House Panel Puts the Brakes on ‘Human Terrain’

It ain’t over, but it seems like HTS is at least “on hold” for now.

The House Armed Services Committee, in its version of the defense budget bill, says it “remains supportive” of HTS. But, as Spencer Ackerman points out, the committee says it will “limi[t] the obligation of funding”the project, until “the Army submits a required assessment of the program, provides revalidation of all existing operations requirements, and certifies Department‐level guidelines for the use of social scientists.”

Last year, the congressional defense committees asked for an “independent assessment” of HTS by March 1st, 2010, reviewing everything from “the adequacy of the management structure” to the “adequacy of human resourcing and recruiting efforts.” Apparently, that assessment hasn’t been delivered yet.

Read More at Zero Anthropology.

61 thoughts on “House Panel Puts the Brakes on ‘Human Terrain’

  1. Thanx for the latest on the happenings in Washington. I read the article you linked to, and it was informative, but it seemed rather biased in its tone. Do you know of any non-partisan sources of this news?

    Either way, it’s good to know that there’s being some oversight with our tax dollars. I hope they get actual answers to their questions, and not just talking points.

  2. Scratch that last request of mine. There are a lot of good links within the links that you provided, especially in the Danger Room article. I should have checked before requesting anything like that.

    BTW, here’s an interesting thread in a blog critical of the new NATO strategy from a one of the non-kinetic branches that the HTS works with: http://psyopregiment.blogspot.com/2010/05/psyop-and-new-nato-strategy.html

    Looking at the last few stories there’s also an insider’s conception about the latest fiasco of illegal uses of assets for intelligence that was reported by Danger Room and others. The use of private contractors for intelligence gathering: http://psyopregiment.blogspot.com/2010/04/furlong-affair-psyop-and-intelligence.html

  3. Funny how all these military anthropology supporters like Rick are now so quick to slink away from the HTS program (after whining about HTS critics for so long) now that has been exposed as a fraud, yet Rick and his militarized anthropology friends will keep trying to tell us that other types of military ethnography programs are OK and are needed.

  4. No, it’s funny that an addendum comment to my initial post has been in line for moderation for a while now.

    It’s also funny the way so many academics can’t seem to understand the basics of the scientific process and thought process. As data and information about structures and events change, one’s mind and opinions should equally either change, or take into consideration these changes. It is a poor ethnographer who comes to a situation thinking they know what’s going on, and seeks to confirm their a prior assumptions. (I’m not going to get into a post-modernist debate, or go into the details of those studying the Sociology of Science. I understand that this goal is not absolute, rather it is consciously striven for.)

    When I first heard about the HTS, I had the same concerns everyone else had. Then as events and facts on the ground changed over time, so did my loosely held opinions. If the HTS is properly evaluated, as every program should be, and deficiencies are found (almost guaranteed), and corrections are implemented, then my opinion of the situation will again shift. Over time programs are evaluated and either cut or improved. This story is simply saying that what’s supposed to happen is happening. Whether or not there’s more than lip service paid to the evaluation, or whether politics will pre-determine the outcome is another matter than needs to be evaluated.

    It’s the assh#$%s in this world that think they know everything and savor the opportunity for an “I told you so,” when fate the outcome was either a matter of dumb luck, or they actively fought for the outcome. This is nothing more than magical thinking. I’m not interested in being proven right or wrong. I’m interested in being mature and effective, in reducing suffering, and on making positive changes where I can. Basically, because I don’t sit in an ivory tower with tenure, or not a grad. student, my pay isn’t derived from mere words. I don’t get paid to be smug.

    The surest sign of whether a person is a manipulated fool, if the conviction of their opinions relative to the information they have. We saw this with the recent health care debate. That’s easy for many anths on the far left to understand, but they become the same manipulated fools when the coin in flipped. The first week the HTS was announced, people had a petition against it; having no information on the actual program or its details. Historical perspective be damned. We aren’t historians, but we use history to understand the context of present phenomena. We don’t assume the details of the present to be the identical to the past.

    I actually learned this lesson with my experience in the army. I remember that during training, we would sit around complaining about the fact that commanders usually relegated their non-kinetic (nobody gets hurt) assets to the side lines. The argument that people are having with HTS, happens among branches in the army that compete over resources, use, and relevance. This argument is very familiar to me. But, as non-kinetic branches prove efficacy, they raise their sociocultural capital, and increase their use to some extent. (there’s always a bias to use the latest shiny new toys and technologies.)

    I once asked an instructor if we should take note of times when the commander ignored our instructions or advice, and got people killed unnecessarily. The instructor told me that only an immature fool would do such a thing, “if the commander jumps in a lake, it’s your job to drain the water.” Sitting around and watching people get killed just to hold it over someone’s head, when you should have been trying to reduce the damage or the effects of poor decisions, is the act of a person with no compassion.
    That’s exactly what many anthropologists have done in these situations. They have actively fought to ensure failure, and then celebrated when it happened, because being smug and right is more important to them than being effective, or actually making a difference in suffering.

    If you want to protest the wars, then I’m behind you and I’ll do what I can. I’ve protested the Iraq war in public before. But, it is counter-productive to stigmatize people trying to help in other ways. In the end you only hurt your cause in order to gain a sense of psychological legitimacy.

  5. “As data and information about structures and events change, one’s mind and opinions should equally either change, or take into consideration these changes.”

    There is also a brisk traffic in arms: US manufacturers recently announced the sale to Cairo of 24 new F-16 fighter jets and other equipment, worth an estimated $3.2 billion. Steven Cook at the Council on Foreign Relations has published a ‘contingency planning memorandum’ in favour of continued support to the regime, which, as he describes it, ‘has helped create a regional order that makes it relatively inexpensive for the United States to exercise its power’. Less expensive at any rate than it would be in the event of an Islamist takeover that ‘would pose a far greater threat – in magnitude and degree – to US interests than the Iranian revolution’. This seems to be the Obama administration’s implicit wager, too. It’s bad news for ElBaradei and his supporters: bad news for all the Egyptians who fear that they will never know democracy because of the ‘American veto’.

    “a regional order that makes it relatively inexpensive for the United States to exercise its power.” That’s what HTS is about Rick. I’ll agree that it’s not a question of absolutes, but then it becomes one of moral choices. Some people may want to fudge and say it’s only principle, but I think if they could know the cause was just they might show a little more flexibility. It would take a lot for me to accept being anything other than an internationalist. And this doesn’t come close.

  6. As usual, Rick’s latest gasbag rant, about HTS’s critics being right for the wrong reason, gets most of the facts wrong. I can see why poor Rick would want to change the facts, after all he’s on record supporting HTS, and he was very late in being forced to admit that what most others who researched the program saw clearly much earlier. Rick is a military ideologue who doesn’t deal with the available facts, but for those others reading this who might be interested in the facts, Rick lied when he claimed that: ‘The first week the HTS was announced, people had a petition against it; having no information on the actual program or its details’. This is quite a claim, and there is nothing to support it other than Rick’s kneejerk promilitary political bias.

    The truth is that HTS was first announced in the summer of 2005, I just looked online and the first petition against HTS that I could find was from November 2007. This isn’t ‘the first week [that] HTS was announced’. Just because you didn’t learn about HTS until the New York Times wrote about it doesn’t mean that everyone else was as ill informed as you were. Facts matter Rick.

  7. Suzanne, you use terms like “gasbag” and attribute motives to Rick with about as much grounding in evidence as “Michael Jackson? Blacks got rhythm.” Would you like it if I described your response as a typical combination of self-righteous indignation and nitnoid cherry picking designed to score political points? I suspect not.

    You are right, facts matter. Could you please provide a few more? As someone who works in the communication trades I am aware that there is often a substantial gap between the time a program is announced and the time news of of it reaches people who get upset about it. It is also a commonly observed that the first expressions of outrage are thin when it comes to specific evidence; not surprising that, since it may be months or years after an announcement when a program is implemented and additional months or years before clear evidence emerges that the program is working as planned (unlikely), has run into unanticipated problems (likely), can be fixed (still possible) or is demonstrably an appalling failure (always a possibility). Since I am aware of these things, I am left wondering whether the maximum two-year gap you mention between the initial announcement of HTS and the first petition against it is sufficient evidence that the petition was well-informed. Could you say a bit more than would strengthen your argument here?

    Like Rick, I have no trouble imagining that HTS has been not only morally suspect but a total boondoggle as well. It was the military, after all, that coined the acronym SNAFU=situation normal, all fucked up. But you do your cause no good by playing the “gotcha” game that political pundits on all sides have turned into an irritating cliché.

  8. Is this a game? It must be, because otherwise why would anyone offer a temporal answer to an ethical question? The Network of Concerned Anthropologists specifically stated that anthropological support for counterinsurgency is work that,

    “breaches relations of openness and trust with the people anthropologists work with around the world and, directly or indirectly, enables the occupation of one country by another. In addition, much of this work is covert. Anthropological support for such an enterprise is at odds with the humane ideals of our discipline as well as professional standards.”

    The answer to that can be any one of a number of answers, but not a temporal answer. The temporal answer is one you give when you’re running interference for a program that you secretly support, even if publicly you don’t have the courage to offer a total endorsement.

    “Gotcha” BTW is what the tea party people are becoming famous for complaining about, whenever they’re expected to know the facts, but don’t. The fact remains the NCA did not launch its petition until two years after HTS was announced. Why complain about what is a fact after all?

  9. Not complaining about the fact but rather the snarky way in which it was used, coupled with unwarranted assumptions about motives ascribed to the person being attacked. Precisely the sort of thing the Tea Party types do all the time.

  10. Tea partiers also think critics’ valid characterizations are “snark”. No, I’m sorry, I’m going to thank Suzanne for being honest and saying what should have been said earlier. Rick treats this blog as his personal playground to romp around in. He’s a greenhorn pontificating on all sorts of subjects he knows little about (because he has some anecdote or read something somewhere). He admonishes, misrepresents and then insults anthropologists twice his age, and now his latest: they’re all being “smug”. Rick is a hypocrite who got called out, that’s all. So it’s up to this village to raise the child, properly. (And McCreery, unless the words stung you so bad because you feel they apply equally well to you, I can’t see why you would want to carry any water for Rick.)

  11. Thank you for speaking up Janey, Suzanne, Alejandro, and Rebecca about Rick’s unaccountability and how he comes across as a testosterone raging bully. Rebecca nails the problems in observing that he is a “greenhorn” who “treats this blog as his personal playground to romp around in.” Indeed.

    When I was a student I used to dread having “greenhorn” students like him trying to dominate classes in which they had very little actual knowledge (and obviously did little of the assigned reading) but lots of ignorant opinions, as a young professor, I make it a point to not allow such macho bullying in my classes. Funny, I don’t ever recall ever having a female student act like this sort of jerk (actually, Suzanne got it right with “gasbag,” sorry John), but I suppose such female students exist somewhere.

    Rick is unable to answer critics, yet he attacks scholars publishing carefully researched document based scholarship in top peer reviewed academic presses without having actually read this work; his grasp of anthropological theory and the history of the discipline comes from reading textbook summaries, cribbed lecture notes or rumors but not from doing the hard work of reading and thinking for himself, and every time he tries to take over and direct the conversation it really shows how ignorant he is about the works and writers that he claims to have read and understand.

  12. Rick treats this blog as his personal playground to romp around in.

    Isn’t that sort of what blogs are?

    He admonishes, misrepresents and then insults anthropologists twice his age

    Yeah, filial piety is so de rigueur in the discipline.

    his grasp of anthropological theory and the history of the discipline comes from reading textbook summaries, cribbed lecture notes or rumors but not from doing the hard work of reading and thinking for himself, and every time he tries to take over and direct the conversation it really shows how ignorant he is about the works and writers that he claims to have read and understand.

    I for one have read this guy named Freud who has this concept he calls projection of which you are apparently unaware.

    The logic and rhetoric of the posts by Suzanne, Rebecca Strauss, and Cynthia Klugman are such that it’s hard not to think that they are actually sock puppets working a Gleiwitz-style angle.

  13. Wow, I’m flattered that you think that I would be worthy of such scheming. Although it does seem a bit coincidental enough to make you thing. I think what’s happening here is closer to what social psychologists call “false consensus bias.” That is what this is.
    Let rise above the personal attacks, no logical fallacies, and all that. If ya’ll are as important as you think you are, then you should be able to come up with an argument of the facts of the case without any personal attacks.

  14. Fact : Rick said that “The first week the HTS was announced, people had a petition against it” to imply the idea that critics of HTS are irrational, “manipulated fools”.

    Fact : His example is false. It is a lie.

    But even if that were true, his argument would still be misguided. Because if one is against the military use of anthropology and the militarization of social sciences more broadly, or against the use of anthropology in projects of cultural domination and neocolonial “appropriation by dispossessions”, if one for example thinks that militarization and objectivity or intellectual independence are incompatible, it would absolutely not be irrational to oppose the HTS as soon as it is announced. One would not need to wait for the little creepy details to appear. Opposition could very well and very rationally have been based on the official project alone.

    Unless Rick thinks that disagreeing with him and his political and ethical views is a sufficient sign of one’s belonging to the sociological category of a “manipulated fools”.

  15. But even if that were true, his argument would still be misguided. Because if one is against the military use of anthropology and the militarization of social sciences more broadly, or against the use of anthropology in projects of cultural domination and neocolonial “appropriation by dispossessions”, if one for example thinks that militarization and objectivity or intellectual independence are incompatible, it would absolutely not be irrational to oppose the HTS as soon as it is announced. One would not need to wait for the little creepy details to appear. Opposition could very well and very rationally have been based on the official project alone.

    To quote Mal Reynolds, that’s an awful lot of caveats and addendums. But here goes:

    Saying that your actions flow from a basic assumption or axiom makes your actions logically consistent but it doesn’t make your basic assumption hold water. If one for example thinks that all individuals belonging to Group X are the cause of the world’s ills then support for that group’s annihilation could very well and very rationally be based on that basic assumption alone.
    There are a number of ill-defined concepts nested within the basic assumptions. Is the Sex and the City sequel a ‘project of cultural domination’ or does it get a pass because the U.S. Military is not involved?
    Which is your bogeyman, the military or militarization? Because the two are not identical.

  16. “Saying that your actions flow from a basic assumption or axiom makes your actions logically consistent but it doesn’t make your basic assumption hold water”

    Of course. But then, what is to be done, if you disagree with the actions, is to challenge the “basic assumptions”, and not, as Rick has done, to invent a fact in order to discredit critics of HTS as “manipulated fools”.

    And of course “military” and “militarization” are not identical. That’s why there is two different words. So I don’t get your last point, particularly as my examples of reasons to oppose HTS (what you seem to want to frame as “basic assumptions”) were quite clear I think, and none involved any “bogeyman”.
    I am not in the mood to discuss “sex and the city” , I thought this thread was about anthropology and the US wars in Afghanistan and Irak.

  17. And of course “military” and “militarization” are not identical. That’s why there is two different words.

    If you know that then you should take care to distinguish them in usage rather than cry foul when someone points out to you that you have not.

    “the forceful imposition of American values and governmental forms on people who have long known how to maintain and cherish their own ways of life.”

    If you think that that is the U.S. military’s mission in Afghanistan and Iraq you are just incredibly and possibly willfully ignorant about what is happening there. There are very good arguments for and against U.S. military presence in both places but there is no course of action that is unproblematic.

    Word to the wise—the Spanish-American War is not the appropriate model for making sense of the current situation. Some of and perhaps the primary motivation for the invasion of Iraq may well have been neocolonialist in nature. But the invasion of Afghanistan was distinct in nature, and the missions in both places have morphed considerably.

  18. It has been, if my jet-lagged count is correct, ten messages since I chided Suzanne and asked her to provide facts that would disprove the conjecture I offered. All I have seen so far from Suzanne, Jeremy, Rebecca and Cynthia is a continuing stream of ad hominem attacks on Rick, seasoned by a wee bit of appeal to authority. If this is what passes for serious scholarly argument by anthropologists, we are in deep trouble.

  19. I’d like to point out that I never said that those apposed to HTS are manipulated fools. I wrote that those who are compelled to a predictable behavior by the use of language and symbols, without themselves having very much information, are the definition of manipulated fools.
    Almost every argument I’ve heard flows from a discourse developed by the Soviets and spread through their intelligence services beginning in the 1950’s. In many ways the far left emerging from the1960’s rebellion was Soviet sponsored. Escobar has shown that the discourse of development was in many ways a capitalist sponsored discourse. We can see many of the themes and discourses used by the far-right today as a continuation of propaganda techniques used to destroy the labor movement. The fact that the history and link between decades of Soviet effort, the rise of these narratives in popular culture and Marxism in the social sciences is for the most part unknown, is a serious failing to the science of humans.
    When it comes to understanding human behavior, we can’t pick sides as a discipline. Whether people are being manipulated and parroting the themes an narratives of capitalist think tanks, the Nazis, the Soviets, or now the Islamists (who have people in room right now working on computers to spread what has been termed the “Narrative” that we are at war with Islam), it’s all the same.

  20. BTW, the GRU and other Soviet intelligence services had a moniker for Western radicals that they developed, they called them, “useful idiots.” I’m not saying that this means we should dismiss people off-hand, because they have certain positions on things. But, we should be mindful of situations when people are being thoughtful and caring, and then they are simply parroting the talking points of others.

  21. BTW, the GRU and other Soviet intelligence services had a moniker for Western radicals that they developed, they called them, “useful idiots.” I’m not saying that this means we should dismiss people off-hand, because they have certain positions on things. But, we should be mindful of situations when people are being thoughtful and caring, or when they are simply parroting the talking points of others.

  22. John, please quote my making an ad hominem argument and my appeal to authority. I think the validity of the definition of “cultural domination” that I quoted rests on its content, not its source. I didn’t wrote that it was a valid definition because it was Sahlins’.

    MTBradley, please show me where I confused the words “military” and “militarization”.

    Rick how do you account for the AAA’s critic of HTS with your narrative about “useful idiots” parrotting the manipulative discourse of Soviets and Islamists ? Or were you talking about something very different than the critics of HTS ?

    As for ad hominems, it seems to me that Suzanne, Rebecca, Cynthia and myself have been associated, thus far, to the far left, the soviets, the islamists and the nazis. Or maybe it’s my imagination, and you were simply making pure, neutral and scholarly discourse analysis without the slightest intent to associate your interlocutors with the above entities.
    To make it more complete, you could add that your interlocutors are using the same arguments as the khmer rouge, the falangists, the italian fascists, the maoist, the neo-nazis, not to forget satanists and pedophiles. That would be, I guess, closer to what McCreery call “serious scholarly arguments”.

  23. I forgot “tea partiers” right next to “the far left” in my penultimate paragraph.

  24. MTBradley, please show me where I confused the words “military” and “militarization”.

    The structure of your statement that “if one is against the military use of anthropology and the militarization of social sciences more broadly” conflates ‘military use’ and ‘militarization.’ Compare, for example, “if one is one against the Marine Corps’ use of CamelBaks and the militarization of water containers more broadly.”

  25. I am not sure I get your point.
    But at least I didn’t confuse “military” and “militarization”.
    In the sentence you refer to, “military use of anthropology” is one part of the process of the militarization of the social sciences, which you could also call, maybe, “the (re)organization of the social sciences and the mobilization of social scientists for military use”.
    I can’t see what kind of conflation your example is supposed to illustrate. I hope you didn’t choose it to trivialize the issue. I don’t think this is trivial. The AAA at least does not seem to consider it a trivial issue either.
    Maybe other readers, if not bored to death yet, could explain to me what I am missing or confusing. But maybe there is already enough pointless comments on this thread.

  26. The military-industrial complex is trying to take over the social sciences? That is just beyond delusional.

  27. MTBradley,
    From my comment near the top.
    “Steven Cook at the Council on Foreign Relations has published a ‘contingency planning memorandum’ in favour of continued support to the regime, which, as he describes it, ‘has helped create a regional order that makes it relatively inexpensive for the United States to exercise its power’.”
    Go back up and read it and click the link. The actions of the USG are based on very limited notion of self-interest. I’d suggest you either stand as an ideological nationalist or not. and then make a case on that choice. Defend the US as “the necessary country” and see where it gets you.

    Jeremy, your attack on instrumentalized intellectualism is overbroad. The apoliticized liberal ideal of the academy is as problematic as the opposing fully instrumentalized one, which is why my link was to a discussion of US foreign policy not the fine points of academic independence.

    Objectivity doesn’t exist; but we each have an obligation to make our own choices, as to when to instrumentalize our knowledge. Those who want their profession to make their choice for them are trying to avoid the responsibility for a choice they can only make themselves.

    “It seems only pathetic that some anthropologists would criticize their colleagues’ participation in such adventures on grounds of their own disciplinary self-interest,” I think they did that as a way of avoiding politics. That fact that it was also narcissistic was rendered morally irrelevant by the reason and objectivity of rational self interest.

    Sahlins’ response was first and foremost as a citizen. He made a good call.

  28. “Or maybe it’s my imagination, and you were simply making pure, neutral and scholarly discourse analysis without the slightest intent to associate your interlocutors with the above entities.”

    My intent was the later. I was trying to make the point before these other posts were written. I really wanted to expand the phenomenon to all instances when knee-jerk assumptions are made and social capital is marshaled to serve either a well worn ideology with historical roots, or to serve the interests of a minority group. I can’t know anyone’s intent, but I can account for the probabilities. I don’t have a lot of time right now, but I will point out that unless my info is wrong the announcement of the HTS and the AAA draft opposing it took both took place in October 2007.

    If I surveyed a group of T-partiers for their adherence to themes generated by the Rand Corp. in the 1930’s, and find that there is a significant correlation between responses and themes, then I might be able to say that the chances that the themes independently developed, rather than historically diffused, have a low probability. It would be on me to explore and outline the historical ties.
    As so, I have to wonder whether the 9/11 Truth Movement is a spontaneous phenomenon associated with predictable cognitive patterns to rare events, or if it was a diffusion from the same propaganda themes developed by Islamists stating that it was either the US government, or the Jews, or both that are responsible for 9/11.
    From this same line of thought, it would be very difficult to dismiss the Soviet development of themes, and the Soviet funding of the majority of leftist groups in the 1960-1970’s, as having no significant affect upon individuals and groups that utilize these themes, symbols, and narratives; especially when they are not made in a post-hoc way, but in a manner which tries to answer a question in a biased and predictable manner before observation. It could be very well that these things are simply accurate and independently derived observations made over and over again. One could say it is on me to make the case that the most probable explanation is the wrong one, but I don’t think so. That is because the data simply doesn’t bare out the repeated development of these themes independent of each other. The world in 2010 is so different from the world in 1965, that the using of the same narratives, themes and explanations can’t have been derived from the data alone.

  29. Seth,

    I read the article you linked too, and I responded, but my post never showed up. Basically, the article puts us in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. Overly meddling in Egypt is labeled as meddling, and attempting to simply deal with existing power structures is labeled as not meddling enough, because by maintain diplomacy with corrupt, anti-democratic regimes is viewed as propping them up. We fall into a relativistic trap it seems either way.
    The US has interests in the area. The only way to remove our influence on the area, is to remove our interests, which couldn’t be done without systematically reshaping the entire political-economic structure of the US. While I can see this as some future ideal to outline and strive for, I don’t see how it could be done over night without destroying the fabric of our economy. You’d learn first hand how cheap life can become in the world. We also have to consider the actual data on what has been happening in the world over the past few decades. Is it a matter of tearing down the system as a whole, or correcting problematic spots. You can see what I mean in this quick TED video, which also supports my proposal that a leftist discourse biases how anthropology, and sociology view the world, the same way that rightist discourses bias fields like economics.
    http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

  30. Almost every argument I’ve heard flows from a discourse developed by the Soviets and spread through their intelligence services beginning in the 1950’s. In many ways the far left emerging from the1960’s rebellion was Soviet sponsored.

    Rick, I do appreciate that you follow this claim with one that notes a similar historical pattern in the diffusion of ideas in the discourse of development. Those who get upset about your mentioning them and radical groups of a number of different sorts in the same breath seem to be missing the point that calling attention to similarities in logic and rhetoric does not imply complicity in similar political positions. (Richard Rorty has some nice things to say about this in PHilosophy and Social Hope(/i>, where he observes that while John Dewey was a social democrat and Martin Heidegger a Nazi, their philosophies of language are similar in several respects.)

    The tricky historical problem here is where the Soviet intelligence services got the ideas that they promoted and whether those who embraced those ideas or variants of them got them from that particular horse’s mouth. Having been a participant in some of those late sixties “far left” activities–I was briefly a member of SDS and joined the Berrigan brothers and the Cornell Quakers in carrying medical supplies for North Vietnam across the Peace Bridge into Canada–I can testify that people were reading all sorts of things, Early and late Marx, Bakhunin and Prince Kropotkin, Rosa Luxembourg, Gramsci and Trotsky and Marcuse, as well as Lenin and Mao, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, liberation theology, Buddhist sutras and the Sermon on the Mount…..and the internal factionalism was a very clear indication that few, if any, of us were taking marching orders from or adopting rhetorical stances promoted by neo-Stalinist Soviet hacks in the pay of the KGB. Projecting my personal experience, I suspect that many of us were reacting to a widely shared sense that something deeply wrong was happening and a very real and immediate fear that we, or someone close to us, would be drafted and wind up in harm’s way in Nam. We were looking around for any plausible-sounding justification for “Hell, no, we won’t go,” while tacitly embracing, had we but known it, Dick Cheney’s position, “I had better things to do.”

  31. Yes, you are right John. I actually get into long debates with friends on the other end of the spectrum who believe that the far left, basically in totality, was a collection of Soviet “useful idiots.” I try to make it clear to them that it is important to separate rational and factual criticisms made by people like Chomsky, Zinn and others. Both of those authors derided the Soviet Union as being corrupt, and morally bankrupt. The fact that many of the things they say come from capitalist propaganda is lost on them. These issues of themes, narratives and discourses get extremely complicated to untangle, and we really need to be more systematic and scientific about it. Many of these things are open questions to me. I honestly don’t know. However, many of the most vocal anths out there are obviously consuming and parroting propaganda wholesale. To say that the Taliban are benevolent freedom fighters is beyond the pale. That is like calling the KKK a benevolent social club.

    Escobar’s accounts of development make it seem like people never wanted things like steel knives, that everything was pushed on them. That’s just not true. Said, likewise, white washes the murderous empires of Islam, who basically produced Orientalism with their own expansionist policies. The US doesn’t have a monopoly on a foreign policy that produces blow back.

    It should also be noted that criticism of the Soviets could have been part of the plan of the propagandists. A propagandist isn’t interested in the thought process of people, they are interested in the behavior of people. It might not be unusual for say US military counter-propaganda folks to counter messages put out by the CIA, because they don’t know that the messages are coming from the CIA. The CIA will pretend to be an enemy force to gain credibility with the enemy, but they don’t tell anyone.

    As far as the 1960’s; one social psychologist at a (I forget the university, I’ll look it up if you want) campus who tested the moral development of student protesters. They often found that along with a real core of compassionate and honest radicals, there was a larger majority of people that just liked the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. I don’t know if you found that to be the case in your situation. I don’t know if these studies were tested in other places.

    There’s actually a descent, but very incomplete list of Soviet sponsored groups in wikipedia, that you can check to see if you were in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_propaganda#Soviet_propaganda_abroad

  32. I’d suggest you either stand as an ideological nationalist or not. and then make a case on that choice. Defend the US as “the necessary country” and see where it gets you.

    Seth, I am aware that throwing money at Egypt and Israel has been an important element of US foreign policy for some time now. I don’t think it is the best course of action. Are you perhaps mistaking the fact that implicit in my statements on this thread is the notion that the federal government is made up of lots of parts with lots of motivations for my blanket approval of whatever the United States Government does?

  33. Are you perhaps mistaking the fact that implicit in my statements on this thread is the notion that the federal government is made up of lots of parts with lots of motivations for my blanket approval of whatever the United States Government does?

    Good question, MT. Nails the sort of rhetorical device now found across the political spectrum: Cherry pick a suggestive fact or two, then rail against a position that the facts in question may or may not entail. I noted today how Barack Obama took a very different tack when asked by a reporter at today’s press conference if, given BP’s efforts to minimize the size of the Deep Horizon oil disaster in initial reports, anything the company said could be trusted. He calmly replied that since BP has a huge stake in reducing its liability, its interests are allied with the public interest when it comes to trying to stop the gusher. By the same token, however, its interests and those of the public are not aligned when it comes to assessing the scale of the damage done. Implicit in the analysis was recognition that evaluating the circumstances in which information is provided is a critical component in assessing the value of the information in question. This sort of consideration is, of course, one that rarely occurs to the self-righteous with indignation in full bloom.

  34. MTB.
    I made my final point in the my last comment. I suggest you read it carefully. It was critical of Jeremy as well, but unlike you I wasn’t quibbling for sport.

    “Which is your bogeyman, the military or militarization? Because the two are not identical.”

    Well actually in a technocratic model of specialization, when the military is made up of professional soldiers, they are. Ask a Marine if he is citizen or soldier first. The answer I got was “Semper Fi!”

    Soldiers are Mil-Geeks. Another form of moral passivity.

  35. Ask a Marine if he is citizen or soldier first.

    A Marine dresses like a soldier and talks like a sailor. Then he slaps the shit out of both of them.

  36. Soldiers are Mil-Geeks. Another form of moral passivity.

    Another unwarranted slander from a demonstrably unreliable source.

    P.S. My son-in-law is a Marine, and while our moral and political decisions do occasionally differ “moral passivity” is the last phrase I would use to describe someone who is literally willing to put his life on the line for what he believes. Unlike keyboard warriors, left as well as right, who mistake invective for rational argument.

    P.P.S. The notion of the soldier as an automaton programmed to follow orders has been obsolete since WWII, when the Germans developed what is now called “management by objective” as part of the Blitzkrieg. The current ideal is a highly skilled professional who can think and act independently under extreme circumstances. The moral choices made may not be the ones we would make and are open to critical scrutiny. But “moral passivity”? Evidence of sheer, possibly willful, ignorance.

  37. A soldier is an army in service to a democracy is a member of an authoritarian order in defense of a free one. He or she needs to understand both forms of organization, and both moralities.
    He needs to be able to make moral choices most people don’t.
    A soldier who says he’s a soldier before a citizen should be summarily discharged.
    Better yet, bring back the draft.
    I don’t hate soldiers I hate geeks.

  38. “Well actually in a technocratic model of specialization, when the military is made up of professional soldiers, they are. Ask a Marine if he is citizen or soldier first. The answer I got was “Semper Fi!”

    Soldiers are Mil-Geeks. Another form of moral passivity.”

    Well, my advice is to not call a Marine a soldier; it’s probably a little insulting to both. You have to understand that there are a lot of layers, hierarchies and divisions within military culture both within and between branches. In the Marines you have grunts (infantry), and you have air-dales, paper pushers, and the like. The grunts look down upon all others at POGs (personnel other than grunt), and the more technical marines often don’t even like being referred to as a Marine without acknowledging their differences with the lowly grunt, since they know that the word infantry is derived from the word “infant.” Sailors basically consider Marines as their personal infantry, and think of them as cannon fodder. We know this because Marines stands for “My ass rides in Navy equipment sir!” Whereas, Navy stands for “Never again volunteer yourself.”
    Both kinds look down upon soldiers who have more sub-cultures than anyone can count. Four different beret colors signifying different levels of eliteness, different patches, pins, insignia, etc… Soldiers wear their resumes on their uniforms with a complex symbolic coding that is understood and immediately judged by other soldiers. There are different jargons and different shared stories and myths. These are all cultural nuances that are derived from differential adaptive responses to different types of missions and traditions. Warrior culture is something as valid of our respect and study as any other culture. I see parallels to the Greeks and the Samurai.

    In case your wondering US Army is actually backwards. I don’t know why they spelled it out that way, because it stands for “Yes my retarded ass signed up.”
    There’s nothing monolithic about the military. If you come in as an outsider and show any of them obvious contempt though, you will be treated as such and they will all band together, like any other tribal group. You are right that many active duty military, that are “lifers” do consider themselves as professionals of their craft. That could be in the art of war, or it could be the ability to network computers together on a ship for a weekend World of Warcraft marathon for electronic geeks on a ship. Your critiques are basically right, they are just not properly directed, due to the fact that you are operating out of stereotypes and assumptions. There’s plenty to hate about the military, you don’t have to make stuff up.

  39. A soldier who says he’s a soldier before a citizen should be summarily

    Yes, if he says it in a situation where duties as a citizen are in direct conflict with duties as a soldier, e.g., if he is ordered to participate in a coup d’etat.

    But all you did was ask a Marine, evidently not in that sort of situation, a question that invites a send-up, an answer intended to get your goat. And it is you who assume that his “Semper Fi” reply should be taken in the most literal and humorless manner possible and make a Federal case out of what may have been a tease, cherry picking the interpretation that supports your political fantasies.

    I could, of course, be mistaken, but if the question were phrased as you report it, “Are you a citizen or a soldier first?” and the Marine I know said, “Semper Fi,” that would be a comment on the civilian’s assumption that a Marine could be a soldier, i.e., Army instead of a Marine.

  40. Seth, sorry I didn’t reply sooner, but I was a bit put off by the level of noise on this thread.
    So, I agree with the critic you adressed to me.
    But I didn’t make myself clear : as a citizen, I am opposed to the US occupations of Irak and Afghanistan (among many other things), and, furthermore, as someone who cares about anthropology, I am opposed to its prostitution in a program like HTS.

  41. as a citizen, I am opposed to the US occupations of Irak [sic] and Afghanistan (among many other things), and, furthermore, as someone who cares about anthropology, I am opposed to its prostitution in a program like HTS.

    Let’s unpack this a bit, do a bit of close reading as it were. The first clause, “I am opposed to the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan,” seems to me to be common ground. I doubt that anyone here is a Neocon with a civilizing mission as an excuse for seizing control of Mideast oil. In my own case, however, I am mindful of something I heard Howard Dean say when he was running for President. Dean had opposed going to war in Iraq. Later, during the campaigin, when asked if he favored an immediate withdrawal, he shocked many supporters by saying, “No.” He observed that there is a difference between a doctor arguing against performing an operation and a surgeon with a patient open and bleeding on the table. The first can walk away. The second can’t.

    Seen in this light, the anthropologist whose delicate sensibilities prevent the use of what he or she knows to minimize the damage of a war underway looks more like a nurse who runs away because she can’t stand the sight of blood than a prostitute, who, if pursuing a career in sex work of her own free will and taking proper precautions might be, if seen from some feminist perspectives, be seen as an admirable figure. (I exclude from any such admiration children, those tricked or forced into prostitution, those hooking to pay for a drug habit.)

    There are plenty of good reasons to believe that HTS is a bizarre idea, right up there with men who stare at goats. Anyone who has done ethnography in an alien place knows how little you learn, even if you have a year or two to pursue whatever interests you, especially if you have to spend the first several months on learning a new language and building rapport with people who have no good reason to trust you. The lack of fit between between this approach and the tempo of combat operations in a hostile environment is manifest.

    What, then, are the proponents of HTS selling? They are selling the notion that “trained anthropologists” have magical powers of discernment, uncanny abilities to disentangle SNAFUs. Why is there a market for this message? The U.S. military in the Middle East is, once again as it was in Vietnam, stuck, up to its neck in a situation where its conventional approaches, even those in the snazzy new manuals of unconventional warfare, aren’t working. Its leaders are ready to try anything, however crazy it sounds.

    So, yes, we agree that HTS is a bad idea and will bring anthropology into disrepute. That is not, however, because the public will respond well to arguments couched in the tone of offended maiden aunt purity. It is because the news will get out that those who called themselves anthropologists were charlatans and shysters and because so much of what is now called “theory” turns out at the end of the day to be pure shuck and jive.

  42. I said “Marine.”

    The way you phrased your original post made everyone who has ever met a Marine roll their eyes. Dolphins aren’t fish, phoneticians aren’t phonologists, anthropologists aren’t sociologists, and Marines aren’t soldiers.

  43. Prostitution is not only about sex for money, John, as Max Forte pointed out recently on his blog.

    Merriam Webster : Prostitution : 2 : to devote to corrupt or unworthy purposes : debase.

    So, according to you, being opposed to corrupt uses of anthropology is making “arguments couched in the tone of offended maiden aunt purity.”
    Interesting try at ridiculizing and trivializing . But then does this also apply to psychologists opposed to the use of psychologists for the sophistication of torture ? Or physicians offended by the nazi doctors’ experiments in the death camps ? “offended maiden aunt purity” he ?

    “minimize the damage of a war underway”. Who exactly is parrotting propaganda here ?

    Besides, you defend the analogy between the US military in Irak and Afghanistan and a surgeon operating. I didn’t think of that, but now that you say it, of course : surgeons too are familiar with torture, rape, dropping of bombs on civilian people, detaining hundreds of people without granting them any rights. That’s exactly what surgeons do on a daily basis. And for sure, Irak and Afghanistan (and their people), just like the patient of a surgeon, will feel much better thanks to the operations of the US military. And the US’ mission was to cure these countries. And the plan of the US now consists in sewing up blood vessels. Very good analogy. Thanks John. Your Dean Howard is quite a poet.

    BTW John, you still didn’t point out where exactly in my previous comments did I make ad hominems and appeal to authority, while you accused me of doing so while painting yourself as the savior of “serious scholarly debate”.

    I first commented to demonstrate that Rick’s argument about the critics of HTS was totally misguided. I don’t think I need to add anything as my argument has not been challenged at all by all the noise and digression you offfered.
    I am quite amazed you seem to consider this as a trivial issue one can “quibble for sport” about on the most popular american anthropology blog.

  44. I didn’t think of that, but now that you say it, of course : surgeons too are familiar with torture, rape, dropping of bombs on civilian people, detaining hundreds of people without granting them any rights. That’s exactly what surgeons do on a daily basis. And for sure, Irak and Afghanistan (and their people), just like the patient of a surgeon, will feel much better thanks to the operations of the US military. And the US’ mission was to cure these countries. And the plan of the US now consists in sewing up blood vessels. Very good analogy. Thanks John. Your Dean Howard is quite a poet.

    If a doctor rapes, beats, and breaks a person he is a criminal. In refusing to then treat the patient he doesn’t exonerate himself of any of the previous crimes but rather adds another crime to the list. Is that a better metaphor for your tastes?

    Prostitution is not only about sex for money, John, as Max Forte pointed out recently on his blog.

    So Puritanical. To paraphrase the concluding remark to a hilariously insightful rant I had the pleasure of hearing from Sherman Alexie, “Fundamentalism of any kind always ends with planes being flown into the sides of buildings.”

  45. MTBradley, there is nothing “puritanical” in my sentence. The word “prostitution” has two different meanings, and among these, the one I used has nothing to do with sex for money. I am sure you would have understood that if you had paid closer attention and tried to understand what the dictionnary entry I provided was about.
    That said, I acknowledge I made an error. I should have wrote, to facilitate your comprehension :
    “Merriam Webster online dictionnary indicates: Prostitution : the state of being prostituted, debasement. -> “Prostitute : to devote to corrupt or unworthy purposes : debase “.

    Now if you really want to carry on making a fool of yourself, please proceed, but I won’t help you in that task anymore.

  46. Very interesting posts. First, I don’t think that any anthro saying they can try to help a situation is a charlatan. The fact is that what anthros bring the situation is an heir of authority. The army has USACAPOC in special ops. That’s the US Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command. They however aren’t trained nearly enough for that mission, nor are they particularly respected or listened to. The reason wars begin, beyond the obvious material aspects, is a lack of information flow. The less information flow you have between groups, the more misunderstandings and the greater the chance of violence between them. It is very difficult to bring violence upon those that are fully humanized in your mind. On a state level there is always more variation within groups than there is between them. The idea is that by forcing open the groups to a dialogue with an increased information flow between them you will automatically reduce violence. Most deaths right now are caused by misunderstandings. There is so much support for this within anthropology, sociology, and social psychology that it’s hard to argue against it. In all of my research whether in studying the organizations of non-profits, corporations, government, or the various groups in low-income, and violent communities in the US, it’s always the same. Groups form and tension builds because information doesn’t flow between groups. A Bernard tells us, whether we like it or not applied social science is the business of behavior change.
    As for the HTS specifically, I’ve been looking into it and I’ve found that most of these stories of late are simply not true. They seem to be grounded in assumptions deriving from limited information. The story about there being disorganization, proved by deep pay cuts was nothing more than HTS members being moved to government employee status, rather than private contractors. This was because the SOFA for Iraq now brings all US personnel under the laws and prosecution of Iraqi authority. This is the same deal we have the Japan or Germany; hardly our puppet nations. Their based pay was cut, but with danger pay, cost of living allowance and other pays, the anthropologists on a team will make more than the government annual pay cap. The idea was also that by placing HTS members in a similar situation to soldiers, that they’d reduce the tension between soldiers and HTS members being seen as civilian “contractors” who soldiers basically hate.
    The other story about BAE taking over is similarly hyperbole. They are responsible for recruiting, but it is the government that selects people for teams during the 3 month training and interview process. After that three months people are transferred to being government employees and automatically leave BAE.

    As for Max Forte and his legion (a very small group of people that live in an eco chamber and allow zero descent, which is what Zero Anthropology seems to stand for), they are more interested in being angry and self-righteous than listening, or being solutions to problems. I remembered the social psychologist I mentioned in another post, Kolberg. He found in the 1960’s in limited studies of only men, that along with what he termed as “post-conventional” protesters, there were a larger mass of “pre-conventional” students that simply liked yelling and rebelling, and doing whatever they wanted. They are narcissists. A much more powerful and methodologically robust study was done with student radicals in 1971-1972 by others, who found the same thing:
    The Radical Personality: Social Psychological Correlates of New Left Ideology
    Author(s): S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman
    Source: Political Behavior, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1982), pp. 207-235

    They don’t use structure coefficients in their regression models, which make the interpretation of the beta weights very difficult, but it’s still very well done and has a sample size with gives it a large confidence interval.

  47. Now if you really want to carry on making a fool of yourself, please proceed, but I won’t help you in that task anymore.

    Yes, you are right. I need to go sit in the corner because I was foolish enough to think that usage of the term ‘prostitute’ cast aspersion upon a person via comparison to someone whose general character the speaker finds objectionable due to their engagement in sexual behavior the speaker judges inappropriate. In short, I was laboring under the impression that if I tell someone they prostitute themselves that they will probably think I am calling them a whore. How foolish of me, indeed. Which Ministry of Truth course do I need to attend to correct this and other misapprehensions?

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