these postcolonial days, few, if any, anthropologists have ever achieved sainthood.

What I worry about is friends who fret about anthropology’s lack of influence and, simultaneously, recommend a moral stance that virtually guarantees that anthropologists will not be influential. They can’t deliver votes. They can’t deliver money. There are, after all, fewer of them than a middling-size megachurch. And now they say, “No, no, we can’t do that. Somebody might get hurt.” So, it’s got to be our world-changing ideas, right? No, can’t do that; we’ve junked our grand narratives.

So, where does that leave us?

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If we did have the power to make a difference, we wouldn’t be at war in the first place. 11 smart, informed anthros who dared to publicly suggest that war was not an answer to 9/11 were put on a list by the Vice President’s wife and the Chair of the Senate’s Armed Forces Committee, through an organization dedicated to having professors like them marginalized and, where possible, removed from their posts.

This is what has *always* happened. The anthros who worked in the Japanese internment camps were turned into informants on “disloyals”; those who resisted were marginalized and threatened. It’s what happens when you work at the pleasure of your employer. We saw it in the first wave of HTS – anthros and other social scientists who weren’t willing to tow the party line never even made it to the field. What do you expect when the military is setting the selection criteria?

Here’s a thought experiment: could you imagine McFate dropping me a line to help out with HTS? I’m as qualified as Marcus Griffin, meaning I have no experience of any relevance to that field; I might even be better-qualified, because at least I’ve studied with Arabists like Stephen Caton. Or better yet, could you imagine them seeking someone like David Price, who *does* have Middle East experience? Anything we could have to say would be disregarded as “politically-motivated” and I don’t believe that people serving in a theater of war are accorded the opportunity to resist their orders.

Look, anthros have been writing about the use and abuse of military and colonial power for decades; do you see any effort to take that work into consideration? When Benedict thought she could ease some of the problems in an integrating military by producing a work about racial diversity, her work was banned from military libraries. Ours is not a perspective the military wants to hear, except where it’s of immediate practical application, generally in pursuit of goals that have already been determined by non-anthropologists.

Again, is taking part in misguided programs like HTS the only way anthros can prove our relevance? I doubt it, but if it is, then there simply is no more room for anthropology.

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1. Current evidence suggests that, like so many aspects of our current wars, HTS is totally messed up.

2. We agree, too, that there comes a point at which decisions have to be made.

To me, however, whether we have reached that point remains problematic. This reflects my experience with complex projects that can take months to barely get off the ground and look totally messed up until, it can seem miraculous, things come together. I have mentioned examples from businesses, but if you have ever played in a concert band or been part of putting on a theatrical production, you might recall that experience.

You note that if those involved in HTS or similar activities fail, people get hurt. But the fact is that people are already getting hurt, people are being killed and maimed. And that rescue attempts fail, often because someone screws up, is a fact of life.

By your logic, no doctor should ever attempt an unfamiliar operation. The patient may be dying, but, “Oh, no, not me, I might be sued.” No firefighter should ever enter a burning building: “I might screw up, somebody might get hurt.” No policeman should ever use force.

You might, of course, reply that in all these cases, we are talking about people trained to take certain risk, with possibly fatal consequences. But to me this points to the heart of the HTS and similar matters. To me the risk of death or injury is a given. The question is how to reduce it. Wishing won’t make it go away and refusing to get involved because we might be blamed for whatever goes wrong–there are ugly words for that. MIghtn’t this be a case of, Better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all?

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The point was, there comes a point when you have to pass judgment. I could have devoted my life to studying Rand’s work, so that I could feel fully confident in dismissing it, but that’s ridiculous. But other than myself, it wouldn’t hurt anyone. Your argument is that we need to keep trying to do HTS better, on the off-chance that it’s not impossible to do effective counter-insurgecy by deploying anthros and other social scientists, and the even more unlikely chance that a military organization would deploy them in a way that would satisfy anthropological criteria and anthropological ethical demands rather than the contingencies of power.

But if we fail, and if I’m right and it just isn’t possible then we DO fail, people are hurt.

At the Anthro and Counter-Insurgency conference in Chicago, I met a couple of anthropologists who worked at military universities. I would venture that the two of them, simply by teaching some sort of cultural awareness, have done more to save lives in Iraq than the entire HTS program. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if *I’ve* done more, by teaching at a community college near a major military base. Certainly, I’ve killed and maimed fewer social scientists.

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All I’ve said so far in terms of personal commitment is that I am reserving judgment because a lot of personal and professional experience convinces me that we aren’t yet in a position to render a verdict on HTS and because, from my perspective, I see a lot of colleagues rushing to judgment in what looks an awful lot like a moral panic.

I’ve got friends who are Quakers and Bahais and deeply respect people who are willing to put themselves at risk on behalf of their beliefs. I could be projecting some of the shame I felt that I lacked the courage to either go to war (why not me instead of some poor SOB who lacked my options?) or go to jail for genuinely conscientious objections.

I am becoming increasingly certain that HTS, in its current incarnation, is a hopeless clusterfuck; not terribly surprising given the continuing news about how badly other aspects of the U.S. effort in Iraq have been run. But, like the editors of _Nature_ I am not yet willing to say no to social science involvement in military operations as a matter of principle. LIke our new president, I am opposed to stupid wars, not to war per se. Given a just war, anything we might do to shorten that war and reduce the damage done would be, in my view, not only right but an obligation.

Why? Because almost every morning I hear Aaron Copeland’s homage to Abraham Lincoln and hear Lincoln saying, “We cannot escape history.” Because my historical memory includes the 1933 King and Country debate in which the Oxford Union debated and carried by a vote of 257 to 153 the motion,”That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country” as Hitler was coming to power in Germany. It also includes Socrates taking his place in the Athenian phalanx and drinking the hemlock, Christ on the cross, and the virtuous officials who, at various crucial moments in Chinese history risked exile or death with memorials chastising imperial misbehavior. I probably saw _The Patriot_, the short film aired at the Colonial Williamsburg Visitors Center, too many times when I was growing up. I believe in the doctor’s principle, “First, do no harm,” but, like Howard Dean, I know that there are times when a surgeon has to operate and that leaving a patient opened up on the table is highly unethical behavior (the imagery Howard used to explain both his opposition to starting the war in Iraq and his unwillingness to end our involvement irresponsibly, a position that Barack Obama appears to share).

So, yes, I feel conflicted. But I’m no John Galt, nor would I want to be.

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Of special interest to me is this passage about the handbook:

bq. In a few places the Handbook makes fleeting suggestions that issues of research ethics are being dealt with by someone or something else. Without explanation, the Handbook states that “an accompanying document is written outlining how the research will comply with the protection of human research subjects according to 45 CFR 46 to ensure the research falls within accepted ethical guidelines.” The Handbook also claims that, “the results of our research provide non-target data that suggests Courses of Action to the commander and his staff. Our research is performed in the same manner in which academic social scientists conduct their research and is similarly rooted in theory and complete with ethical review boards.” It is difficult to evaluate the claims of non-targeting. In his forthcoming book American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and the Human Terrain, anthropologist Roberto González quotes U.S. Army, Lt. Colonel Gian Gentile, scoffing at suggestions that such cultural data would not be used for targeting in active war situations, responding to similar claims by Human Terrain anthropologist Marcus Griffin: “Don’t fool yourself. These Human Terrain Teams whether they want to acknowledge it or not, in a generalized and subtle way, do at some point contribute to the collective knowledge of a commander which allows him to target and kill the enemy in the Civil War in Iraq.” That the Handbook claims HTT’s research is “complete with ethical review boards” is news to me, and I await further clarification for how this claim is actually being implemented. I remain skeptical that this has in fact been implemented in any meaningful way.

Last year I made some inquiries into the human subjects question and got a little data before being stonewalled by both HTS people and by universities I contacted. I’m still convinced that there are real questions about whose oversight a university anthropologist, contracted to HTS, is governed by.

Thanks Dustin & John for your discussion.

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If being useful costs people their lives, hell yeah. You know, you sound like an ex of mine who liked Ayn Rand. How could I have an opinion on Rand if I never read her? SO I read _Anthem_. Hated it. Simply evil, stupid, sophomoric stuff. Ah, but to *really* have an opinion on Rand, I needed to read _Fountainhead_. SO I read _Fountainhead_. The height of depravity. Pure shite. Ah, but to really REALLY have an opinion, I should read _Atlas Shrugged_.

We’re no longer together.

The thing is, aside from a stain on my brain that I can never clean, reading Rand didn’t hurt me. Much. But you’re saying we have to keep trying at counter-insurgency, because apparently that’s the only way we can be relevant, until people stop dying. And that somehow hurting people is acceptable if it’s for the good of the discipline.

I’ve said a thousand times here that being “a protagonist”, as you put it, is not limited to following the military’s marching orders. If that’s the best we can come up with, we’re dead in the water. But it’s not the best we can come up with. I’ve known anthros who marched with groups of refugees over Central American borders acting as human shields in the face of armed paramilitaries. Who have had guns stuck in their mouths in an attempt to get them to identify guerrillas or sympathizers. Was Marshall Sahlins not being “a protagonist” when he started organizing teach-ins during the Vietnam War, rather than volunteering his services to the military as others did?

Whose framing is this, anyway?

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Fair enough, but they managed that without anthropologists. What is the call for anthropological involvement but an effort to minimize the hurting and killing? If we’re not *sure* we can do that, it seems to me the height of immorality to get involved.

As to the other point, I’ll say again that if the only way anthropologists can be relevant when it comes to war and military occupation is to provide information to the conquerors, then we’re already done. What’s the point in keeping anthropology around if that’s all we can offer?

I don’t see that HTS, or any other military deployment of anthropology, is in any way an effort “to make sense of behavior that others find too disturbing to contemplate”; I haven’t exactly seen, and don’t imagine I will, the flood of monographs making sense of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan — nor did we see that in WWII, when so many anthropologists laid their shoulder to the wheel. I also don’t see HTS or any other program changing the fact that “the powers that be” already “safely ignore as irrelevant to anything of importance” the work and word of anthropologists. And, again, for all our efforts, they never have before, either. Anthros have been, time and again, listened to whenever what they said confirmed the policy already in place, and marginalized or actively persecuted when it didn’t.

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How, then, to we make ourselves credible to people who have read even a bit of history and know how much of the world we take for granted was created through projects that involved people being hurt or killed?

Not wars or monuments to vanity e.g., the Pyramids, alone—things like the transcontinental railway, the Brooklyn bridge, aircraft, space exploration, medical advances that depend on testing, including testing of treatments that fail. How do we get up in the morning and take the risk of driving an automobile, knowing that accidents will kill and maim tens of thousands of us within the next year or so?

Are we anthropologists the ones who are supposed to be able to make sense of behavior that others find too disturbing to contemplate (head-hunting, suttee, rituals in which real pain is inflicted and real blood flows, for example)? Or have we become so tender-minded, so delicate in our sensibilities, reduced to pursuit of otaku hobbies that the powers that be and act in the world can safely ignore as irrelevant to anything of importance?

This stereotype does not, of course, apply to all anthropologists and this is, in no sense, a call for lack of empathy. The question to which it points for me is this: When does a moral choice, a form of conscientious objection, become a form of self-isolation that may protect our purity but, at the same time, render our attempts to “speak truth to power” absurd?

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“Current evidence suggests that the machine called HTS is a sorry excuse for a tool designed to achieve what it is supposed to do. Is no such tool possible? That remains to be seen.”

II believe that, in this case, it behooves social scientists to be a little more predictive. The problem is that when a “machine” like HTS fails, people are hurt or even killed. I’m not sure we can afford to reiteratively test this concept in the field on the off chance that eventually the “machine” works.

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