Really, try focusing on what the article actually says, than guess around it and raise issues and arguments that are at best tangentially related.

http://www.firstearthbattalion.org/

It’s not a joke.

Anyway, here’s a video I thought you’d want to see. Its from Jim Channon, the guy depicted in the movie, “Men who stare at goats.” He talks about his role in influencing the army. I think this is very important for anyone who thinks this that the military is a monolith, which influences one way.

It’s a multipart video. He talks about dealing with officers near the end.

“I feel about Neoliberal economics the way Max feels about the HTS”

Uh, no you don’t. If you did, you would see those two as very much tied together, and you would condemn both, as I do. HTS is itself an incarnation of the neoliberal economic ethos, with privatization and outsourcing of state functions and resources, relying on a range of private contractors. HTS employees may now be government employees, but HTS itself is supported by a nest of private firms. None of these firms operate transparently and with accountability to the American public — just visit their websites and see for yourself. Some are barely more than a flashy picture and a mailing address. In addition, HTS is part of the force projection inherent to the politics of neoliberalism, binding other nations into a system of free markets, “democracy” (meaning multiple parties and competition allowing for the entry of foreign interests, such as U.S. funding of political parties by the CIA), and “freedom” (meaning individualism and consumerism). If you rejected neoliberalism, you would reject its imperialism, and thus HTS as one of its expressions. Checkmate, mate.

“So the lack of transparency is not the issue. We can just toss that reason out.”

There is no ONE issue, but that certainly is one of them. Why? (1) Because HTS promised such transparency, and apparently that was a lie. (2) Because in a democracy the public is supposed to have oversight and be informed of what the government it pays for is doing.

“As for working with the military, one excuse is that it puts our lives in danger. So, if we look at the many deaths of ethnographers that have put themselves in dangerous situations, do we find protest?”

Apples and oranges. The first is putting someone putting your life in danger, and the second is about you choosing to put your life in danger. Anyway, I am sure there is an element of both in HTS. As for cynical joy about the loss of HTS lives…it’s not cynical, and it’s not joy. Actually, it’s usually a lot more of a collective, “I couldn’t give a flying fuck”. Noting how HTS has tried to capitalize on the deaths of its own (I think here of St. Paula), even while obfuscating its own role in their deaths (through lack of proper training, for example), and the degree of sentiment gushed out that reserves dead HTS perps for “humanity” while reducing others to animals…now that is the bullshit I have argued against. If you cannot follow the thread, put away your scissors.

“Ok, then there is the, “it puts our informants lives in danger.” No it doesn’t. Our informants live in a war zone.”

And guess what? HTS is part of what makes it a war zone for them. Did you miss the part where HTS is part of the U.S. Army, a foreign occupier that invaded to fight a war against people who never attacked the U.S. You put their lives in danger, by being there. HTS is not separate from the context in which it exists and plays itself out.

“By saving their mens’ lives, they are saving everyones’ lives.”

Oh boy, as far as logic goes, this one fails the smell test. The U.S. saved its men’s lives by dropping atomic bombs on Japan. Your argument has to then be that everyone’s life was thus saved. This is bizarre: death is life — but it’s not your only Orwellian approach to this debate. Remember, you’re the one who rejects neoliberalism and supports neoliberalism’s warfare. Bad is good then.

“the worse things get, the more bloody things get, the more our resolve will stiffen. Now that things are better in Iraq, we are getting out.”

No. You did not get such a bloodied face and confront such impossible options in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Haiti, and that’s why the U.S. and its partners are still there. You get out of Iraq because you have failed. The same will follow in Afghanistan, except that by then you would have wasted more lives, and more resources, for absolutely nothing.

“opponents of the HTS are also culturally blind, in the sense that they have frozen the view of what it is that anthropologists are and are supposed to do”

That cuts both ways, too bad this eluded you. The conflict between anthropologists and HTS began when Montgomery McFate started to unilaterally preach to the world about what anthropology’s new mission would be, which would be her mission in fact, and indeed it has served her very well financially. She told us we are dumb and irrelevant — and yet we were to be recruited for our brains. McFate declared she would make “anthropology useful to the military”, as if she had the right to speak for all of us. She said this would “anthropologize the military” — which does not follow from the last statement, at all — and she has been totally wrong. Right now, HTS cannot even anthropologize itself. McFate, in her extreme arrogance, assumed she could talk for all of us. Well, surprise, surprise.

Anthropologists are in an immense debate about what they do, and why. McFate sought to exploit that crisis, and capitalize on it. Had she been less of a presumptuous “star of the show” type, she might have found many more allies in academic anthropology to back her up, apart from the marginal likes of a Liam Murphy, or the disreputable and sinister likes of a Felix Moos. Instead, she ended up alone, isolated even among those who initially admired her mission. This is the person who would bring insurgents in Afghanistan to their knees? She cannot even convert her own kind.

The problem, as explained repeatedly elsewhere and by others as well, is that anthropology has no actual core that can be aligned either for or against “power.” It has a colonial past, and a continuing colonial legacy. It remains a club for middle class white people, travelers who need to get certifications to ensure that their travels do not undermine their quest for middle class comfort. What some anthropologists wonder is whether they should be kicked out by history while presiding over, and engaging in, more bloody colonial wars. It offends the sensibility, to different degrees, of most anthropologists.

If you cannot respect that, you have no business being in anthropology, and even less in claiming that you can use it to serve the interests of big business (your beloved applied anthropology, of service to neoliberal economics) and the military. Had McFate really been a good anthropologist, rather than one graduated from Yale, she would have tried to understand this tribe better, and not march so triumphantly. She has failed, and there are no two ways about that.

“Anthropology has taught me that nothing is really real outside of a person’s mind”

I very much doubt that anthropology taught you that.

“What makes you think there isn’t talk of avoiding all the bullshit and just sending soldiers to college for anthropology degrees? Can you say unintended consequences? Do your jobs exist without government funding?”

Let them, and I can assure we will not be following any military script, or prepping them for battlefield situations. On the contrary, they seriously risk getting back a number of defectors and dissidents. Indeed, the reason the army has not chosen this obvious route earlier, and with greater intensity, is precisely because it fears loss of control. Let these students show up in class, in front of their peers, and argue for going to war against people who never attacked their country, and who are simply fighting to retain theirs. Let these army students present themselves, and explain why their endeavors are worth so many billions of dollars, when seriously urgent human problems rage without control. I cherish the opportunity…send them to me.

Angstboy, I wish we were doing just that, because I think that’s a good thing, and is usually a sign that there is less variance of position, and that much of that variance can be accounted for with semantic differences only, which means that we are talking in circles. That would be a good thing.

I think your also getting close to the heart of things when you say that both the effectiveness of HTT reports, and the murky ethics of academics, are somewhat over blown, due to the not knowing. As an applied anthropologist I have no problem with this level of transparency. As I’ve said, it is more transparent than much of the work I’ve done, and will probably ever do. I was on a team for Samsung mobile once, and you report will never be scene by anyone, outside the company. The participants didn’t get to see a thing. If it is ever written about it will be referred to as Company X, or something.
The AAA cleared this kind of thing in the early 1980′s, after an almost 30 year ban, which is why we are not nearly as relevant to the world as every other social science. We have basically allowed economists to ruin the world, and run amok. (I feel about Neoliberal economics the way Max feels about the HTS).

Again a real Content Analysis can be done on the written texts on this subject, and compared to text on other forms of applied anthropology to get at what someone is really saying. I don’t think any of us would be stupid enough to simply take everyone at their word and write in verbatim what our informants tell us. Many are simply trying to influence opinion, which is based on emotional reasoning.
A quick test. The argument of a lack of transparency. We only have to look to see if anyone is protesting, and signing petitions, against the much greater lack of transparency in business, and other applied, anthropology. I’ve heard a bit, but it doesn’t come close to this. So the lack of transparency is not the issue. We can just toss that reason out. It has everything to do with the lack of transparency with the military, and really it is simply working with the military. That’s it.

As for working with the military, one excuse is that it puts our lives in danger. So, if we look at the many deaths of ethnographers that have put themselves in dangerous situations, do we find protest? No. No one is actually against one of us making a choice to do something dangerous. Again just the military. Rather than grieving lost colleagues, or demanding the release of a captive, there is a kind of cynical joy in using it as fodder against the program. This is cutting off one’s nose to spite their own face. It is sad.

Ok, then there is the, “it puts our informants lives in danger.” No it doesn’t. Our informants live in a war zone. Their lives are already in danger, and not knowing anything about what is going on on the ground is more dangerous for them. A sharp knife is less dangerous than a dull one. If we don’t talk to people, then soldiers will talk to them. Either way someone is going to talk to them, who do you want talking to them? The only way to ensure that they aren’t targeted by the enemy for talking to someone is to not talk to them. Does anyone really want that? To operate in a way that completely ignores any input from locals, so that our military simply assumes everything and operates from a complete position of ethnocentrism? That is how things were being done at the first push into Iraq, and we see how that went. It is a guaranteed way to kill more innocent people.

So, then we have to see that things would be worse if there wasn’t a recognition that we need this type of knowledge, imperfect as the process is. The simple fact that military commanders admit that they want and need this so they can save lives, even if it is only their mens’ lives, is a net good. By saving their mens’ lives, they are saving everyones’ lives. We could save every American life by simply using nukes for every conflict. So again, this is an ethical choice that is on a continuum.

I think there is also a fear that if the HTS is successful, then it might make this new type of war more successful, and fill us with even more hubris. This is similar to the old anarchist slogan, “the worse the better.” The worse conditions for workers and others were, the more likely a real revolution could be had to change everything. I find anarchist history fascinating.
That would be valid, but very recent history (not Vietnam or WWII) has shown us that the worse things get, the more bloody things get, the more our resolve will stiffen. Now that things are better in Iraq, we are getting out.
Us staying irrelevant is not going to change anything, or make anything better. If people think that we cannot make things better at least, then they are admitting that anth. is ultimately an irrelevant academic exercise, and that is not something I want any part of. I also know from actually working in applied projects, that it is not true.

The only highly trained professionals whose absence would make everyone think twice about committing to military conflict are doctors, MD’s. If the AMA condemned their people from taking part in military conflicts, and pulled licenses from those that did, we would not be having a war. Of course, they are licensed by the state, so the AMA would be rendered irrelevant quickly. The ethical choice for MDs is much more serious, because they are bound to help, yet their mere presence acts as an enabling force. Perhaps they’d save more lives by not being involved. A commander would really think twice about attacking anyone if he didn’t have a doctor. However, Doctors without Borders realizes that if they were there or not, chances are the types of conflicts that they are involved in would happen anyway.
This is the kind of holistic, systematic thinking that we should be doing.

As an ethnographer if an informant told me that nothing of theirs could ever come into contact with menstrual blood, lest they loose all magical power, because menstrual blood is polluting; I would not actually think there was something special or different about their womens’ blood. I also wouldn’t start to think they might know something about hematology that I didn’t. I would immediately begin looking at how and why such a cultural construct exists. I wouldn’t think it was anything other than a belief and a construct.

When anthropologists tell me the same thing about the military, I have the same reaction. This argument is no different. We can boil the whole thing down to them saying that the polluting effects of the military will damage my anthropological magic, and the fruits of the AAA will fail the next rainy season.

Ok, now I’m really just wasting time to avoid work.

Everyone check out article published in the JSOU jounal, title, “Psychological Operations: Learning is not a Defense Science Project.”

[link deleted: U.S. government website that inspects the computers of those visiting the site]

You can see something we all intuitively know. The inherent conflict between non-kenetic power and kenetic power in the Army. The article was written before the transition of the reserve component back to the reserve command, so things have gotten better, but not much.
You will see almost verbatim the arguments that many HTT members and outsiders are making of the way the system in organized and sometimes marginalized in planning and execution stages. Number one on his list is cultural blindness. Big army essentially understands its role as, “stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in close combat.” (from the Army creed).

Likewise, opponents of the HTS are also culturally blind, in the sense that they have frozen the view of what it is that anthropologists are and are supposed to do.

So, is the answer to get rid of Civil Affairs and PSYOP?

That sad thing is, is that conflict is simply inevitable at almost every scale. We as humans, have done more damage by ignoring this reality and making it a black and white issue. We should strive for zero conflict, or total war, and ignore anything in between. Conflict can rarely if ever be solved, rather it can and must be managed. Don’t take my word for it, others make the case more strongly here:
“Working Through Environmental Conflict: The Collaborative Learning Approach”

This is the model we need to try to replicate to make the HTS more successful in dealing with conflict between the two competing interests in the army.

You cannot say that there are no proper ways to dealing with this problem, and at the same time not look.

Holden – “I just stopped in to mention something I saw in a conversation on a secure site. See I have access to secure sites on my computer, so I can actually look over the power points that are used for HTS briefings, comments between commanders, etc… I can’t post them, but I just find the disconnect between the conception and the reality.” If these powerpoints are only found on secure sites, that does not count as “published,” and is exactly what Max and others are complaining about HTS – scholarship should be publicly available, nothing from HTS is. There are lots of articles written ABOUT HTS, but none written BY HTS.

Max – your quote simply proves the point Holden was making – it is a statement by an anti-HTS person about how she “won” a debate with an HTS antrhopologist, without any supporting documentation. A person who self-admittedly studies “cold war militarization of the Arctic and other aspects of modern American militarism” – as Holden said, if you have a hammer…

However, yes, the AAA has condemned HTS, and knowing some of the members of the CEAUSSIC who have consistently personally struggled with the issue of working with the military, I think it can safely be said that this condemnation was not an ideological reaction to the program. There are definitely problems with the HTS program, not least of which is the issue of scientific ethics. And as I have mentioned before, I have worked frequently (in theater) with HTS, and also read the products they post on cleared computers. Yes, some are interesting and informative, but some are also ridiculously poor in planning and execution. If these were available publicly, then there possibly could be more debate about the efficacy of the program besides third-party comments from military officers on one side talking about “effectiveness” and scholars on the other talking about “ethics.”

Anyway, I just stopped in to mention something I saw in a conversation on a secure site. See I have access to secure sites on my computer, so I can actually look over the power points that are used for HTS briefings, comments between commanders, etc… I can’t post them, but I just find the disconnect between the conception and the reality.
One of the things I thought was funny is that the vitriol from some AAA members over the program is being viewed by some in the army as positive, that something is being done right if academics are so angry. This is called blow back, or when you hurt your own cause by being stupid and misreading the situation.

Another thing ya’ll haven’t figured out is that this is the only job of this type that is outsourced. The army has psychologists, doctors, nurses, economists, political scientists, etc… Officers trained in all of them. What makes you think there isn’t talk of avoiding all the bullshit and just sending soldiers to college for anthropology degrees? Can you say unintended consequences? Do your jobs exist without government funding?

Oh, and I would like to apologize for that rude post above, with the ad hominims. I had had a few beers before I wrote it.

(from: http://www.truthout.org/when-scholars-join-slaughter56379)

“Stacey Fritz is a Ph.D. candidate in cultural anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who studies cold war militarization of the Arctic and other aspects of modern American militarism, including its impacts on academia. She is also a member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, an independent ad-hoc group that seeks to promote an ethical anthropology and that believes that anthropologists should refrain from directly assisting the US military in combat. On November 18, Fritz debated Kathleen Reedy, an employee in the HTS, assigned to the 1/25th Stryker Brigade out of Fort Wainwright, Fairbanks.

“She seemed to be trying to make herself believe the HTS lines, but they are so unbelievable that I think that it is very, very difficult to debate/defend that perspective, especially since I had plenty of quotes from military leaders saying very candidly that the HTTs do HUMINT [Human Intelligence gathering] that the military uses to figure out who the bad guys are and which good guys can be co-opted.”

Fitz explained that Reedy opted not to debate the central HTS issues, but rather attempted to persuade the audience that she, as an anthropologist, had control over her information, and that she maintained “strong ethical guidelines concerning what she would pass on to them.”

Good job, on ignoring the facts. Keep doing that, especially while in Afghanistan, so we can look forward to an even more dramatic American failure.