Our good friends at Small Wars Journal have provided another forum for discussion of David Price’s article on plagiarism and Field Manual 3-24, aka the Counterinsurgency Field Manual. Lt. Col. John Nagl, one of the manual’s authors, has published a piece at SWJ directly responding to Price. Here is a quote (but inquiring Minds should read the whole thing):
The writing team had a lot of ground to cover. Counterinsurgency has been well described as “the graduate level of war”; success in counterinsurgency campaigns requires extraordinary political acumen, a real feel for the nature of the society in which the war is being waged, and an understanding of the political economy in the country and its neighbors, among dozens of other demanding requirements. Hence the need for a field manual writing team that could, and did, draw upon the best scholarship available. Remarkably, the team turned a draft of the manual in just two months—a process that often takes years. The draft manual was vetted at a conference Petraeus hosted at Fort Leavenworth in February 2006 that included journalists, human rights organizations, and military officers; at its conclusion, James Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly commented that he had never seen a more open exchange of ideas in any institution, and that the nation would be the better for more such exchanges…
Critical to those successes has been a better understanding of the peoples of Iraq, an understanding that is a direct result of the influence of some of the people who contributed to the Field Manual. In particular, Dr. David Kilcullen, who recently served as General Petraeus’ counterinsurgency adviser, played a key role in building bridges with the Sunni tribes who have recently turned against Al Qaeda in Iraq. Dr. Montgomery McFate, who also contributed to the manual, is working to further the use of anthropological knowledge in our counterinsurgency campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan to save more lives and build better societies.
Nagl argues that plagiarism is an inappropriate accusation because the genre conventions of the manual are different than those of an academic treatise, echoing discussion in CKelty’s post here at SM. Both Harper’s and Danger Room have picked up on Nagl’s response. Additionally, SWJ has published a response by US Army spokesman Tom McCuin. The Harper’s article looks at the comments at SWJ, and highlights one by Lt. Col. Gian Gentile:
Agree that the Price piece is strident and very angry in tone . . . [However] I am looking for an explanation for the reason so many passages from the manual were pulled directly from other sources (as the Price piece demonstrates) but were not set off in quotations in the manual. I mean heck on page 1–4 of the manual the publishers did find it in their means to use quotation marks to quote directly from TE Lawrence; So why not these other passages?
While we could think of the charge of plagiarism as simply a ‘gotcha’ tactic, we might also think of it in terms of a larger attempt to assess the quality of the social science being offered to, conducted for, and used by the US Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nagl suggests that Kilcullen, McFate, and other military social scientists offer “broader and deeper understanding of other societies.” Listening to McFate on the radio and reading her comments in newspapers, looking at the writing and production of the FM 3-24, and reading the blog of Marcus Griffin, we are offered only bits and pieces of what comprises this ‘broader and deeper understanding.’ I personally was thinking of Shweder’s comment about Emily Post, as well as McFate’s comments about ‘man-boy love,’ after reading Nagl’s evocation of deeper understanding.
I find it very odd that Nagl keeps on stressing how quickly the manual was put together — he did it on The Daily Show, too. It sounds like an excuse: “Of course it’s sloppy, we put it together really quickly and didn’t take the time to really get it right”.
So this is the best excuse the army could come up with? I think Nagl was trying to by ironic with his choice of title, but it really is his excuse isn’t it. Nagl doesn’t care that these sentences were plagiarized. I am surprised that this is the Army’s response to this. Lt. Col. Gian Gentile’s concerns are well founded, I think we can expect more fragging from within.
They should have hired me to provide anthropological justifications for the anthropologists work!
Price responds to Nagl, and gets much closer to the mark: http://www.counterpunch.com/price11032007.html (perhaps Rex wrote this 😉
it’s interesting that Nagl says this:
Price responds:
Two things. First, this is as much an admission that the passages were copied by the authors and their minions. There is no disputing the similarity of the passages, only an argument that the practice is OK.
Second, and more importantly, Copyright law, and fair use doctrine say exactly nothing about attribution. Fair use neither approves nor prohibits the practice of using someone else’s words without attribution. It merely gives one the legal right to do so subject to four standard tests (character of use, nature of work, extent of copying, and economic harm). It is irrelevant to the law whether the work is properly attributed, only whether it is copied without permission of the owner.
Plagiarism is, unfortunately, outside the law, which is what makes it such a slippery landscape. Accusing someone of plagiarism has no immediate legal implications (unless the accusation is wrong, whence it might be grounds for a libel case by the accused, but that’s about it)– it rests entirely within the domain of moral denunciation. Copyright infringement, on the other hand, is a legal matter, and concerns the strict liability of the accused for infringement.
My guess is that the Manual pretty easily passes the four tests of fair use law. IANAL but I wouldn’t even bother proposing a case of copyright infringement here. Whether it is Nagl, the Army, or superstar highpaid lawyers who say it, the borrowings of the manual are probably within fair use, and for the most part that is probably a good thing, legally speaking, and a shameful thing, morally.
I find it frustrating however that both Nagl and Price seem either ignorant of these issues, or worse, willing to purposely confuse copyright infringement and plagiarism for rhetorical purposes– I expect this of the military, but hope for more from my colleagues in academia.
It’s pretty clear to me that this manual is shoddy, quickly and poorly constructed, full of unattributed quotations, probably not very useful for soldiers (except in the Emily Post sense mentioned by Schweder), bad as tactics, even worse as strategy, imperialism gone haywire, and a million other things– but if it is plagiarism that is simply one more moral denunciation among others, and hardly the worst one, and if it is an accusation of copyright infringement it is both a non-starter and maybe even a reactionary accusation.
All this endless consideration of plaigiarism loses sight of the bigger issues, and can be described as arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a grenade pin
…do we want to make anthropology more relevant? If so, commenting on the substantive problems of the CI manual to a wider public would be a good way of doing so. Who wants to meet up at AAA to talk about such matters? let me know at lek28@georgetown.edu
Some military guy here: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/11/ivory-tower-or-glass/#c000960 posted a link to a claimed early draft of the part of the manual. I think this is supposed to make the army or McFate look good, but it makes them look worse. This early draft is full of citations that someone apparently later removed and never said anything. I guess they knew what they were taking and not acknowledging, so it wasn’t an accident.
This is made all the worse by Price’s comment added below the article reading:
“You and Lt. Col. Nagl claim that the use of un-attributed passages written by others is acceptable when writing military doctrine. Given my ongoing research into the military’s past record of lifting anthropological work for their own uses and the ongoing assurances by military personnel that the mistakes of the past have been corrected, I am disturbed to find this view stated so bluntly in the present. But even more significantly, if you RTFM (Read the Field Manual) you see that this view is unambiguously contradicted by the manual itself, which says in the preface:
“This publication contains copyrighted material. Copyrighted material is identified with footnotes. Other sources are identified in the source notes.” (University of Chicago Press edition, preface page xlviii, paragraph 3, this same quote appears on page vii of the PDF version of the manual as released on December 15, 2006).
This statement contradicts the arguments by you, Nagl, McFate and other military aligned scholars claiming that doctrine does not have footnotes.
According to doctrine’s preface: doctrine has footnotes.
Regards, David”
I like the “RTFM” response above. This makes it clear why McFate has gone silent. There is nothing more to say.
Sarah Sewall and Montgomery McFate talked about many things that are similar to what Metro Police did in Baltimore to lower crime in the 90’s by changing to a Community Policing Model. Counter Insurgency, in some ways is a spin on a Community Policing Model used by US Police for over 2 decades. The Brits used this model, but with more of a Martial Law style of policing in Ireland to defeat the IRA.
By placing Iraqi and US Military Police, Military Intel and Contractors in an area where they can study, learn, conduct surveillance and communicate with the locals of a specific area in Iraq, they can slowly counter an insurgency and change people’s mindsets. The basics are that, this would help us in finding the bad people…the “hard-liners” and who can then be arrested, removed or eliminated. Finding the straw the breaks the camel’s back is what they are ultimately trying to do.
Much of this is a joint effort that would include distribution of reading materials, controlling news and other biometric / psych-ops programs. By having small community meetings with local politicians, business owners, and people of that community that are looking for a “positive change” is what makes the wheels spin on this style of operation. This “change” that would be the topic and discussion of meetings, would be for violence to end and for people to not live in fear. They have to re-educate and slowly change the Iraqi’s and also empower them to defeat their insurgency. Working with the local population and gaining their trust is what primarily needs to take place.
Sure there are going to be numerous ways of learning more about these people by tapping into local phone lines, seeing what they are doing on their computers, find out who they are communicating with and by putting troop / contractors out there who are going to learn their education levels / finding out what their beliefs and systems are in their native tongue. Are they friend or foe? How can we gain their trust? This is very much a surgical style of operation, compared to what has been used in the past during a War. Will it take time? Yes. Can we do this with a reduced presence of military forces on the ground in Iraq? Yes, but it will increase the amount of analysts and linguists in the rear who are going to crunch information. SPSS and Research Methods will definitely have to be used and key foreign national figures will have to be found or invented, in each region, to help guide the rest of those individuals in the local community to a positive change and outcome.
It was interesting that Montgomery McFate discussed her dissertation about Counter Insurgency Operations in Northern Ireland by the British. She said that this was where she learned most of her knowledge and information on COIN. The thing I don’t get is, Montgomery said her idea of Counter Insurgency was more hands off, when the facts are that the Brits treated Ireland very much like a Police State and Martial Law was imposed on Ireland by the UK. If one has read up on the Special Branch’s informers and their handlers, particularly since security sources have, in recent years, played up the role of a “double agent” within the IRA known as “steaknife” (or stakeknife – spellings vary), he was the key individual who was responsible for finding and eliminating three of the top leaders in the IRA. Raids on houses in Ireland occurred on a regular basis, for those who were suspected of being involved with the IRA or even being a sympathizer to the IRA. Raids purposes included the planting or removing of listening devices. A Sunday Times article (14 April, 2002) claimed the removal of covert bugs was the motive behind the raids.
So can we expect that a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus will likely occur in Iraq for the next decade or more? Who knows, but I think Montgomery McFate needs to stop jerking me off from behind and not try so hard to paint a pretty picture of how COIN Operations work. It is War, isn’t it? Hopefully things will get better in Iraq and we‘ve learned from the mistakes that have been made in the past.
By placing Iraqi and US Military Police, Military Intel and Contractors in an area where they can study, learn, conduct surveillance and communicate with the locals of a specific area in Iraq, they can slowly counter an insurgency and change people’s mindsets. The basics are that, this would help us in finding the bad people…the “hard-liners” and who can then be arrested, removed or eliminated. Finding the straw the breaks the camel’s back is what they are ultimately trying to do.
Much of this is a joint effort that would include distribution of reading materials, controlling news and other biometric / psych-ops programs. By having small community meetings with local politicians, business owners, and people of that community that are looking for a “positive change” is what makes the wheels spin on this style of operation. This “change” that would be the topic and discussion of meetings, would be for violence to end and for people to not live in fear. They have to re-educate and slowly change the Iraqi’s and also empower them to defeat their insurgency. Working with the local population and gaining their trust is what primarily needs to take place.
Sure there are going to be numerous ways of learning more about these people by tapping into local phone lines, seeing what they are doing on their computers, find out who they are communicating with and by putting troop / contractors out there who are going to learn their education levels / finding out what their beliefs and systems are in their native tongue. Are they friend or foe? How can we gain their trust? This is very much a surgical style of operation, compared to what has been used in the past during a War. Will it take time? Yes. Can we do this with a reduced presence of military forces on the ground in Iraq? Yes, but it will increase the amount of analysts and linguists in the rear who are going to crunch information. SPSS and Research Methods will definitely have to be used and key foreign national figures will have to be found or invented, in each region, to help guide the rest of those individuals in the local community to a positive change and outcome.
It was interesting that Montgomery McFate discussed her dissertation about Counter Insurgency Operations in Northern Ireland by the British. She said that this was where she learned most of her knowledge and information on COIN. The thing I don’t get is, Montgomery said her idea of Counter Insurgency was more hands off, when the facts are that the Brits treated Ireland very much like a Police State and Martial Law was imposed on Ireland by the UK. If one has read up on the Special Branch’s informers and their handlers, particularly since security sources have, in recent years, played up the role of a “double agent” within the IRA known as “steaknife” (or stakeknife – spellings vary), he was the key individual who was responsible for finding and eliminating three of the top leaders in the IRA. Raids on houses in Ireland occurred on a regular basis, for those who were suspected of being involved with the IRA or even being a sympathizer to the IRA. Raids purposes included the planting or removing of listening devices. A Sunday Times article (14 April, 2002) claimed the removal of covert bugs was the motive behind the raids.
So can we expect that a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus will likely occur in Iraq for the next decade or more? Who knows, but I think Montgomery McFate needs to stop jerking me off from behind and not try so hard to paint a pretty picture of how COIN Operations work. It is War, isn’t it? Hopefully things will get better in Iraq and we‘ve learned from the mistakes that have been made in the past.