Human Terrain & Anthropology (merged thread) [Archive] - Page 2

Adam L

11-04-2007, 04:33 PM

Everyday that the authors could have spent double and triple checking sources, re-wording footnotes, bibliography, etc., is one more day that this mission critical publication would not have been where it needed to be--in the hands of those executing COIN or preparing to execute.

It does not take days to do this. If they had good research skills (I'm sure they did considering where their degrees are from) it is a simple matter. Also, they shouldn't have been doing it themselves. That's what interns are for. Also, if they had time to wait for comments on the manual they certainly had time for this. This FM was not turned out in such short order (3-8 weeks) that I could understand this justification. I don't have a problem with them quickly sending off a version to the troops, but before letting U of C publish it they should have polished things up and put in the citiations for them. This is not a matter of copyright law. It is a matter of plagarism.

The previous post mentioned that it won't be long before we have quality control circles looking at publications down to the rifle squad level. Maybe. The sad reality is that the vast majority of our publications haven't been updated in more than 20 years because there's usually a 30+ step process before a new reference, warfighting or doctrinal publication is released. While I'm all for accuracy and legitimacy in writing, there's also an element of timeliness that must be met so that slow moving military and government bureaucracies can get the ship headed in the right direction. LtCol Nagl highlights well in Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife that permanent change in western militaries normally requires a new "doctrinal" publication to justify the change. From my perspective, this is a very true statement.

Yes, accuracy can take a long time and we need to get manuals into the field. That's what "interim" manuals are for.

One more thought on the subject... the Small Unit Leader's Guide to Counterinsurgency was put together by 5-10 different people, reviewed by about 10-20 more and then put to print in mass quantity all in a less than 8-month period due to some very high level general officers forcing this book (made to fit in a cargo pocket) through the normal doctrine process. I remember a few days after the pub was released when a person from the USMC doctrine division said that it should have never been published because of the way Dr. Kilcullen phrased Rule #19 Engage the women, beware the children (I think it was covet the women, beware the children initially... I could be wrong here)... anyway, the Small Unit Leader's Guide to COIN has been atop the Marine Forces Central Command reading list for all Marines ever since it was released. Along with the Anbar Awakening, bold and decisive leadership from warriors like Col McFarland, Capt Patriquin, LtCol Alford and many others, I know that FM 3-24 and the Small Unit Leader's Guide to COIN have played an integral role in the changing security environment in Anbar and throughout Iraq as a whole.

8-months is a long time. Fine it was written by 5-10 people, but I'm sure each of them had a few research assistants. The research is the time consuming part, writing isn't. If it was written under such time pressure with so little review, then it almost immediately should have been re-anylized, edited and reviewed on a larger scale. This leading to a "revised" edition 3-6-18 months down the road. A revised version of "#19" along with all other possible mistakes should have been sent in memos to troops so they could correct their copies (as well as thier perception of that entry) until they recieved an updated version.

In sum, Iraq isn't Harvard or Yale or Foreign Affairs magazine. Therefore, I don't care much about documentation. Get the information in our warriors hands as fast as possible so that we can learn and adapt faster than our enemies.

A copy with documentation is necessary not only for ethical reasons, but also to allow those studying, or in the future revising it, to see the sources from which the authors drew their information. This will allow them to understand the authors thought process and conlusions. Without this it is difficult to understand why certain oppinions where reached.

Adam

SteveMetz

11-04-2007, 05:00 PM

OK, I think I've really killed my horse now :wry:

When I taught at Leavenworth in the late '80s, there was a sign in one of my classrooms that read, "No horse is so dead that it can't be beaten a little more."

SteveMetz

11-04-2007, 05:02 PM

A copy with documentation is necessary not only for ethical reasons, but also to allow those studying, or in the future revising it, to see the sources from which the authors drew their information. This will allow them to understand the authors thought process and conlusions. Without this it is difficult to understand why certain oppinions where reached.

Adam

Well, as I suggested above, the primary source for doctrine is the collective wisdom of the community of practice as validated by vetting, not written sources. If it was up to me, I would have a bibliography but no foot- or endnotes. I think it's a mistake to give the impression that you're creating a work of scholarship if, in fact, you're not.

Maximus

11-04-2007, 05:06 PM

Appreciate the feedback. Just a few comments then I must sign off on this topic...

"8-months is a long time. Fine it was written by 5-10 people, but I'm sure each of them had a few research assistants. The research is the time consuming part, writing isn't. If it was written under such time pressure with so little review, then it almost immediately should have been re-anylized, edited and reviewed on a larger scale. This leading to a "revised" edition 3-6-18 months down the road. A revised version of "#19" along with all other possible mistakes should have been sent in memos to troops so they could correct their copies (as well as thier perception of that entry) until they recieved an updated version."

The 5-10 writers DID NOT have a few research assistants, in fact they had none. We're talking about a Marine Corps at war, not a law firm, not a university, not a... 90% of the Small Unit Leader's Guide to COIN was written by active duty Marines on their "free time", when not instructing, advising, working on other taskers, etc. The Marine Corps does not have a pool of writers--active duty, research assistants, GS-X or otherwise--standing by to write new doctrinal publications. I confront this reality almost daily. With respect to this is why we have "interim" publications, a thorough vetting process, and then we can all slap the table on the "perfect" manual. Again, not in this Corps, not at this time. Most of the initial writers have since moved on from their billets. Some are commanding units that are either in Iraq or about to leave for Iraq.

Here's the reality: The review process is not as thorough as we'd all like because your average Marine has higher priorities given the OpTempo today than reviewing/editing/re-writing a manual. We preach the 70-80% solution when it comes to decision-making and this has to suffice for manuals at this time as well, both the Small Unit Leader's Guide to COIN, FM 3-24, new MG Publications, Motorized Ops or any other subject. We can talk until we're blue in the face about the importance of documentation, accuracy, and everything else, but in the end, we've got what we've got when it comes to FM 3-24 and the Small Unit Leader's Guide to COIN and these documents are 1000 times better than anything we had beforehand. Yes, we must strive to revise, update, keep current all of our publications. But please keep in mind many of the warriors that played a key role in creating the documents are decisively engaged elsewhere. For example, LtCol Nagl, in charge of ensuring transition teams--the military's main effort--are ready to go; Gen Petraeus is now in Baghdad; Gen Mattis leaving I MEF to be the CG at Joint Forces Command, etc.

marct

11-04-2007, 05:09 PM

Hi Steve,

The thing is, though, that by far the major source for doctrine is the collective experience of the community of practice, not the work of scholars.

Point taken, at least in the general case. But how about the specific case of FM 3-24 and, especially, chapter 3? Yes, I agree that the community of practice provides the source of collective experience but, I think in the specific case of chapter 3 of FM 3-24, the scholarship was providing a specific set of concepts to discuss this collective experience. In effect, it was establishing part of the "universe of discourse" as an interface between the scholarly world and the community of practice.

Let me just bring out one example where I think the idea of a critical edition would be useful.

Counterinsurgency Manual, section 3-51: Cultural Forms(1)
"A ritual is a stereotyped sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects performed to influence supernatural entities or forces on behalf of the actors' goals and interest."
Unacknowledged Source:

Religious ritual is "a stereotyped sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place, and designed to influence preternatural entities or forces on behalf of the actors' goals and interests." (Turner, Victor. W. "Symbols in African Ritual". In J. Dolgin, et al., eds., Symbolic Anthropology. Columbia Univ. Press, 1977. P. 2.)

Now, I have done a lot of work with Victor Turner's ideas on ritual and, especially, on extending his formulation of rites of passage theory beyond the generally "religious" context (2). More importantly, the current version is quite limited; Turner was brilliant, and this doesn't even begin to touch his insights on ritual. By not having the citation available, people who are interested in ritual (like this thread (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=1745)) have to rely on either finding someone who does know the area and will talk about it or doing their own research without much of a starting point.

The primary method of establishing validity in document is the extensive vetting process, not reflection of an existing body of published scholarship. So I'm just not sure what the value of a "critical edition" would be.

Agreed on the vetting process as the main source of validity, although I would also suggest that that is for preliminary validity, and the post-publication validity would be established through, as it were, field trials :wry:. As I said, I think the value of a critical edition would be primarily in the area of professional military education and in the subsequent expansion of doctrine - not in the specific training function.

I suspect that the lesson future doctrine writers may draw from this little episode is that the "value added" of trying to integrate scholarly work isn't worth the hassle.

Agreed, and it is one of the major reasons why I am rather angry with his article. I believe that it probably will have this effect; an effect that will

only serve to polarize an already existing division, and
be a disservice to both the Military and Anthropology.I will continue to believe that it is worth the hassle to integrate scholarly work into doctrine but, as Stan has occasionally noted, I am a hopeless romantic (3).

Marc

*****
The Critical Edition (4)
Endnotes:

1. Price, David, Pilfered Scholarship Devastates General Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual, Counterpunch, October 30th, 2007 available at http://www.counterpunch.org/price10302007.html dl: Nov 4, 2007

2. Tyrrell, Marc W.D. "At the Cusp of the Information Age: Outplacement as a Rite of Passage in Late 20th Century Canada." Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa. available upon request.

3. Stan, post at SWC, September 25, 2007 available at http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=26924&postcount=44 dl: Nov 4, 2007

4. :D

marct

11-04-2007, 05:15 PM

on the current to and fro.

Nagl Responds to Price (http://savageminds.org/2007/11/02/nagle-responds-to-price/)

Our good friends (http://savageminds.org/2007/10/18/what-flavor-are-we/) at Small Wars Journal (http://smallwarsjournal.com/) have provided another forum for discussion of David Price’s article on plagiarism and Field Manual 3-24 (http://usacac.army.mil/cac/repository/materials/coin-fm3-24.pdf), aka the Counterinsurgency Field Manual (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Marine-Corps-Counterinsurgency-Field-Manual/dp/0226841510/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/203-6662939-8700720?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194065860&sr=8-1). Lt. Col. John Nagl, one of the manual’s authors, has published a piece (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/11/desperate-people-with-limited/) at SWJ directly responding to Price.

SteveMetz

11-04-2007, 05:42 PM

8-months is a long time. Fine it was written by 5-10 people, but I'm sure each of them had a few research assistants. The research is the time consuming part, writing isn't.
Adam

This is simply not how military doctrine is developed. Professors have research assistants; that concept does not apply to doctrine writing.

I'd have to check with Con Crane who was the lead writer, but I'm pretty sure literally dozens of people drafted parts of it, ranging from a few paragraphs (me) to whole sections. But the point is that it is NOT research in the academic sense.

The vetting process is elaborate. Literally hundreds of people from subject matter experts to four star generals had input. Generally that's done from an institutional rather than an individual perspective. For instance, in my organization--the U.S. Army War College--the draft was farmed out to a range of subject matter experts. Each was asked to make line in/line out suggestions. That was then compiled by our doctrine division, but ultimately the input comes from our commander.

Sargent

11-04-2007, 06:00 PM

The 5-10 writers DID NOT have a few research assistants, in fact they had none. We're talking about a Marine Corps at war, not a law firm, not a university, not a... 90% of the Small Unit Leader's Guide to COIN was written by active duty Marines on their "free time", when not instructing, advising, working on other taskers, etc. The Marine Corps does not have a pool of writers--active duty, research assistants, GS-X or otherwise--standing by to write new doctrinal publications. I confront this reality almost daily. With respect to this is why we have "interim" publications, a thorough vetting process, and then we can all slap the table on the "perfect" manual. Again, not in this Corps, not at this time. Most of the initial writers have since moved on from their billets. Some are commanding units that are either in Iraq or about to leave for Iraq.

Here's the reality: The review process is not as thorough as we'd all like because your average Marine has higher priorities given the OpTempo today than reviewing/editing/re-writing a manual. We preach the 70-80% solution when it comes to decision-making and this has to suffice for manuals at this time as well, both the Small Unit Leader's Guide to COIN, FM 3-24, new MG Publications, Motorized Ops or any other subject. We can talk until we're blue in the face about the importance of documentation, accuracy, and everything else, but in the end, we've got what we've got when it comes to FM 3-24 and the Small Unit Leader's Guide to COIN and these documents are 1000 times better than anything we had beforehand. Yes, we must strive to revise, update, keep current all of our publications. But please keep in mind many of the warriors that played a key role in creating the documents are decisively engaged elsewhere. For example, LtCol Nagl, in charge of ensuring training teams--the military's main effort--are ready to go; Gen Petraeus is now in Baghdad; Gen Mattis leaving I MEF to be the CG at Joint Forces Command, etc.

While optempo is high, I think this case is overstated.

1. There are plenty of Marine officers in B-billets who's time could have been utilized to assist in this matter. The two years my husband spent at his before returning the fleet last year for a deployment were not the picture of busy. Clearly some percentage of Marine officers at any given time are being underutilized.

2. Even Marines in the Fleet are not always pinned down by operational helmet fires. Were it not for the actual fires that recently plagued SoCal, his regimental job was not so onerous that some time could not be spared to provide an assist.

3. Even a deployed Marine has lot's of downtime. In a mission with an incredibly high optempo, my husband read voraciously. He even had time to vet a 25 page document I put together to assist a defense analyst.

4. I'm sure you couldn't throw a stone very far without finding more than a handful of military history doctoral candidates or newly minted PhDs who would have been happy to assist in this effort for little or no money. Of all the unpaid work I do for the Marine Corps, this would have been one task I would have jumped at to do given my own professional and scholarly interests. I know, for example, that Elliot Cohen at SAIS has provided students for military work, some paid and other unpaid -- I worked on two such projects during my time there, lo those many years ago (one a research project, another a Marine Corps War College CINCEX -- interesting, now, because it was during Larry Wilkerson's tenure there, but that's another story).

*5. A particular comment re Gen. Mattis: even in the period leading up to his deployment to Iraq in 03/04 he had time to write on the importance of reading military history. Based on that, he and I exchanged several messages. I can't have been the only person with whom he had personal exchanges on the matter, so clearly he had time in his schedule to indulge in such "frivolities."

As for the Price article, I read it and found it an interesting critique. Not necessarily a useful critique, but certainly one that made me think about the manual and military documents generally.

The piece I found most compelling in the article was practically buried, and did not receive much follow-on in the article itself:

"The significance of the University of Chicago Press' republication of the Manual must be seen in the context of the Pentagon's domestic propaganda campaign to generate support for an indefinite U.S. presence in Iraq. Here is an "independent" academic press playing point guard in the production of pseudo-scholarly political propaganda. As the Middle East scholar Steve Niva recently suggested to me, 'General Petraeus' counterinsurgency in Iraq has failed, but his domestic campaign for American hearts and minds is succeeding in textbook fashion; the strategy is to weaken the demand for withdrawal by dividing insurgents (anti-war activists) from the general population (American public).'"

http://www.counterpunch.org/price10302007.html
David Price, "Pilfered Scholarship..."

It made me wonder whether a military document or work of doctrine had ever been conceived of or used in this way. Given some other critiques of the Manual I've heard (along the lines that, in the end, it doesn't offer much that is new -- perhaps this new iteration makes the information more valuable because it now has much greater institutional support), the notion that this document was meant to salve the public fears is not so far flung. It's certainly an interesting use of doctrine.

SteveMetz

11-04-2007, 06:07 PM

Ken White

11-04-2007, 06:08 PM

We all know that but even the Forces occasionally succumb to the siren lure of 'process.' Seemingly forgetting every few years that form over function is antithetical to success in combat.

...
. . .
... It is this function of doctrine that I see as being a very good reason for having a "critical edition" of doctrine available (i.e. full citations, etc.).

We can disagree on that. I think the process of producing the document and compiling and annotating and filing the references to include detailed cites is adequate. Seems to me your approach would add to costs with no tangible benefit to the doctrinal producer. Admittedly, such an approach would be an asset to scholars but I submit that's an ancillary effect not justifying the expense of tax dollars -- or effort on the part of the developers..

...First, when Ken mentioned Taylor, I really had to laugh since Taylor actually took many of his ideas, filtered 3rd and 4th hand (without citations :eek:), from the beginnings of modern warfare going back to William the Silent and Maurice of Nassau. Second, Demming actually got a lot of his ideas from Mao via, in part, the 1st Marine Raider BTN...

Why do you think Ken mentioned those two? You may not have known or may have forgotten to add that "their ideas" were rolled back into military training (and not just in the US) with poor modifications in the 70s and 80s, much to the detriment of said training. Great detriment...

Much 'modern' management theory actually was developed in the US in the 1940-45 time frame by the armed forces and industry for the worldwide conduct of the war. After the war, industry continued to adapt it and then some of the civilian Educational Specialists hired by DoD and the services reinvented the wheel by 'introducing' these techniques in the service schools in the 70s -- not realizing that many of the precepts had been modified to maximize profit and lessen costs. Need in industry, dangerous in combat. Thus the Armed forces of the US began to teach what to think instead of how to think.

...The idea of using quality control circles, or some modern variant of them, is actually not too bad. In some ways, the SWC is just a giant quality control circle, as are many of the informal communications networks that exist.

With the note that SWC is an informal 'QC' of sorts -- and thus works simply because it has not been institutionalized, we again disagree. That too has been done with almost ludicrous effects; I've seen it attempted in the training institutions and on high level staffs. The effort has merit where widgets are made and a tax write off can occur if they are improperly assembled -- it has less merit where unnecessary deaths can recur from cockamamie ideas. That doesn't even address the problem of convincing a crusty flag officer that a group of lesser mortals has determined his idea in not sound... :)

The second point is not trues in all cases, in those where it is, it needs to be corrected; no question the services are too heirarchical in many respects. However, the first is the real problem. :(

Fortunately, the experimentation with Deming et.al, QC and such like seems to have run its faddish course. Before QC we had Organizational Development (O.D) and then Organizational Effectiveness (O.E.). My fear was that the next step would be O.F. -- organizational failure -- and we almost achieved that. :D

marct

11-04-2007, 06:25 PM

Hi Ken,

We can disagree on that. I think the process of producing the document and compiling and annotating and filing the references to include detailed cites is adequate. Seems to me your approach would add to costs with no tangible benefit to the doctrinal producer. Admittedly, such an approach would be an asset to scholars but I submit that's an ancillary effect not justifying the expense of tax dollars -- or effort on the part of the developers..

It might and you are quite right that it may just be my academic biases at work. Again, I would like to know, in this particular case, if there were cites in the original drafts. If there were, and they were later edited out for training clarity, then the time and effort to add them back in for a critical edition, such as the U of C one, would be minimal.

Why do you think Ken mentioned those two? You may not have known or may have forgotten to add that "their ideas" were rolled back into military training (and not just in the US) with poor modifications in the 70s and 80s, much to the detriment of said training. Great detriment...

Because he is a really smart dude who knows his history :D? I did know that they had been brought back in, but I wasn't sure when. I also knew, at least from the Canadian side, that they had been butchered almost beyond recognition.

With the note that SWC is an informal 'QC' of sorts -- and thus works simply because it has not been institutionalized, we again disagree. That too has been done with almost ludicrous effects; I've seen it attempted in the training institutions and on high level staffs. The effort has merit where widgets are made and a tax write off can occur if they are improperly assembled -- it has less merit where unnecessary deaths can recur from cockamamie ideas. That doesn't even address the problem of convincing a crusty flag officer that a group of lesser mortals has determined his idea in not sound...

I didn't know that it had been tried - thanks for letting me know :). BTW, I do agree that most of the attempts at institutionalization I have run across, mainly in private industry, have been abject failures (if anyone really wants the cites, I can get them ;)).

Fortunately, the experimentation with Deming et.al, QC and such like seems to have run its faddish course. Before QC we had Organizational Development (O.D) and then Organizational Effectiveness (O.E.). My fear was that the next step would be O.F. -- organizational failure -- and we almost achieved that. :D

Oh, yeah, business fads come and go. I keep hoping and praying that we as a species can develop some type of institutional form that focuses on integrating results and theory. I'm still waiting...

Ken White

11-04-2007, 06:26 PM

It does not take days to do this. If they had good research skills (I'm sure they did considering where their degrees are from) it is a simple matter. Also, they shouldn't have been doing it themselves. That's what interns are for...

Doctrine writers don't have interns. A guy or gal gets tasked to write it if it's done in the armed forces. If it's contracted, the writer may or may not have interns but in either case, much of the effort is individual and the modifications come from meetings with subject matter experts. As Steve Metz pointed out, most of it is simply distilled knowledge.

... Also, if they had time to wait for comments on the manual they certainly had time for this. This FM was not turned out in such short order (3-8 weeks) that I could understand this justification. I don't have a problem with them quickly sending off a version to the troops, but before letting U of C publish it they should have polished things up and put in the citiations for them. This is not a matter of copyright law. It is a matter of plagarism.

The development file for the doctrine is voluminous and generally contains tons of references and cites, some used and some not used. If any copyright releases were required, they were obtained and will be in that file.

Plagiarism is defined as claiming credit for someone else's work -- it is essentially an academic issue (and lately, it seems, a political one...). Since military doctrine writers have nothing to gain and are essentially parts of group efforts producing government publications for the common good, I believe that accusations of plagiarism are specious. Even silly, in fact.

I suggest that if the nominal authors were CPT Eward Heebley, an OCS graduate with no degree at this time and SFC Tetranore Schwazkopf, there would be no outcry.

This is all political foolishness.

selil

11-04-2007, 06:31 PM

Would you footnote an operational order (tactical)? Doctrine from what I understand and the FM's specifically are the materials to write those orders from (strategic).

What is lost is the audience and the specific needs of the document. It's not for academics. It was released because academics wanted to read it. Now it is being judged not on it's merits or how it effects the audience but on an artificial expectation of academic citation. If it were cited in MLA (English) would it then be characterized as wrong by the APA5 (Psychology) crowd? If entire pages were ripped off from sources (above lets say 250 words) there would be a copyright violation. However, copyright and scholarship are NOT bound at the hip. In fact they could be considered mutually exclusive concerns since scholarship is exempt from most copyright by the fair use doctrine. Citation in academia is about attribution, claim of original authorship, proof of reflection on the science, and ability to recreate the study/science.

I can only see this being used in funny shaped building to drive more research to contractors and away from academia. I can see this as being used as a wedge for secrecy and used as a reason for less transparency. The obvious political punditry of Dr. Price may be heralded by his colleagues but the tone and tenor brings into question his actual goals. I wonder what Steven Aftergood would say about this... I'll think I'll ask him.

Sargent

11-04-2007, 06:33 PM

Sheesh--the fact that every sentence in the manual isn't footnoted isn't due to a lack of time or labor. There were slews of Ph.D.s who worked on it. The reason is IT IS NOT A WORK OF SCHOLARSHIP AND WAS NOT INTENDED TO BE.

If this is in response to what I wrote, I did not argume in my post that the manual should be footnoted, I merely responded to the notion that it could not be footnoted due to a lack of adequate resources.

However, as to whether a manual such as this should be footnoted, I can think of several reasons why the effort might be worthwhile. For example, one of the end-users, finding some piece particularly useful, might want to know more about the subject. A footnote to a source will provide a starting point from which to learn more about that particular issue. Writers of future manuals would certainly benefit from having recourse to the captured knowledge of previous generations.

At some point during the research phase, when the information was collected, a decision was made to leave off the citation details. They had it and chose not to use it. Even if this is not a scholarly work for academic purposes, I don't think there is a definitive answer that such a manual would not benefit from the utilization of certain scholarly forms. There is certainly nothing wrong with questioning the wisdom of that decision, no matter the outcome of that discussion. If the creation of the manual were likened to a combat operation, what we are engaged in is akin to an after action review.

Cheers,
Jill

Ken White

11-04-2007, 06:43 PM

...
It might and you are quite right that it may just be my academic biases at work. Again, I would like to know, in this particular case, if there were cites in the original drafts. If there were, and they were later edited out for training clarity, then the time and effort to add them back in for a critical edition, such as the U of C one, would be minimal.

Those and any copyright releases will be in the Background File and were almost certainly not included in the Drafts. I strongly believe that the inclusion of references and notes excessively enlarge and complicate doctrinal material and that such inclusion should be totally avoided. In my experience, the Army is pretty punctilious about such stuff.

I suspect the major issue here is essentially political, is very much predicated on the fact that several contributors have advanced degrees and that the U of Chicago sought or was sought to publish a 'civilian' edition. Why the Manual wasn't simply okayed for release by the GPO or picked up by Praeger or one of the publishers who specialize in such stuff I don't know. Maybe because someone got stooopid? :wry:

...I also knew, at least from the Canadian side, that they had been butchered almost beyond recognition.

Same down here. It almost seemed they picked out the bad to implement while discarding the good...

... BTW, I do agree that most of the attempts at institutionalization I have run across, mainly in private industry, have been abject failures (if anyone really wants the cites, I can get them ;)).

Yet, the seekers of Nirvana press on. Are Consultancy and Snake Oil related... :D

Oh, yeah, business fads come and go. I keep hoping and praying that we as a species can develop some type of institutional form that focuses on integrating results and theory. I'm still waiting...

Me, too. Sigh...:(

SteveMetz

11-04-2007, 06:45 PM

If this is in response to what I wrote, I did not argume in my post that the manual should be footnoted, I merely responded to the notion that it could not be footnoted due to a lack of adequate resources.

However, as to whether a manual such as this should be footnoted, I can think of several reasons why the effort might be worthwhile. For example, one of the end-users, finding some piece particularly useful, might want to know more about the subject. A footnote to a source will provide a starting point from which to learn more about that particular issue. Writers of future manuals would certainly benefit from having recourse to the captured knowledge of previous generations.

At some point during the research phase, when the information was collected, a decision was made to leave off the citation details. They had it and chose not to use it. Even if this is not a scholarly work for academic purposes, I don't think there is a definitive answer that such a manual would not benefit from the utilization of certain scholarly forms. There is certainly nothing wrong with questioning the wisdom of that decision, no matter the outcome of that discussion. If the creation of the manual were likened to a combat operation, what we are engaged in is akin to an after action review.

Cheers,
Jill

My argument was that doctrine could or should have a bibliography, but not footnotes. The reason is that adding footnotes creates the illusion that it is a scholarly document, which creates unrealistic expectations (such as those of Dr. Price). I do not think it's accurate to say that "At some point during the research phase, when the information was collected, a decision was made to leave off the citation details" because the overwhelming amount of information in a doctrine manual is not collected from "citable" sources, but from the collected wisdom of the body of professional experts. So a point is not considered valid by whether it was lifted from some published article, but--to be honest--by whether key flag officers considered it valid.

Rex Brynen

11-04-2007, 06:47 PM

Sheesh--the fact that every sentence in the manual isn't footnoted isn't due to a lack of time or labor. There were slews of Ph.D.s who worked on it. The reason is IT IS NOT A WORK OF SCHOLARSHIP AND WAS NOT INTENDED TO BE.

Are you saying it was doctrine, and not a scholarly work?

*grins and ducks behind his dead horse*

http://www.blogscanada.ca/egroup/content/binary/dead_horse.jpg

Stan

11-04-2007, 06:48 PM

This is simply not how military doctrine is developed. Professors have research assistants; that concept does not apply to doctrine writing.

Indeed, 110% corrrect. I want to point out that Steve's rendition is simply the way things are, and I suspect will be for some time to come.

Real Life Version - I just returned from a tour in Korea and was instructed to go directly to Michigan with a team of authors, mechanics, and senior military representatives. Our mission was to take the dash 10, 20, and 30 manuals for the XM1 and do each and every task and function therein, regardless of faults, quotes, etc. 5 inches of paper later, few things worked out and arguments ensued.

Ever have an argument with a maintenance manual 'writer' who never saw an M1 ? I did, several times.

I wished there were quotes and sources to refer to and call, but they were absent as they often are.

This is not doctrine, but a 30-level maintenance manual.

I somewhat see Dr. Price's point, but this subject is not about punctuation and journalistic ethics. Military manuals are written and designed for a Soldier's use. It is, IMHO useless to waste paper quoting sources when the end user is under fire and reading short passages that should save his Alpha.

Marc,
You are a hopeless romantic and I think that's great to have a real human with your intellect at our side. Hang in there...we're on your side, come hell or high water !

Regards, Stan

SteveMetz

11-04-2007, 06:48 PM

Stan

11-04-2007, 06:52 PM

This whole thread has convinced me that someone with extensive experience in doctrine development needs to write a scholarly article on what doctrine is and how it is developed--Doctrine For Dummies or something. Maybe I'll put that on my "to do" list. It would be item #3458 on the list.

Not to overkill this subject, but DIA did try and do just the same with their admin manual for total idiots, 100-1 :mad:

Not only does it suck, it's still with us. :D

Adam L

11-04-2007, 06:56 PM

Well, as I suggested above, the primary source for doctrine is the collective wisdom of the community of practice as validated by vetting, not written sources. If it was up to me, I would have a bibliography but no foot- or endnotes. I think it's a mistake to give the impression that you're creating a work of scholarship if, in fact, you're not.

Footnotes and endnotes have NOTHING to do with scholarship (other than that they are quite often neccesary for scholarship), they are simply a common method used to achieve clarity, depth as well attributions. Footnotes are used in a lot of ways. Put a bibliography in fine, but make sure you can reference it if anything specific is taken from a source.

Adam

marct

11-04-2007, 07:05 PM

I suspect the major issue here is essentially political, is very much predicated on the fact that several contributors have advanced degrees and that the U of Chicago sought or was sought to publish a 'civilian' edition. Why the Manual wasn't simply okayed for release by the GPO or picked up by Praeger or one of the publishers who specialize in such stuff I don't know. Maybe because someone got stooopid? :wry:

Could be :D!

It almost seemed they picked out the bad to implement while discarding the good...

One thing I find fascinating is the backflow. I remember spending 20 minutes trying to explain to a very intelligence business colleague of mine what the differences were between Strategy, Operations and Tactics. Personally, I find the inclusion of military conceptualizations of organization, the 70's and 80's variety that is, to be totally counter-productive in any business that couldn't be fully automated.

Yet, the seekers of Nirvana press on. Are Consultancy and Snake Oil related... :D

Probably, although I hate to say it since one of my other hats is as a consultant :wry:.

Marc

SteveMetz

11-04-2007, 07:11 PM

Footnotes and endnotes have NOTHING to do with scholarship (other than that they are quite often neccesary for scholarship), they are simply a common method used to achieve clarity, depth as well attributions. Footnotes are used in a lot of ways. Put a bibliography in fine, but make sure you can reference it if anything specific is taken from a source.

Adam

The key word there is "if." In doctrine, only a small portion of the information is taken from a discernible or discrete source. That's the point I've been trying to make--if you do, in fact, cite those few things that are citable, people outside the military community are going to be critical because so much of it is not cited. To me, that is not a flaw in the doctrine development process, but simply an indication that some in the scholarly world don't understand that process.

I think it's relevant here that the Army and Marine Corps, as institutions, are not responding to Dr. Price. John Nagl happens to care because he is both a scholar and a soldier. While I could be proven wrong, I don't think the Army and the Marine Corps as institutions given a gnat's posterior about what Dr. Price thinks.

This has struck a raw nerve with me because it is one element of a bigger issue: in order to grant degrees, military staff and war colleges have had to take on some of the trappings of academia. But because of their nature, they do it half way--they have to have "academic freedom" policies in order to get accredited, but they have subtle and not so subtle ways of enforcing a type of academic freedom that no civilian institution would tolerate. They require their students to do "research," but it's often research that no quality civilian graduate institution would accept.

Being caught in the middle of this, I wish the staff and war colleges would just stop trying to be ersatz universities and be what they are. The problem is that once one service started giving graduate degrees (and this means YOU, Naval War College), penis envy kicked in and the other ones had to follow. Basically, the Navy recognized that because of its deployment patterns, it was very hard for its officers to get advanced civilian degrees. This was seen to put them at a competitive disadvantage in higher level joint staffs. So the Naval War College became an accredited degree granting institution. So then all the rest had to follow.

The Army War College is a case in point. Something like 80% of our Army students come with a master's degree, but we insist on giving them another. I know lots of Army officers with 2, 3, even 4 master's degrees. In other words, there wasn't really a need for the degree but we couldn't have the Naval and Air war colleges giving master's degrees and us not. So that put us in a position of having to do things to get accredited which, in my opinion, did not contribute the professional education of senior military leaders.

OK, /rant.

Rex Brynen

11-04-2007, 07:13 PM

For what its worth, the US Army publishing guidelines (including copyright clearance and citations of material) can be found here:

The Army Publishing Program (AR 25-30) 27 March 2006 (http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r25_30.pdf)

Army Publishing: Actions Officers Guide (PAM 25- 40) 7 November 2006. (http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/p25_40.pdf)

marct

11-04-2007, 07:22 PM

Hi Folks,

I'm wondering if it wouldn't be possible, and possibly profitable, to reframe the debate a touch. I'd like to toss out a few statements and see what people think about them.

1. Field manuals are designed for an audience that will apply their contents, whether it be a manual on how to repair a vehicle or a counter-insurgency manual. As such, their writing focus should, and must, be on the application of the knowledge contained in the manual and anything else is, for that audience, unimportant.

2. The subject matter of field manuals varies widely in terms of the predictive validity of the knowledge contained in the manual. In some cases, the knowledge should be prescriptive (i.e. do X, Y and Z and the equipment will work), while in other cases the knowledge should be either descriptive (i.e. this has worked in some situations) or attempting to produce highly interactive and adaptable courses of action in a broadly defined environment (sorry, can't come up with a single word for that).

3. The value add of references, citations, links to other sources in any format vary based on the nature of the knowledge presented.

In cases where the writing is prescriptive, references, citations, etc. are just useless verbiage.
In cases where the writing is descriptive, they may prove useful but could easily be in the form of an bibliography and reading list.
In that third, unnamed, case they may be useless in the immediate form for training, but are quite useful for those who wish to go deeper into the subject since they help frame the debate.4. Manual are NOT scholarly works but, in both the second and third case, contain or may contain scholarly elements.

5. Especially in that 3rd case, the scholarly elements contained in the work are likely to be part of ongoing debates with a low predictive value. In other words, since they can't be tested directly in many cases, they are interpretations. Being able to follow up on these debates, should individuals choose to do so, is valuable to the long term reworking of the doctrine.

Marc

SteveMetz

11-04-2007, 07:34 PM

I'm wouldn't be possible to toss out a few people.

As such that audience unimportant.

The knowledge presented are just useless verbiage.

Notice I'm getting better at snipping quotes! :wry:

But, you've given me a title for the article that I'm never going to write: "The Tao of Doctrine."

Rex Brynen

11-04-2007, 07:44 PM

I'm wondering if it wouldn't be possible, and possibly profitable, to reframe the debate a touch. I'd like to toss out a few statements and see what people think about them.

Let me reframe the reframing ;)

I don't think FM 3-24 would have been strengthened with citation notes, actually--a recommended further reading list, perhaps, but not citations per se. This is an efficacy issue (and on this aspect of it I agree with Steve).

That is, I think, an entirely different issue from whether one needed to use unsourced verbatim or near-verbatim text from the works of others, rather than simply express similar ideas in original language. This is an intellectual property rights and "fair use" issue, and since none of us are copyright lawyers we're probably exhausting our ability to effectively discuss this.

This, in turn, is a different issue from the question of public relations—whether the obvious political liabilities of unsourced quotations, the packaging of FM 3-24 in its UChicago release, and the Army's subsequent handling of the Price critique.

SteveMetz

11-04-2007, 07:49 PM

Let me reframe the reframing ;)

I don't think FM 3-24 would have been strengthened with citation notes, actually--a recommended further reading list, perhaps, but not citations per se. This is an efficacy issue (and on this aspect of it I agree with Steve).

That is, I think, an entirely different issue from whether one needed to use unsourced verbatim or near-verbatim text from the works of others, rather than simply express similar ideas in original language. This is an intellectual property rights and "fair use" issue, and since none of us are copyright lawyers we're probably exhausting our ability to effectively discuss this.

This, in turn, is a different issue from the question of public relations—whether the obvious political liabilities of unsourced quotations, the packaging of FM 3-24 in its UChicago release, and the Army's subsequent handling of the Price critique.

Well, it does have a four page bibliography.

Ken White

11-04-2007, 07:53 PM

Are you saying it was doctrine, and not a scholarly work?

*grins and ducks behind his dead horse*

http://www.blogscanada.ca/egroup/content/binary/dead_horse.jpg

Golden Opportunities I have missed number 27... ;)

Ironhorse

11-04-2007, 08:03 PM

Sargent

11-04-2007, 08:31 PM

I don't think FM 3-24 would have been strengthened with citation notes, actually--a recommended further reading list, perhaps, but not citations per se. This is an efficacy issue (and on this aspect of it I agree with Steve).

The manual would have been strengthened or weakened by the use of citations/footnotes depending on what those tools demonstrated about the sources used and the methodology of the work.

Part of the purpose of the citation/footnote and bibliography is to demonstrate the breadth of scholarship that informs a particular work. A "selected bibliography" has its utility, but it does not tell you which sources were actually used, and to what degree. Footnotes and citations demonstrate the specific uses of the sources.

I think it would matter very much if it were shown that a doctrinal manual were drawing only from a narrow pool of sources. One is then left to wonder at this selectivity. Alternatively, there is a difference between starting with an answer and then finding the sources to support that and surveying the sources and offering a synthesis of the conclusions that can be drawn from them. If there is no differentiation between these two processes it becomes very easy to cloak the former with an air of objectivity it does not merit. Footnotes and citations make the process utilized in a particular work easier to discern. In all respects, footnotes and citations allow the critical reader to understand more about the work than they can from the text itself. I would like to believe that a doctrinal manual of the American armed forces could only benefit from such intellectual transparency and humility.

Maybe I'm just an academic geek, but I find the information gleaned from footnotes and the reverse engineering of an argument to be fascinating. You start in one place, and before you know it you are somewhere else entirely -- it can be quite exciting.

And now that I've revealed the true depths of my dorkiness...

Regards,
Jill

Rex Brynen

11-04-2007, 09:01 PM

And now that I've revealed the true depths of my dorkiness...

Oh, there's a growing crew of us dorks here :D

SteveMetz

11-04-2007, 09:05 PM

Oh, there's a growing crew of us dorks here :D

I've changed my signature to reflect that.

selil

11-04-2007, 09:59 PM

1. Field manuals are designed for an audience that will apply their contents, whether it be a manual on how to repair a vehicle or a counter-insurgency manual. As such, their writing focus should, and must, be on the application of the knowledge contained in the manual and anything else is, for that audience, unimportant.

The purpose of field manuals are to convey a body of knowledge to a wide audience. The verbs of a field manual are active and the lower levels of for example Bloom's taxonomy. Describe, define, enable, act on, implement, and rarely do they go above level 2 or 3 of as in this Example of Bloom. A field manual may ascribe to or attempt to "engineer" or "create" a sense of action at the strategic level but even as doctrine they will rarely attempt to evaluate, consider, or synthesize information. That would be the purpose and activity of the creators.

2. The subject matter of field manuals varies widely in terms of the predictive validity of the knowledge contained in the manual. In some cases, the knowledge should be prescriptive (i.e. do X, Y and Z and the equipment will work), while in other cases the knowledge should be either descriptive (i.e. this has worked in some situations) or attempting to produce highly interactive and adaptable courses of action in a broadly defined environment (sorry, can't come up with a single word for that).

Once again we are at the lowest levels of knowledge attainment. Whether we use a model of Gagne or Bloom the cognitive models in play are going to be very much based on simple factual or restrictive actions. The primary goal of a field manual is to provide exposure to ideas or concepts that will have substantial chance of occurring or will result in significant risk/cost should they happen. (chance X cost = risk). A field manual is exactly that. A manual used in the field and in this case a method of broadening the scope and consideration of a topic thought to be under covered in other areas of training.

3. The value add of references, citations, links to other sources in any format vary based on the nature of the knowledge presented.

In cases where the writing is prescriptive, references, citations, etc. are just useless verbiage.
In cases where the writing is descriptive, they may prove useful but could easily be in the form of an bibliography and reading list.
In that third, unnamed, case they may be useless in the immediate form for training, but are quite useful for those who wish to go deeper into the subject since they help frame the debate.4. Manual are NOT scholarly works but, in both the second and third case, contain or may contain scholarly elements.

The use case for a field manual is a soldier likely from the platoon leader on down reading in a fox hole reading by the fading light of a parachute flare on the wire. (Oh for the romance and dust of combat). The military is an obvious hiearchical organization where the primary readership is going to be the volumes of enlisted and junior officers. Not a general sitting in an office though that will be the case too. For the absolute horde reading it from the perspective of actionable and sustainable use in the field foot notes and citations will only clutter the reading and have little to no value. Only an academic or other entity with the resources, desire, will, and time to look up something would care and only rarely in the cases of refutation or criticism. There is little to no value in the larger world of where the manual was written for it to have a substantive method of documentation and many reasons not to clutter or obfuscate the reading.

5. Especially in that 3rd case, the scholarly elements contained in the work are likely to be part of ongoing debates with a low predictive value. In other words, since they can't be tested directly in many cases, they are interpretations. Being able to follow up on these debates, should individuals choose to do so, is valuable to the long term reworking of the doctrine.

The likelihood of scholarly debate is minimal to none at the battalion level down where the lions share of readers exist. The debate at the implementation level will be over the utility of restrictive rules of engagement that support the doctrinal nature of the manual. The utility of the information in concordance with the mission of the unit and balanced on the experience of the trigger puller will be the scholarly debate. A highly trained well educated (maybe doctoral or multiple masters degree) trigger puller looking at the cultural map of a village in discussions with his company commanders isn't going to be worried about much more than a current mission and looking at a FM for clues on how to do so and not get his men killed.

I doubt there will be a re-working of the doctrine found in the FM. My experience is that it is out there and will be the new doctrine for the future for a long time. A Nagl or one of the other writers may edit and write scholarly articles about it showing the process or detailing the reasons about it because they are scholars. Other than that all we can look forward to is a likely opaqueness to the process in the future.

Ken White

11-04-2007, 10:29 PM

cut and paste is your friend... :)

Good post.

11-04-2007, 10:54 PM

I am way late on this discussion. But given that

Steve Metz (comment #74)

"No horse is so dead that it can't be beaten a little more."

….so just a couple of very light flogs before dinner (horse steak, perhaps?).

MarcT (Comment #70)

I fully expect that the authors of the manual draft chapters included references in their drafts, and I would ask that anyone on the SWC who was an author or reviewer if this was so.

One early draft of a chapter I saw had citations.

Steve Metz (comment #79)

Professors have research assistants

They do? :eek: Darn, I have really missed out on this perk..:(

Rex Comment (#66)

it results in a discipline that often seems to be preoccupied by abstract theorizing and to have little intrinsic grasp of the actual nature of politics and policy processes.
The odd (and even tragic) thing is that many, perhaps most graduate students usually come into the system wanting to not only study the world, but to engage with it too. We put then put them through a series of disciplinary tribal rituals that emphasize the theoretical at the cost of the actual, and in the end reproduce the discipline's own weaknesses. (Or we put them off graduate school altogether--which is a shame, since there is a lot that is useful to learn too.)

Sigh. All too true even on the east side of the pond as well these days (though there are some places where this does not hold). I could tell horror stories….. Even though I do not engage in abstract theorizing, I sadly feel obliged to warn my PhD students that they might be wise to do a theory oriented PhD thesis as most Departs they are likely to apply to will be looking for people who do theory, and so they have to consider whether not adopting a theoretical approach might circumscribe their job prospects.

Sargent (comment 103

Maybe I'm just an academic geek, but I find the information gleaned from footnotes and the reverse engineering of an argument to be fascinating. You start in one place, and before you know it you are somewhere else entirely -- it can be quite exciting.

Certainly as another of those 'dorks' , especially one who studies change in military organizations, I would have appreciated the manual being properly (and fulsomely) cited. For I fully expect that if my future research agenda comes to pass, I will a part of this research look at the process and the sources and citations would make my life easier. But I know there are ways that I will be able to do this (something called research) that will allow me to do this sans citations in the manual, if not perfectly at least very well.

That said, I did not read the manual as a piece of scholarship nor did I expect it to be a piece of scholarship. That it is a doctrinal manual first and foremost is an argument that many others have made very well already.

As for Price, while I find the argument he makes irritating on all sorts of levels, I do wonder if maybe it would have been best simply to have ignored him....

Cheers

PS I was tempted to add to marct and Ken White’s comments on Quality Control from the perspective of working in an academic system that is subjected to a Teaching Quality Control and a Research Assessment Exercise, but I would start at a full out rant and escalate from there. Suffice to say these QCs are enough to make any sane and rational academic seriously crazy or just want to cry. (visualize an icon representing 'being made crazy')

Ken White

11-04-2007, 11:36 PM

"(visualize an icon representing 'being made crazy')"

as a "this is the result" but my wife is mumbling about family blogs, the sanity of viewers and other such maternalistic nonsense... :wry:

Adam L

11-05-2007, 05:02 AM

selil

11-05-2007, 05:36 AM

SteveMetz

11-05-2007, 10:25 AM

I've been re-reading this thread...

You wrote earlier that the "primary source for doctrine is collective wisdom of the community of practice." If the information/ideas in FM 3-24 were based on either a group's general knowledge/wisdom or were sufficiently original not to need citation or other attribution, or if releases were obtained, and if, as the U of Chigago ed. (at xlviii) states all copyrighted material is id'd with footnote and other sources are id'd in source notes, why didn't john Nagl just write about that in refuting Price? If a good faith effort was made to comply, and some citations were in fact missed, and picked up by a nit-picker in furtherance of another agenda... it happened.

Instead, Nagl's respone to Price in part tried to justify the failure to cite all sources as a matter of "societal" differences. The argument about not being an academic pursuit seems to lose some power given the number of non-military degrees held by those involved with FM 3-24. Nagl also writes that Field Manuals are not designed to be judged 'by the quality of thier sourcing' but instead of leaving it there, he goes on to write that because they are indended to be used by soldiers, "authors are not named, and those whose scholarship informs the manual are only credited if they are quoted extensively. This is not the academic way, but soldiers are not academic; it is my understanding that htis longstanding practice in doctrine writing... is well within the provisions of "fair use" copyright law." If he had only bothered referencing where his understanding came from and how the Manual met with the it and/or the Army Publishing procedures (thanks, Rex) it would have been very helpful.

In any event, I was curious about why all this struck a "raw nerve." I understand that being compulsively academic can blind people to the merits of the substance of this subject matter, but i don't understand why formal academic rules would get in the way of educatioin at the military staff and war colleges. I would think they woudl enforce ideas of disciplined htought and thoroughness. I am also curious about what would be unacceptable about research and from what perspective. Is this a difference in ethical approaches or in the formality of the methodology? What is it about the accreditation process that changes the character of the colleges, and makes them try to be "ersatz universities" rather than what they are?

Adam

As I mentioned above, John's decision to try to answer Price is, as far as I know, his own. The Army and Marine Corps themselves have not. With hindsight, I wish John had just ignored him and simply said, "this is a government document for which academic standards do not apply."

The fact that many of the 3-24 authors have advanced degrees is absolutely irrelevant. I have an advanced degree and I'm working on a briefing that I will give later this week. I feel no compunction to make this meet academic standards because it is not an academic product. In fact, that's exactly what distinguishes the authors of 3-24 from Dr. Price: they understand the difference between an academic and non-academic product and he, apparently, does not.

I'm not sure why you think John Nagl (or anyone associated with the military for that matter) is obligated to justify the military doctrine development process to those who are not participants. If I were to question the content of Dr. Price's courses, would he be compelled to explain his university's curriculum development process to me?

What I was getting at in my comments on the war colleges is that all the things they have to do to get accreditation have real or opportunity costs, sometimes both. To give just one of many examples, it takes a huge amount of faculty and administrative time (and taxpayer money) to meet accreditation's requirements. That is time they are not spending augmenting their professional knowledge. Ultimately, staff and war colleges are not designed to produce scholars. They are designed to produce professional military leaders.

And I think you're just wrong in your intimation that only academic methods "enforce ideas of disciplined htought and thoroughness." There are many ways of doing that other than academic methods. To repeat an example I used earlier, doctrine manuals are vetted by and briefed to literally hundreds of professional experts before they are published. Does your average academic article undergo that degree of scrutiny? In my experience, if an author can get two or three referees (who very well may be his friends given the degree of hyperspecialization) to go along, there's a good chance of a work being published. Given that, I would contend that despite having a bunch of citations, your average academic publication has undergone a much less rigorous quality check than your average doctrine manual. Between the author of an academic article, the people who refereed it, and the people who were cited, it often reflects the collective wisdom of, at most, a couple of dozen people. A doctrine manual reflects the collective wisdom of hundreds.

SteveMetz

11-05-2007, 10:33 AM

AdamL,

Plagiarism strikes a raw nerve with academics because in a world where so little counts for much the little things count for a lot. In academia the only thing you trade upon are your ideas. Ideas may be reprsented in books or patents, but those ideas are your product. If you stole bread from a baker you would understand the theft. In the realm of intellectual exchange the trade of cash for bread is in the attribution. Academics are given accolades for being cited and creating dialog.

Academics are rarely paid extensive sums of money for their work and the only acknowledgment of their work is the report that citation bibliometrics provide. Attribution is about giving due recognition for others work and not claiming others work as yours. In academia you can publish an annotated bibliography which is nothing but citations and have that considered scholarship. There are other reasons such as recreating the science for attribution, but in general I think it is about credit. A history of science shows good scientists being claim jumped by better politically connected scientists which led to funding and respect.

I understand why the Army and Marine Corps would do things a particular way and I'll even take their side, but I'll be honest I walk on hot coals with my colleagues doing so and jeopardize my career. Even just doing so here on SWC. I think Steve Metz and MarcT would back me up in saying in academia plagiarism is not about the money and many careers have ended for less than what these accusations entail. When you talk about ideas being the coin of the realm what appears to be of no consequence can have extreme effects.

Those outside of academia can belittle the specifics of intellectual pursuit that academics engage in, but they are lesser individuals for that. Every career has it's way of dealing with acknowledgement and attribution for acts. In the military medals, and rank are given based on the deeds of the soldier. In academia awards and academic rank are given based on the quality and quantity of scholarship. In the military wearing medals not earned are nearing culturally the same level of abhorrence as plagiarism in academia.

It might not make sense to everybody but you have to respect it. I'm sure there is some silly anthropologist theory about it, but I call it respect.

Agree with what you say but, in my opinion, Price's screed is not really about his abhorrence of plagiarism. He is motivated by his personal ideology; plagiarism is a just a trojan horse. I also think there's an inherent hypocrisy in Price's essay since he contends that the manual doesn't reflect "cutting edge" scholarship. Does he or does he not want the military to be more effective at counterinsurgency?

I think that in the name of fairness, if we're going to submit military doctrine to scholarly standards, then we should require that scholarly publications dealing with armed conflict or military affairs be vetted by those with hands on experience. I'm assuming that Dr. Price wouldn't write about a given ethnic group without field research yet, from what I've seen, he has no problem writing about the internal workings of the U.S. military without direct knowledge. So when Dr. Price reaches conclusions about, say, U.S. policy in Iraq or the military's motives for publishing doctrine, he should be required to validate them by vetting them with people who have the most direct knowledge of the topic. Equity demands it!

Mark O'Neill

11-05-2007, 11:39 AM

Those outside of academia can belittle the specifics of intellectual pursuit that academics engage in, but they are lesser individuals for that.

Hmm, you are right.

I would not dare belittle academic intellectual pursuits - just consider the benefit to humanity of some of these pursuits : (since we are big on citation I must acknowledge the source of this info as that paragon of citation, Wikipedia, and its listing of the 2007 "Ignobel" awards)

Aviation: Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek, for discovering that hamsters recover from jetlag more quickly when given Viagra.
Biology: Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk, for taking a census of all the mites and other life forms that live in people's beds.
Chemistry: Mayu Yamamoto for extracting vanilla flavour from cow dung.
Economics: Kuo Cheng Hsieh, for patenting a device to catch bank robbers by ensnaring them in a net.
Linguistics: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Nuria Sebastian-Galles, for determining that rats sometimes can't distinguish between Japanese, played backward, and Dutch, played backward.
Literature: Glenda Browne, for her study of the word "the"
Medicine: Dan Meyer and Brian Witcombe, for investigating the side-effects of swallowing swords.
Nutrition: Brian Wansink, for investigating people's appetite for mindless eating by secretly feeding them a self-refilling bowl of soup.
Peace: The Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, for suggesting the research and development of a "gay bomb," which would cause enemy troops to become sexually attracted to each other.
Physics: L. Mahadevan and Enrique Cerda Villablanca for their theoretical study of how sheets become wrinkled.

And people are having a go at the authors of 3-24?

Mark

(a limited person with desperate skills)

SteveMetz

11-05-2007, 12:11 PM

Hmm, you are right.

I would not dare belittle academic intellectual pursuits - just consider the benefit to humanity of some of these pursuits : (since we are big on citation I must acknowledge the source of this info as that paragon of citation, Wikipedia, and its listing of the 2007 "Ignobel" awards)

Aviation: Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek, for discovering that hamsters recover from jetlag more quickly when given Viagra.
Biology: Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk, for taking a census of all the mites and other life forms that live in people's beds.
Chemistry: Mayu Yamamoto for extracting vanilla flavour from cow dung.
Economics: Kuo Cheng Hsieh, for patenting a device to catch bank robbers by ensnaring them in a net.
Linguistics: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Nuria Sebastian-Galles, for determining that rats sometimes can't distinguish between Japanese, played backward, and Dutch, played backward.
Literature: Glenda Browne, for her study of the word "the"
Medicine: Dan Meyer and Brian Witcombe, for investigating the side-effects of swallowing swords.
Nutrition: Brian Wansink, for investigating people's appetite for mindless eating by secretly feeding them a self-refilling bowl of soup.
Peace: The Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, for suggesting the research and development of a "gay bomb," which would cause enemy troops to become sexually attracted to each other.
Physics: L. Mahadevan and Enrique Cerda Villablanca for their theoretical study of how sheets become wrinkled.

And people are having a go at the authors of 3-24?

Mark

(a limited person with desperate skills)

You nicked my signature, you wanker.

Mark O'Neill

11-05-2007, 12:15 PM

You nicked my signature, you wanker.

Only if you are dyslexic...

Sorry... it seems that plagarism is indeed rife in the military :D, sprung again.

SteveMetz

11-05-2007, 12:47 PM

Only if you are dyslexic...

I just assumed that since water spins the other way going down the drain in the Southern Hemisphere, so too do platitudes.

J Wolfsberger

11-05-2007, 02:13 PM

Just to add some data points as fuel to the fire, I checked on a couple of documents from my personal technical library:

“The Effects of Nuclear Weapons.” Compiled and edited by Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan. Prepared and published by the United States Department of Defense and the Energy Research and Development Administration. First publication in 1950, my edition was printed in 1977. This has long been the “bible” for people requiring technical knowledge on the physics of nuclear weapons. It used to be available at GPO bookstores, but obviously no longer. Extensive bibliographies at the end of each chapter; footnotes only to clarify text; no citations.

FM 24-33: “Communications Techniques: Electronic Countermeasures.” Dated March 1985. (Probably a superseded copy.) No authors named; no footnotes; no citations; no bibliography; a section at the end with references to other ARs, FMs, etc.

As additional data points, no authors named; no footnotes; no citations; no bibliography; also applies to: the USMC "Small Wars Manual," dated 1940; MIL-STD-1629A: "Procedures for performing a Failure Mode, Effects, and Criticality Analysis," dated 1980; and a bunch of others.

I can’t lay my hands on any handbooks at the moment, but it’s my recollection that, for example, the handbooks of military chemistry and explosives are the same.

If anyone is open to criticism in this affair, it’s Dr. Price far, apparently, violating the standards of his own discipline. An FM is not a scholarly paper. By imposing those standards on it, he has taken the norms of his own “subculture” and imposed them on another. Granted, the tone of his writing leaves no doubt that his motivation and goals were purely political, he still seems to have clearly violated the standards of his own profession.

Rank amateur

11-05-2007, 02:25 PM

I think you're just wrong in your intimation that only academic methods "enforce ideas of disciplined htought and thoroughness."

No sources, but it seems to me that the sloppy and undisciplined are removed much faster - and much more permanently - from the military than they are from academia. Al Qaeda doesn't give anyone tenor.

SteveMetz

11-05-2007, 02:31 PM

No sources, but it seems to me that the sloppy and undisciplined are removed much faster - and much more permanently - from the military than they are from academia. Al Qaeda doesn't give anyone tenor.

Are you suggesting the Zawahiri's videos and bin Laden's fatwas aren't peer reviewed? Then how do you account for their similarity to a Noam Chomsky book?

Steve Blair

11-05-2007, 02:53 PM

Are you suggesting the Zawahiri's videos and bin Laden's fatwas aren't peer reviewed? Then how do you account for their similarity to a Noam Chomsky book?

They aren't peer-reviewed....they're (gasp) plagiarized!:eek:

SteveMetz

11-05-2007, 03:05 PM

They aren't peer-reviewed....they're (gasp) plagiarized!:eek:

Well, if we ever catch the cads then, they ought to be sentenced to attend the MLA Conference for the rest of their unnatural lives.

marct

11-05-2007, 03:45 PM

It looks like AQ thinks the HTTs are worth imitating!

The Intellectual Arms Race (http://savageminds.org/2007/11/01/the-intellectual-arms-race/)
Posted by Kerim under Anthropology at war

Al Qaeda in Iraq has responded to the US military’s Human Terrain System (HTS) program by implementing its own army of cultural experts in what they call the Imperial Terrain System or ITS. Since the logistics of fighting an armed insurgency make it impossible for the Iraqis to directly question the Americans about their culture, they have instead hired critics trained in post-colonial critique. Omar Ali, the director of this new program has explained that the insurgent forces find it useful to understand Said’s theory of orientalism.

More... (http://savageminds.org/2007/11/01/the-intellectual-arms-race/)

I will point out that the ITS is using more "(post-)modern" theories. Make of that what you will :cool:.

selil

11-05-2007, 04:00 PM

Well, if we ever catch the cads then, they ought to be sentenced to attend the MLA Conference for the rest of their unnatural lives.

That's cruel and unusual punishment.

Stan

11-05-2007, 04:21 PM

Hi Marc !
An interesting evaluation and post...Thanks.

Admittedly, I enjoyed Laura's comments more than the story itself. She has a point, but I don't think that such a 'blanket approach' will hold much water today. Granted, some will subcome to greed.

Don't we (in practice - today) use the term 'postcolonial studies' much more loosely? It used to be the 'cookie cutter' for defining social formations of the colony (my primitive psychology lessons are showing).

In your opinion, studying 'yanks' :rolleyes:, do you believe that understanding our experiences with colonization (e.g., dumping the Brits tea into the ocean) gives you a leg up in our society ? If it does, please do explain ;)

Sorry, but this seems a bit too generic and still won't come close to understanding modern U.S. Military warfare and tactics. Or does it ?

Now, if they got ahold of say Goesh and Slapout (God help us), they'd have their hands full :D

It looks like AQ thinks the HTTs are worth imitating!

I will point out that the ITS is using more "(post-)modern" theories. Make of that what you will :cool:.

Regards, Stan

marct

11-05-2007, 04:37 PM

Hi Stan,

Don't we (in practice - today) use the term 'postcolonial studies' much more loosely? It used to be the 'cookie cutter' for defining social formations of the colony (my primitive psychology lessons are showing).

In your opinion, studying 'yanks' :rolleyes:, do you believe that understanding our experiences with colonization (e.g., dumping the Brits tea into the ocean) gives you a leg up in our society ? If it does, please do explain

A lot of it is now defined by Said's work - 'nuf said on that. As for studying the Yanks, yeah, it, or rather the variant I use, does help explain both parts of your history and your current attitudes :D.

Sorry, but this seems a bit too generic and still won't come close to understanding modern U.S. Military warfare and tactics. Or does it ?

Some, limited, help. Then again, it is aimed mainly at the civilian population which, after all, has been pretty heavily conditioned for the past 50 years or so.

Now, if they got ahold of say Goesh and Slapout (God help us), they'd have their hands full :D

Now you're scarin' me Stan ;).

Marc

Rex Brynen

11-05-2007, 04:39 PM

Al Qaeda in Iraq has responded to the US military’s Human Terrain System (HTS) program by implementing its own army of cultural experts in what they call the Imperial Terrain System or ITS.

Hahaha :D

They used to try to explain to the Americans that they were Sunnis not Shi’ites, but after discussing Said they know better. As one soldier put it too me: “I understand now, they just see us as the mirror image of the West, not for who we really are.”

The originator of the prank ought to read his Said more carefully, since that's not at all what he suggested in Orientalism Rather, he argued that the West tended to see the "Orient" as a timeless, unchanging, exotic "other."

marct

11-05-2007, 04:44 PM

Al Qaeda in Iraq has responded to the US military’s Human Terrain System (HTS) program by implementing its own army of cultural experts in what they call the Imperial Terrain System or ITS.

Hahaha :D

I know - I wanted that title for us :eek: (that's just the unrepentant British Imperialist in me speaking :D).

The originator of the prank ought to read his Said more carefully, since that's not at all what he suggested in Orientalism Rather, he argued that the West tended to see the "Orient" as a timeless, unchanging, exotic "other."

No citations either by the "originator". Obviously bad scholarship that needs to be commented on in Counterpounch :eek:!

Stan

11-05-2007, 05:05 PM

Hey Marc !

Hi Stan,

As for studying the Yanks, yeah, it, or rather the variant I use, does help explain both parts of your history and your current attitudes :D.

Some, limited, help. Then again, it is aimed mainly at the civilian population which, after all, has been pretty heavily conditioned for the past 50 years or so.

Marc

I'm of the opinion (anymore) that mainstream America only begins to think and care when if affects their pocket books and/or political ratings in an election year.

Would being able to explain our history and current public attitudes "aimed at the civilian population" then be of an advantage under the current administration governing the war ?

We've got Counter 1. Proliferation, 2. Terrorism, Clockwise and Punch :confused: Is there an end in sight ? Sorry, but I don't see much productive 'countering' coming from this new twist.

<sigh>

J Wolfsberger

11-05-2007, 05:16 PM

That's cruel and unusual punishment.

No, it's torture. Probably as bad if not worse than bright lights and loud music.

Adam L

11-05-2007, 05:43 PM

As I mentioned above, John's decision to try to answer Price is, as far as I know, his own. The Army and Marine Corps themselves have not. With hindsight, I wish John had just ignored him and simply said, "this is a government document for which academic standards do not apply."

This is not a matter of academic, technical or military standards. It is an issue of this nation's copryright laws. Nagl stated, "This is not the academic way, but soldiers are not academics; it is my understanding that this longstanding practice in doctrine writing is well within the provisions of “fair use” copyright law." ("Desperat People with Limited Skills") (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/11/desperate-people-with-limited/) This may be his understanding, but if he did take it upon himself to find out if this is in fact true and had cited his legal sources (or military guidelines pertaining to such) it would have ended the issue.

Adam

SteveMetz

11-05-2007, 05:54 PM

This is not a matter of academic, technical or military standards. It is an issue of this nation's copryright laws. Nagl stated, "This is not the academic way, but soldiers are not academics; it is my understanding that this longstanding practice in doctrine writing is well within the provisions of “fair use” copyright law." ("Desperat People with Limited Skills") (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/11/desperate-people-with-limited/) This may be his understanding, but if he did take it upon himself to find out if this is in fact true and had cited his legal sources (or military guidelines pertaining to such) it would have ended the issue.

Adam

For starters, I don't think Price was motivated by his concern for copyright laws.

Second, I think that is a red herring: if copyright laws have been violated (and I don't know that they have), adding a citation doesn't change it. As someone else pointed out, ideas aren't copyrighted, words are. I don't believe that the manual includes enough verbatim use of copyright material to constitute a legal violation. I would strongly suspect that it was scrubbed by lawyers at some point before publication.

Again, keep in mind that John is giving his personal opinion in the statements you quoted.

Adam L

11-05-2007, 06:01 PM

For starters, I don't think Price was motivated by his concern for copyright laws.

Price and his motivations are not the focuse of what I wrote. The issue I am addressing is broader.

Second, I think that is a red herring: if copyright laws have been violated (and I don't know that they have), adding a citation doesn't change it. As someone else pointed out, ideas aren't copyrighted, words are. I don't believe that the manual includes enough verbatim use of copyright material to constitute a legal violation. I would strongly suspect that it was scrubbed by lawyers at some point before publication.

My point exactly. Why couldn't someone just have said that?

Adam

Steve Blair

11-05-2007, 06:17 PM

My point exactly. Why couldn't someone just have said that?

Adam

Because people like Price wouldn't listen...and don't listen. They have their own agenda.

"Fair Use" is in fact a damned fluid concept at times...I've seen it quoted for photocopying purposes as up to 25 pages. Notice that this is for PHOTOCOPYING an existing, printed work. What it translates to in terms of "how much can you use without citations" varies depending on the academic community you're working from. As others have pointed out, the scientific academic community has different standards (hard science journal articles may contain only a handful of citations, while those in the biological sciences will contain hundreds in some cases) and theirs are also different from the social sciences community (to which Price belongs) and those are again different from the historical community.

In short, Price is flogging what could be a dead horse to advance his own ideological viewpoint. And I still contend that the best "solution" for this is to make the actual citations for 3-24 available through the University of Chicago press as a downloadable file (assuming that they can be recovered...which I would assume is possible). That way those of us who WANT to look through them (and I'm one of them...just for the historical backtrail) can do so.

Adam L

11-05-2007, 06:19 PM

In short, Price is flogging what could be a dead horse to advance his own ideological viewpoint. And I still contend that the best "solution" for this is to make the actual citations for 3-24 available through the University of Chicago press as a downloadable file (assuming that they can be recovered...which I would assume is possible). That way those of us who WANT to look through them (and I'm one of them...just for the historical backtrail) can do so.

Exactly how I feel!

Adam

Adam L

11-05-2007, 06:26 PM

SteveMetz

11-05-2007, 06:37 PM

Because people like Price wouldn't listen...and don't listen. They have their own agenda.

"Fair Use" is in fact a damned fluid concept at times...I've seen it quoted for photocopying purposes as up to 25 pages. Notice that this is for PHOTOCOPYING an existing, printed work. What it translates to in terms of "how much can you use without citations" varies depending on the academic community you're working from. As others have pointed out, the scientific academic community has different standards (hard science journal articles may contain only a handful of citations, while those in the biological sciences will contain hundreds in some cases) and theirs are also different from the social sciences community (to which Price belongs) and those are again different from the historical community.

In short, Price is flogging what could be a dead horse to advance his own ideological viewpoint. And I still contend that the best "solution" for this is to make the actual citations for 3-24 available through the University of Chicago press as a downloadable file (assuming that they can be recovered...which I would assume is possible). That way those of us who WANT to look through them (and I'm one of them...just for the historical backtrail) can do so.

I think you'd be disappointed if you had the "withheld" citations. It's not like every idea is cited and someone is just holding them out. In doctrine development, things get in if they are approved by the various people who vet the document, not because there is a citation pointing to something else.

I'll be honest with you: while I understand the theory behind citations in academia, I'm leery of the process as a means of establishing validity. I've just seen too many instances where someone simply pulls an idea out of their butt (to put it in GI terminology) and somehow gets it included in a published article. Then someone else repeats that point, citing the first source. Then someone else repeats it citing the second source. And so forth.

As one example of this, I was reviewing a manuscript that simply stated as fact that the U.S. military was killing journalists it didn't like in Iraq. The statement footnoted another academic article. I followed the trail back about four levels without finding anyone that had hard information before I decided I had much better ways to waste my time.

The moral of my story is that doctrine writers don't have a bunch of citations to academic material sitting around somewhere because they generally don't think it adds to the validity of the doctrine to have them.

Ultimately what we have here is cultural dissonance. In academia, the validity of something is determined, in part, by where it is published and by whom. Military doctrine writers don't give a toot if an idea is published in the most prestigious academic journals; if it doesn't match their experience (and that of their bosses), it isn't going in.

Adam L

11-05-2007, 07:12 PM

I think you'd be disappointed if you had the "withheld" citations. It's not like every idea is cited and someone is just holding them out. In doctrine development, things get in if they are approved by the various people who vet the document, not because there is a citation pointing to something else.

I can't speak for Steve Blair, but I would not be disappointed. I just want to see where they got their information. If a lot of it was through discussions and word of mouth then fine, it won't be in there. Still, I want to see what sources they did in fact use.

I'll be honest with you: while I understand the theory behind citations in academia, I'm leery of the process as a means of establishing validity. I've just seen too many instances where someone simply pulls an idea out of their butt (to put it in GI terminology) and somehow gets it included in a published article. Then someone else repeats that point, citing the first source. Then someone else repeats it citing the second source. And so forth.

As one example of this, I was reviewing a manuscript that simply stated as fact that the U.S. military was killing journalists it didn't like in Iraq. The statement footnoted another academic article. I followed the trail back about four levels without finding anyone that had hard information before I decided I had much better ways to waste my time.

This is an issue of poor source material. The point of the citations is so you can see that its poor source material.

The moral of my story is that doctrine writers don't have a bunch of citations to academic material sitting around somewhere because they generally don't think it adds to the validity of the doctrine to have them.

Forget about validity. It’s good to have it in there (not necessarily the field version but one of them) so that people can try to better understand your opinions. Also, if anyone in the future is looking back at it you want them to be able to find where you got the information for obvious reasons. If there is a file somewhere with this stuff in it, then that is good. If its just file boxes filled with the research, but no references as to what was used and how it effected the paper, then it poses a great obstacle for those in the future who attempt to revise or understand the authors' opinions.

Look, somewhere along the way I suspect you had a crazy and stupid professor who cited everything (including idle discussions which he had with someone in the next stall while he was on the can) and traumatized you. You appear to be upset with people’s practices (improper practices I might add) and have transferred your dislike for them onto legitimate writing tools (citations whatever form they come in.) Again, these are simply tools that are most often utilized because they are useful. They are nothing "academic," it’s just that academics happen to use them a lot (as do lawyers, engineers, anyone who does research.)

Adam

SteveMetz

11-05-2007, 07:22 PM

I can't speak for Steve Blair, but I would not be disappointed. I just want to see where they got their information. If a lot of it was through discussions and word of mouth then fine, it won't be in there. Still, I want to see what sources they did in fact use.

This is an issue of poor source material. The point of the citations is so you can see that its poor source material.

Forget about validity. It’s good to have it in there (not necessarily the field version but one of them) so that people can try to better understand your opinions. Also, if anyone in the future is looking back at it you want them to be able to find where you got the information for obvious reasons. If there is a file somewhere with this stuff in it, then that is good. If its just file boxes filled with the research, but no references as to what was used and how it effected the paper, then it poses a great obstacle for those in the future who attempt to revise or understand the authors' opinions.

Look, somewhere along the way I suspect you had a crazy and stupid professor who cited everything (including idle discussions which he had with someone in the next stall while he was on the can) and traumatized you. You appear to be upset with people’s practices (improper practices I might add) and have transferred your dislike for them onto legitimate writing tools (citations whatever form they come in.) Again, these are simply tools that are most often utilized because they are useful. They are nothing "academic," it’s just that academics happen to use them a lot (as do lawyers, engineers, anyone who does research.)

Adam

I just don't seem to be getting my point across. In a doctrine manual, the overwhelming majority of the information is derived from professional experience, not from some other published sources. DOCTRINE IS NOT A WORK OF RESEARCH. It's more akin to the owner's manual of your car. Do you ask your car manufacturer to provide citations so you can judge how it arrived at its recommendations?

Citations may be a "legitimate" writing tool but they are not a universal one applicable to all types of writing. You seem to have this perception that doctrine is like a master's thesis and someone is keeping all the citations or "boxes of research" secret from you. That's just not how it is developed. DOCTRINE IS NOT A WORK OF RESEARCH. It is a compilation of best practices within a professional community.

In research publications, citations are used, in part, to convince readers of the validity of the conclusions. The consumers of doctrine accept its validity because it reflects the knowledge of the professional community which developed it. As a scholar, I can look at an academic article and decide that based on its citations, I don't accept its conclusions. The consumers of doctrine--junior officers, field commanders, planners, NCOs--don't have that option. They are obligated to accept the collective wisdom of their professional community.

(And I would suggest you drop the bush league psychoanalysis of my past. Unless you want to exchange CVs. My list of professional and scholarly publications runs to about 8 pages. And there are well over 1,000 citations in the book manuscript I'm sitting here working on.)

Gian P Gentile

11-05-2007, 07:47 PM

But this case of FM 3-24 is different which seems to pass over most of the blog postings on this issue up to now. FM3-24 is not your garden variety army doctrine. It is not at all like for example the doctrine I used for reconnaissance in a heavy brigade when I commanded an ars. This was one of the main points of the Price piece. This FM3-24, at least the way it has been hawked to the public, is unique in that the perception created by Nagl, Con Crane, Gen Petreaus, McFate, Sarah Sewall, et al is that they as scholars had a very strong hand in writing it. So Price's point is that in this case you shouldn’t have it both ways. If as scholars would they see it as acceptable to use direct quotes or ideas from another source without somehow crediting it? I would not even if I wrote parts of or entire chapters in the new Coin manual. Also, the new Coin doctrine is intentionally built not so much on previous and contemporary army experience in coin (because of so much what many coin experts always say that the army up to the Surge was basically horrible at it and discarded any lessons from previous coin ops) but on historical cases like Galula and Thompson and on social and anthropological theories and models. So FM3-24 is different and Price's point that a different standard concerning the crediting of sources should apply.

You know sitting back as an outsider to the majority of thinking of the writers on this blog most of you have your hair stand on end when certain things are attacked or questioned. Those things are: anything that John Nagl or Dave Kilkullen writes; anything that questions the perceived success of the Surge; anything that fundamentally questions the efficacy of Coin operations to include its operational doctrine. The only topic I have seen on this blog that had drawn serious and deep debate is the discussion currently ongoing over waterboarding and torture.

gentile

Steve Blair

11-05-2007, 07:48 PM

Steve,

I know that doctrine isn't cited. Doesn't bother me a bit either way. Like I said, I'd be interested in the citations for my own personal curiosity. I've felt that way about similar publications...no need to get excited about it...:)

The other part of this is simple IO on the part of the military. Sure, they aren't NEEDED, but if you make them available you undercut some of Price's ground.

But we've also come full circle in this thread about three times now. No need to chase the hare around the tree again.

Adam L

11-05-2007, 08:11 PM

Sargent

11-05-2007, 08:26 PM

The more I have watched this discussion unfold, the more it seems to me that Price had an entirely different motivation. My theory is that his objective was really to conduct an anthropological experiment to examine the following:

- How does a group respond to criticism? What effect does it have when the criticism comes from without? What effect does it have when the criticism is directed to a matter seen as irrelevant by the group?

- As regards the specific responses to the criticism, part 1: Can the group internalize and give any credence to the criticism? To what extent will the norms of the group be used to nullify the criticism? To what extent will external norms be criticised in response?

- As regards the specific responses to the criticism, part 2: How long does it take for the critic to become the target of the response? When will a nefarious agenda be suggested as the real source of the criticism? When will the critic's credentials be called into question? When will the critic be ridiculed outright?

Ok, this is mostly tongue-in-cheek, but it would certainly have been a fruitful experiment given the conduct of the discussion herein.

Adam L

11-05-2007, 08:47 PM

That would be creative!

Adam

Rex Brynen

11-05-2007, 10:14 PM

The more I have watched this discussion unfold, the more it seems to me that Price had an entirely different motivation. My theory is that his objective was really to conduct an anthropological experiment to examine the following:

*lol*

Damn, and now you've gone and contaminated his respondent group by sensitizing them to the research questions :wry:

Adam L

11-05-2007, 10:36 PM

*lol*

Damn, and now you've gone and contaminated his respondent group by sensitizing them to the research questions :wry:

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! (this is a long "no" not "noo")

LOL!

Adam

Mark O'Neill

11-05-2007, 11:12 PM

Forget about validity. It’s good to have it in there (not necessarily the field version but one of them) so that people can try to better understand your opinions. Adam

Adam,

I think part of the problem might be that your understanding of doctrine is quite different to that of its producers and users. Doctrine is not 'opinion'. It is culturally sensitive organisational guidance ( and, in some cases, regulation). It almost invariably does not represent one man's opinion - indeed, that would be virtually impossible given the type of 'committee process' system of writing, editing, review and publication that most western militaries use.

Furthermore, Military doctrine is 'applied' writing. Tt only exists to guide the masses, either philosophically or procedurally, to address a percieved problem that they may encounter or have to deal with in the 'real' world. (no percieved problem = no doctrine written on the subject, another distinction between academic work and the military need for writing).

Noting then that doctrine is a 'problem solving guide' for soldiers who are a) invariably time poor, and b) often (unfortunately) disinclined to be prolific readers and c) want an answer or clue "now"; the use of an academic writing style would be culturally inappropriate. It is not an accident that military doctrine is styled as it is.

Regarding wanting to 'know' how the ideas are sourced or justified. This suggests a failure to appreciate the military and the issue of 'trust'. The military is, to a large extent, a 'paternal' organisation built on mutual trust. That trust is demonstrated at all levels - from breaking cover to advance in contact and trusting your fire support team to give you the supressive fire that you need to move ahead safely, to the idea of 'no man left behind', to the fact that soldiers (and officers) trust the judgment of those who the organisation selects / directs to write the doctrine that guides. I contend that there is no replicable level of trust implicit in normal civil society (or academia).

Accordingly, it may be understandable that some are not 'happy' with the style of military doctrine - they demonstrably do not comprehend the real nature of what they are reading or discussing. Ultimately, I believe that this is of little or no consequence to the military, since these folks are not the targetted audience. Until you have to rely upon Mr Price, or any of his adherents, to actually do something useful to contribute to the defence of your country, it really does not matter whether he approves of military doctrine or not - since he clearly has no practical use for such an 'applied' work. I would go as far to say the simple solution for Mr Price would be "if it troubles you, don't read it". I suspect that no one in the military would care if he did not.

Gian,

I believe your comments re: Nagl, Kilcullen, Surge etc are wide of the mark. My observation of this discussion board has been that all comment is welcome as long as it conforms to the accepted standards of reason, politeness and evidence based argument. If you have something to saa about any of the things you mentioned I would urge you to say it - keeping within the guidlines you accepted when signed up.

Cheers,

Mark

SWJED

11-06-2007, 12:37 AM

**Snip**

You know sitting back as an outsider to the majority of thinking of the writers on this blog most of you have your hair stand on end when certain things are attacked or questioned. Those things are: anything that John Nagl or Dave Kilkullen writes; anything that questions the perceived success of the Surge; anything that fundamentally questions the efficacy of Coin operations to include its operational doctrine. The only topic I have seen on this blog that had drawn serious and deep debate is the discussion currently ongoing over waterboarding and torture.

gentile

Gian,

Not so, but I doubt I could change your mind as you are very persistent in pointing out our flawed thinking whenever someone here (or elsewhere for that matter) agrees with certain counterinsurgency experts, FM 3-24 and items concerning the Surge.

One could say just the opposite concerning many of your comments here and on the blog - your hair stands on end when anyone agrees with the writings of Nagl or Kilcullen, success of the Surge... Your opinion has been respected here and we ask you do the same for other Council members.

Dave

All,

I try to stay hands off as much as possible on the Council as it is pretty much self-policing and several volunteer moderators have pitched in to help keep things professional and sane. This is especially important as we have grown of late and indications are this trend will continue.

Mark has raised a very good point - one that we all need to heed here:

My observation of this discussion board has been that all comment is welcome as long as it conforms to the accepted standards of reason, politeness and evidence based argument. If you have something to say about any of the things you mentioned I would urge you to say it - keeping within the guidelines you accepted when signed up.

Dave / SWJED

Gian P Gentile

11-06-2007, 01:26 AM

Dave:

I respect their opinions; I just disagree with many of them and think they should be challenged stridently since they do carry so much weight and influence. You have to admit that poor Mr Price got a pretty good shellacking on this blog and many of the attacks were quite personal. I think I remember a few entries ago somebody making disparaging comments about Mr Price being from a “third tier” university.

I acknowledge that early on in some of my first postings I did cross the line and attacked the person and not the idea. Ironhorse pointed out my ways to me and I have since avoided those mistakes. Pointing out that I think that Nagl and Kilkullen are taken without serious critical assessment is not personal but something that should be considered.

gian

Rank amateur

11-06-2007, 01:54 AM

Pointing out that I think that Nagl and Kilkullen are taken without serious critical assessment is not personal but something that should be considered.
gian

President Bush was taken without serious critical assessment here for four years. He still is by a few die hards, but the folks here are pretty smart and figure things out eventually. They only take things personally if you name someone they like. (The "Move on" error.)

If you replace Nagl and Kilcullen with FM 3-24 in everyone of your posts, I'm sure you'll fit in better than me and the closest I've been to West Point was as a passenger on the Amtrak train that goes down the Hudson.

SWJED

11-06-2007, 02:03 AM

President Bush was taken without serious critical assessment here for four years. He still is by a few die hards, but the folks here are pretty smart and figure things out eventually. They only take things personally if you name someone they like. (The "Move on" error.)

If you replace Nagl and Kilcullen with FM 3-24 in everyone of your posts, I'm sure you'll fit in better than me and the closest I've been to West Point was as a passenger on the Amtrak train that goes down the Hudson.

The board is only two years old (9-11-2005) and most members did not join until well into our first and second years. You joined a mere two 1/2 months ago. As for the rest of your "observations" I'll just say - see the first one and then consider the "figure things out" and "take things personally" cooments. Sweeping generalizations don't cut it here. Thanks in advance for showing restraint and the research you will do and cites you will make before future postings about the SWC and its members.

Adam L

11-06-2007, 03:13 AM

Gian,

I believe your comments re: Nagl, Kilcullen, Surge etc are wide of the mark. My observation of this discussion board has been that all comment is welcome as long as it conforms to the accepted standards of reason, politeness and evidence based argument. If you have something to saa about any of the things you mentioned I would urge you to say it - keeping within the guidlines you accepted when signed up.

Cheers,

Mark

Mark,

I have to say that all posts that I have seen from Mr. Gentile on this thread (and a few others) have been direct, on point and respectful to the others on SWC. He may be critical of Nagle, Kilcullen, etc., but his disaggreements appear to come from a legitimate viewpoint.

One could say just the opposite concerning many of your comments here and on the blog - your hair stands on end when anyone agrees with the writings of Nagl or Kilcullen, success of the Surge... Your opinion has been respected here and we ask you do the same for other Council members.

Dave

All,

I try to stay hands off as much as possible on the Council as it is pretty much self-policing and several volunteer moderators have pitched in to help keep things professional and sane. This is especially important as we have grown of late and indications are this trend will continue.

Mark has raised a very good point - one that we all need to heed here:
Dave / SWJED

I don't see where things have gone over the line in this blog. I do not agree that Mr. Gentile's comments came near to or over the line. His logic and analysis are impecable. He may be aggressive in his attacks on others' arguments, but this does not appear to be personal.

I think I remember a few entries ago somebody making disparaging comments about Mr Price being from a “third tier” university.

Yup!

Adam

Mark O'Neill

11-06-2007, 11:43 AM

Mark,

I have to say that all posts that I have seen from Mr. Gentile on this thread (and a few others) have been direct, on point and respectful to the others on SWC. He may be critical of Nagle, Kilcullen, etc., but his disaggreements appear to come from a legitimate viewpoint.

I don't see where things have gone over the line in this blog. I do not agree that Mr. Gentile's comments came near to or over the line. His logic and analysis are impecable. He may be aggressive in his attacks on others' arguments, but this does not appear to be personal.

Yup!

Adam

Adam,

A point of clarification - I was not saying that Gian had been offensive or crossed any 'line' with Nagl, Kilcullen et al. My point was that no one here is that ''precious (well, few are...) that they cannot be questioned, after all, only the Pope has moments of doctrinal 'infallibility'...Accordingly if Gian had something to say he should say it.

Cheers

Mark

11-06-2007, 12:57 PM

Here's a solution to the apparent impasse and declining use of civil discourse that have manifested themselves recently on this thread as well as several others like Chaotic Dynamics (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=4250); Strategy, Values, and Ideas (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=4255); and Russia and the US (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=4225) to name just a few.

Let's split the SWC discussion board into three autonomous regions. It seems to me it would map out like this:
--liberal intellectual theorists on one board
--conservative hands-on practitioners on a second board
--middle of the road synthesizers on the third

It can be used as a test bed to see how well this sort of proposal might solve the problems in Iraq.

In the interests of full disclosure, I must admit that this idea was stimulated by Sargent's post "A Different Motivation for Price (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=4218&page=2)"

marct

11-06-2007, 03:31 PM

First, some of the issues we have been talking about are also discussed in the latest SWJ Blog Ivory Tower? Or Glass? (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/11/ivory-tower-or-glass/). Second, it looks like one of the drafts (http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/coin-draft-excerpt.pdf) has appeared with full citations. Food for thought all around...

Marc

SteveMetz

11-06-2007, 06:18 PM

Pointing out that I think that Nagl and Kilkullen are taken without serious critical assessment is not personal but something that should be considered.

gian

As someone who was sort of at the periphery of the 3-24 development process, I think you greatly overestimate the role of Dave and John. Ultimately the manual reflects the judgement of the flag officers of the two services.

SteveMetz

11-06-2007, 09:10 PM

marct

11-06-2007, 09:46 PM

Hi Steve,

Just so I understand, we're just talking about that one chapter and not the whole manual?

It looks like a part of chapter 3 to me, not the whole thing. Based on that (and some emails I've received) it looks like the drafts had full citations, but they were stripped off during the editing process.

historyguy99

11-07-2007, 01:17 AM

Dr. Tom Barnett has some thoughtful comments, and advice to: Disregard academic critique of the new COIN manual (http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2007/11/disregard_academic_critiques_o.html).

Gian P Gentile

11-07-2007, 11:44 AM

As someone who was sort of at the periphery of the 3-24 development process, I think you greatly overestimate the role of Dave and John. Ultimately the manual reflects the judgement of the flag officers of the two services.

Steve:

But this was exactly the point i made in an earlier posting to highlight the main point concerning plagiarism that Price makes but no one wants to take head-on. Actually based on your experience with the writing of the manual you probably are right that Nagl and Kilkullen, McFate et al had little actual role in the writing of the thing. But Price's point is that these invidiauls have helped to create the perception that they were the primary writers. I mean I bet if we went back in and reviewed the Daily Show with Nagl or the Charlies Rose interview with Kilkullen we would certainly get the impression that they were the primary writers of it. Which again is Price's point along with the idea that this manual is not your garden variety version of army doctrine and i cant believe that any one else out there would think so either. How many versions of army doctrine in the last 20 years have published by a major university press and sold many, many copies to the general public?

This is the question i have raised and the point from Price's piece that i have tried to highlight. And in this sense i do think it is reasonable to question people like Nagl, Kilkullen, McFate, and others as to why there wasnt a better job at citing original sources in the final version.

I wish Price would have written this piece with those as the primary questions and left off his rant against anthropologists in the Army which is the main reason i think he has been attacked so stridently.

thanks
gian

Ironhorse

11-07-2007, 02:12 PM

I acknowledge that early on in some of my first postings I did cross the line and attacked the person and not the idea. Ironhorse pointed out my ways to me and I have since avoided those mistakes. Pointing out that I think that Nagl and Kilkullen are taken without serious critical assessment is not personal but something that should be considered.Hmmm. Little ol' me? :o Who'd a thunk it?

I do have to say that I concur w/ both comments below. LTC Gentile is certainly consistent and vigorous in his choice of topics (SWJED), and direct in his articulation with more balanced criticism / respect (Adam L). That's really what this board seems to be all about: sharing viewpoints, influencing some, agreeing to disagree on others, enhancing all.

I have to say that all posts that I have seen from Mr. Gentile on this thread (and a few others) have been direct, on point and respectful to the others on SWC. He may be critical of Nagle, Kilcullen, etc., but his disaggreements appear to come from a legitimate viewpoint.

One could say just the opposite concerning many of your comments here and on the blog - your hair stands on end when anyone agrees with the writings of Nagl or Kilcullen, success of the Surge... Your opinion has been respected here and we ask you do the same for other Council members.

Sargent

11-07-2007, 04:07 PM

I think that the Bateman blog message provides insight to why I and others have a problem with the missing cites:

"Hanson is tricky. He plays upon a uniquely American dichotomy. Generally speaking, we Americans respect academic qualifications, but at the same time harbor deep-seated biases against those we deem too intellectual. The line there is squiggly. Thus, Hanson tries to claim academic credentials as a historian, but then immediately switches gears and denigrates any potential opposition as mere 'academic' history squabbles. Yes, academic history, with its unreasonable insistence on things like footnotes or endnotes so that your sources can be checked, is not to be trusted. Indeed, he dismissed the whole lot by saying, 'Academics in the university will find that assertion chauvinistic or worse -- and thus cite every exception from Thermopylae to Little Bighorn in refutation.' Ahhh, I love the smell of Strawmen burning in the morning…"

Yes, we have an "unreasonable insistence on things like footnotes or endnotes so that your sources can be checked." It's part of our training. The practice is hammered into us over the course of years of hard work. It represents a code of ethics and conduct as strong to the historian as, say, the ethos inculcated in a Marine officer during OCS and TBS. And however much one might like to dismiss this as pesky, or pinheaded, or part of an ivory tower mentality, the real value of this practice is to keep us all honest, to make sure that the work we do is not personal opinion or politics masquerading as "history."

Like it or not, this manual is as a much a work of history as doctrine. As doctrine, it might be pure genius -- or, at least good enough to get the job done. However, as a piece of history, the flaws grate. They detract from the value of the work, because they preclude the sort of rigorous analysis to which a work of history must be subject.

Gen. Petraeus might not agree, but Dr. Petraeus ought to understand.

Regards,
Jill

Ironhorse

11-07-2007, 06:18 PM

Gen. Petraeus might not agree, but Dr. Petraeus ought to understand.
I'd wager the latter does.

I understand why many have problems with there not being more citations. But there's a big difference between "more notes would be nice-to-have" and "it is invalid because it doesn't." Some of the criticism has flown too close to the latter. (Not yours, Jill)

FM 3-24 does not draw its formal authority from an auditable trail to the source material, but rather from the two flag officers' signatures that annoint it as the doctrine of two services. In practice, it gains added strength from the value, relevance, and effectiveness of those ideas. Not from how well they are cited.

A few readers could have used notes as a shortcut to their own self-study. But only in our sound bite culture would that be seen as a major value-add. For extra exploration, which the work has certainly encouraged, there's a healthy bibliography. For the core idea, it is there in black and white with two meaningful signatures, and it does need any more.

Unlike in any number of reduced-size hip-pocket manuals, an extra end note appendix wouldn't have killed anyone. Oh well. It didn't make the cut. Coulda, woulda, shoulda, didn't.

marct

11-08-2007, 05:56 AM

AAA Board Statement on HTS
Welcome

On October 31, 2007, the American Anthropological Association’s Executive Board passed a statement concerning ethical aspects of the U.S. Military’s Human Terrain System (HTS) project. The project, which has received widespread national and international media coverage, embeds anthropologists and other social scientists in military teams in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More here (http://aaanewsinfo.blogspot.com/). The full AAA statement here (http://www.aaanet.org/blog/resolution.htm).

SteveMetz

11-08-2007, 09:11 AM

More here (http://aaanewsinfo.blogspot.com/). The full AAA statement here (http://www.aaanet.org/blog/resolution.htm).

Here's the message I would send to the AAA if I knew how to get a communication to the alternative universe they apparently inhabit: all wars are a "denial of human rights and [are] based on faulty intelligence and undemocratic principles." That's the nature of the beast. In my opinion, the organization has simply elected to secede from reality. Which will have no effect on conflict in the real world. I realize that drafting statements takes a lot of time so AAA's member may not have noticed, but Afghanistan and Iraq weren't exactly bastions of human rights and democratic principles sans outside intervention.

Seriously, that particular phrase says it all: "We're not coming out against the involvement of scholars in wars, just in ones we don't personally like."

11-08-2007, 01:10 PM

I think the following quotation from the AAA statement is very instructive:

The Commission’s work did not include systematic study of the HTS project. The Executive Board of the Association has, however, concluded that the HTS project raises sufficiently troubling and urgent ethical issues to warrant a statement from the Executive Board at this time. Our statement is based on information in the public record, as well as on information and comments provided to the Executive Board by the Ad Hoc Commission and its members. (http://www.aaanet.org/blog/resolution.htm)
This sounds to me like the AAA Board has chosen to condemn an activity without even attempting to understand it in any detail.

Where does this leave us? I submit that this statement provides anthropologists with their "Martin Luther moment". (I wonder on whose door Montgomery McFate and company will hammer their theses.) The AAA statement stands to widen the age-old divide between theory and practice, at least as it applies to anthropology. The AAA may well become the refuge of theoretical anthropolgists while anthroplogists who choose to do something practical with their education and training will avoid AAA membership. I forsee two unfortunate outcomes:
1. The AAA stands to lose any meaningful ability to enforce its professional ethical standards. Those who disagree with the AAA position may simply create another organization with its own standards. (I am reminded of the WBA/WBC divide in professional boxing.)
2. Academic freedom for anthropologists will be curtailed with academic preparation for future anthropologists significantly degraded. If (as I suspect is the case) the AAA is the keeper of the keys to academic anthropology, then lack of AAA membership will become a barrier to entry as a teaching anthropologist. Therefore, formal, "mainstream" anthropology instruction will be limited to that provided by those who are willing to tow the AAA party line.

I hope that I am wrong.(Insert "sad" emoticon here)

SteveMetz

11-08-2007, 01:43 PM

I think the following quotation from the AAA statement is very instructive:

This sounds to me like the AAA Board has chosen to condemn an activity without even attempting to understand it in any detail.

Where does this leave us? I submit that this statement provides anthropologists with their "Martin Luther moment". (I wonder on whose door Montgomery McFate and company will hammer their theses.) The AAA statement stands to widen the age-old divide between theory and practice, at least as it applies to anthropology. The AAA may well become the refuge of theoretical anthropolgists while anthroplogists who choose to do something practical with their education and training will avoid AAA membership. I forsee two unfortunate outcomes:
1. The AAA stands to lose any meaningful ability to enforce its professional ethical standards. Those who disagree with the AAA position may simply create another organization with its own standards. (I am reminded of the WBA/WBC divide in professional boxing.)
2. Academic freedom for anthropologists will be curtailed with academic preparation for future anthropologists significantly degraded. If (as I suspect is the case) the AAA is the keeper of the keys to academic anthropology, then lack of AAA membership will become a barrier to entry as a teaching anthropologist. Therefore, formal, "mainstream" anthropology instruction will be limited to that provided by those who are willing to tow the AAA party line.

I hope that I am wrong.(Insert "sad" emoticon here)

Personally, I think you're being too kind to them. I find the "resolution" morally repulsive.

By "this war" it is not clear whether the esteemed scholars mean Iraq, Afghanistan, or both. I assume Iraq.

Their assumption that American support is preventing the elected Iraqi government from promoting "human rights" and "democratic principles."I have to wonder if the AAA's executive board knows anything aobut the human rights record and support for democratic principles evinced by Qaeda in Iraq?

The AAA's critique of "faulty intelligence," by contrast, did cause me to laugh out loud. I would be most interested in the credentials of the Executive Board to assess whether intelligence is or is not faulty.

But, I assume that the "faulty intelligence" the AAA alludes to is the claims of weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration used to justify removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. If so, the AAA's argument is both logically and ethically flawed. If if Saddam Hussein had no WMD or WMD programs and hence the Bush administration's rationale for removing him was flawed, the fact is that the deed is done. That alone does not justify hamstringing efforts to try and stabilize Iraq today or build a democracy there.

Second, this contention illustrates the bizarrely twisted ethics of the AAA: I assume they never passed a resolution criticizing Saddam Hussein's horrific human rights record. So ultimately this more of the pathetic Vietnam era morality that holds that anything done by a Western nation is an abuse of human rights while actions done by even the most psychopathic Third World tyrant merits understanding and tolerance.

Rex Brynen

11-08-2007, 02:07 PM

1. The AAA stands to lose any meaningful ability to enforce its professional ethical standards.

While the AAA and other professional scholarly associations may comment on ethics issues, and those comments may even have some effect on perceptions of ethical protocols, it is worth mentioning that in the social sciences (unlike, to some degree, medicine or law) the associations play no substantive guardian role. Rather, ethics clearances are the responsibility of university-level research ethics boards and granting agencies (in Canada, from what I can tell, this is much more structured than it is in the US).

I've noted somewhere in another thread that there are real ethical dilemmas in moving between (or having one foot in each of) the academic research and the applied (especially COIN or IC or foreign policy) worlds. )Indeed, I ran across an interesting one last week, although I'm not sure I can post
the details :wry:) These usually aren't insurmountable in my view, and I think it would be useful if the AAA would address these directly rather than pronouncing from on high.

For what its worth, I think the HTS has, from all outward appearances at least, been lax in also not addressing these up front and explicitly. Is there a predeployment HTT training session on balancing ethical responsibilities, for example? Is there an advisory or reporting mechanism (preferably outside the regular chain of command) where HTT members can seek guidance on potentially troublesome dilemmas? It seems to me that these would be very useful mechanisms to have in place, for normative, practical and political reasons.

The bigger issue here is the marketability of HTT "graduates" in the academic job market, post-deployment. Members of departments of hiring committees may well be biased against former HTT members. Given the dynamics of hiring processes, they needn't even explicitly articulate these: they simply need to highlight other perceived weaknesses in the applicant's file, or rally around "untainted" colleagues. Frankly, explicit HTS attention to ethical issues might help to reduce post-deployment academic employment issues for former HTT members too.

It would be interesting to put together a formal panel discussion on this some time, either at a professional association meeting (AAA, MESA, etc) or a Washington-area think tank (heck, I would even consider coming down to DC for it).

ProfessorB

11-08-2007, 02:08 PM

SteveMetz

11-08-2007, 02:14 PM

Speaking of the twisted logic department, what is the logical -- that is, mathematical -- basis for IF you didn't condemn Saddam, THEN you have no moral foundation for criticizing Bush? Presumably, then, since Reagan didn't condemn Pol Pot, he had no moral foundation for condemning Soviet Communism.

Are we now at the point in the discussion that a governing body for anthropologists is given sufficient political gravitas that one needs to take seriously an admonition against anthropologists serving with the military? The Association rejects the war -- that's not foolish Vietnam-era namby-pambyism, it's a political position to which they are entitled as citizens of the United States.

Well, perhaps the word "hypocritical" would have been more appropriate.

The bigger point is this old, stale idea that all of the evil in the world comes from Western repression. The AAA's decision to portray the war in Iraq today as against human rights and democracy shows that they believe that is what the other side seeks. Of course, I don't know whether they are simply naive or truly so mired in ideology that they believe that.

And, I never questioned their right to be nitwits. I just also feel that I have a right to point it out.

And I don't think the AAA "rejects" the war. I haven't seen one whit of criticism from them of AQI or other insurgent movements. I think they reject American involvement in trying to preserve one of the most democratic regimes in that part of the world.

Abu Suleyman

11-08-2007, 02:52 PM

SteveMetz

11-08-2007, 03:02 PM

HTT's and everything of their ilk (Civil Affairs, Psyops, FAO's etc) are an attempt to understand something that is only a major factor in Small Wars. The best soldiers are those that understand the terrain upon which they fight, and in Small Wars the human terrain is at least as important as the physical terrain. The difference is that the physical terrain has only five major and three minor terrain features, and it can be taught effectively to virtually anyone who goes through basic training. Of course the effective use of that terrain is another matter, but the basic verbiage is available to every Soldier and Marine on the ground.

On the other hand, human terrain has not only dozens and perhaps hundreds of features but each feature can have thousands of variables. There are over two thousand religious sects in the United States alone! We cannot possibly hope to teach that to the wider military audience in a short time. Experts are required and that is why we try to involve anthropologists, among others, in forums such as this one.

Unfortunately there is a fundamental conflict between the philosophy of anthropology and that of the military. Because anthropology is concerned with the study of people, any injection of other people or societies into the study can alter it. It would be like trying to take a temperature with a thermometer that is self heating. Therefore anthropologists are trained to limit their involvement with cultures in order to study them better.

Those techniques include, but are not limited to, identifying and distancing themselves from the subject. While these techniques are not perfect, and contamination does inevitably occur, it is what they are trained and required to do to be considered anthropologists. This is also the cause of the perceived moral relativism. While some anthropologists are indeed relativists the study of the cultures itself requires a completely blank slate.

This is also why, in part, the AAA is going to oppose the use of Anthropologists in HTT's. I am not saying that there is not an anti-military bias, which there may well be. But what the military is asking the anthropologists to do goes against, not some vague hippie ideal, but the very science the military wants anthropologists to represent. We are asking them to do their job, without following the principles of their training. It is like asking an infantryman to take a bunker without shooting, or communicating.

That said, everyone would be better off with anthropologists, and other people involved. I don't know the total solution, but the beginning is the same as the beginning of any communication between two cultures, or in this case sub cultures, and that is understanding. The military needs to understand the difficulty of what they are asking anthropologists to do, and they need to respect it. Likewise, the anthropologists, need to understand what the military is trying to do. Until communication occurs between groups, there is no point in working at the group level, e.g. DOD and AAA. The best we can hope for is to win people one at a time, and that is going to be too little too late, I fear.

I take your point that some anthropologists prefer to remain "scientists" rather than undertake praxis, but what annoys me is their aggression in attempting to delegitimize anthropologists who see thinks different. To me, this is as if whatever the professional associations of sociologists is condemned those of their members who decided to become social workers.

Phrased differently, I don't think this is purely an issue of how professional training should be used, but an instance of one group within a profession attempting to impose their personal politics on the profession as a whole. Is the profession opposed to any practical application of its knowledge, or just THIS practical application? If it is just "this" one, then the real issue is no longer preserving professional integrity. If one practical application of anthropological knowledge damaged professional integrity, then all would. If the professional integrity argument as, as I I believe, simply a stalking horse for personal opposition to U.S. involving in Iraq, I believe those making the argument have a moral obligation to explain how deterring professional anthropologists from contributing to stabilization and counterinsurgency operations is going to make Iraq a better place.

This reminds me of a discussion I had with some people who were protesting the presence of a CIA recruiter at a college job fair. I asked them to explain to me how preventing the U.S. intelligence community from hiring talented people is going to make the world a better place. They hadn't really thought it through that far.

marct

11-08-2007, 03:23 PM

Hi Steve,

I take your point that some anthropologists prefer to remain "scientists" rather than undertake praxis, but what annoys me is their aggression in attempting to delegitimize anthropologists who see thinks different.

Well, I agree with the sentiment if not the specific terms you use :D. I wouldn't use the term "scientist" in the way you have - there is nothing scientific about their actions and it is, in many ways, anti-scientific. I think the most appropriate term would be "theologian" or, if I was being realy pedantic, neo-Thomistic pseudo-Marxian theologian.

The dynamic itself is nothing new - it is a standard variant on the witch hunting process used by theologians and other demagogues to rout out heretics. As such, the ad hominen attacks are to be expected as is the use of illogical logic (e.g. binary logic with extremely flawed assumptions).

SteveMetz

11-08-2007, 03:31 PM

Hi Steve,

Well, I agree with the sentiment if not the specific terms you use :D. I wouldn't use the term "scientist" in the way you have - there is nothing scientific about their actions and it is, in many ways, anti-scientific. I think the most appropriate term would be "theologian" or, if I was being realy pedantic, neo-Thomistic pseudo-Marxian theologian.

The dynamic itself is nothing new - it is a standard variant on the witch hunting process used by theologians and other demagogues to rout out heretics. As such, the ad hominen attacks are to be expected as is the use of illogical logic (e.g. binary logic with extremely flawed assumptions).

As long as my dander is up and I'm in mid-rant, let me throw out another point. While some trained anthropologist who consult with the government undoubtedly do so because they believe in the cause, I suspect there are other who do it just because it's a job. So the profession generates more anthropologists than the academic market can absorb, and then carps when they seek other ways to make a living.

This is a longstanding pet peeve of mine. I once taught in a master's granting political science department which was desperately trying to get a Ph.D. program. I opposed this, pointing out that there were already dozens of Ph.D.s for every job, so I didn't see why we needed to produce even more. That was not a popular position in my department since all the tenured folks were obsessed with the idea that it would increase their prestige (and salaries) to be a Ph.D. granting department. They didn't care that they'd be churning out many unemployable Ph.D.s.

Sargent

11-08-2007, 04:36 PM

Agree 100% with LTCOL Gentile. If anthropologists weren't helping commanders figure out who to detain/kill, they wouldn't really be all that much use.

The alternative that anthropologists in opposition should understand is that that American troops without local knowledge will possibly detain/kill many who don't deserve it.

Well, the blow could be softened by arguing that what they are really helping the military to do in Iraq is NOT kill or detain the WRONG people. Without the focus their knowledge can bring to the table, force must be applied in a far more blunt manner, causing more unintended collateral damage. Furthermore, it seems that the collateral damage issues, not the failure to kill the right people, has done the greater harm to the effort in Iraq.

The morality of the death a sniper brings can be debated, but it is certainly better than the indiscriminate death and destruction of a couple of two thousand pound bombs. While this sort of moral subjectivity has its repulsive implications, what is truly important is that the former action gets you out of the killing/fighting phase much sooner (because you're not creating more enemies), which is an indisputable good.

As with many things associated with war, it is often the marketing (public relations, propaganda, etc.) that makes ultimate difference in effectiveness. Given the philosophy the underpins modern anthropology, it is obvious why the idea that their knowledge being used as a tool to deliver force chafes. But if the message is that their knowledge is being used to minimize the use of force, well that might make it all a bit easier for them.

Of course, there is something about this argument that makes me feel distinctly evil.

11-08-2007, 05:41 PM

Thanks for your post. It has crystalized the reasons for my antipathetical responses to positions of the members of SAMA (Society of Anti-Military Anthropolgists). I find that their proclamations portray them as being sophistical, eristical, and hypocritical rather than critical, unbiased Socratic searchers after truth. In case it isn't clear, I believe that scholars ought to be the latter.

As with many things associated with war, it is often the marketing (public relations, propaganda, etc.) that makes ultimate difference in effectiveness. Given the philosophy the underpins modern anthropology, it is obvious why the idea that their knowledge being used as a tool to deliver force chafes. But if the message is that their knowledge is being used to minimize the use of force, well that might make it all a bit easier for them.

Of course, there is something about this argument that makes me feel distinctly evil.

What you describes is not limited to war. As to your feeling of malaise about the argument, I suspect that you might now be in a better position to understand why the charge of Sophistry against Socrates could have resulted in the death penalty.

selil

11-08-2007, 11:01 PM

While the AAA and other professional scholarly associations may comment on ethics issues, and those comments may even have some effect on perceptions of ethical protocols, it is worth mentioning that in the social sciences (unlike, to some degree, medicine or law) the associations play no substantive guardian role. Rather, ethics clearances are the responsibility of university-level research ethics boards and granting agencies (in Canada, from what I can tell, this is much more structured than it is in the US).

I've got to disagree.

Human Research Boards of Ethics often refer to third party professional organizations as being the subject matter experts in what is allowed. More importantly adherence to those bodies expectations can effect tenure, promotion, accreditation for programs, etc.. into silliness.

I'm thinking I have a set of ethics that I ascribe to through ACM and IEEE and if I get whacked by the organization I lose my ability to publish in most of the scholarly journals that would count at my University for professional growth. Science has always been political, but hyper-politicization I think is absolutely abhorrent. I also think that AAA has violated the precepts of academic freedom, and scholarly inquiry. If I was one of the people affected I'd go to the AAUP have the AAA sanctioned (like they have done to administrations and programs in the past) for taking a political stand in neglect of scholarship.

Abu Suleyman

11-09-2007, 01:54 PM

Phrased differently, I don't think this is purely an issue of how professional training should be used, but an instance of one group within a profession attempting to impose their personal politics on the profession as a whole. Is the profession opposed to any practical application of its knowledge, or just THIS practical application?

Let me clarify by saying that I have no doubt whatsoever that there is an anti-military bias within anthropology and many other social sciences. To be utterly fair, though, there is also an anti-academia bias within the military. If you doubt this, look at all the name calling on this site. I cannot speak knowledgeably on involvement in general, but anecdotally when I took anthropology I was told a story about a man who became peripherally involved in his PhD. thesis, and when it came out a fist fight erupted between the the PhD. candidate and the Dean who wanted the document back, because it violated the norms of the science. (In the interest of full disclosure, that anecdote may actually relate to Sociology, I have forgotten. The similarity between the two fields allows some leeway in anecdotes, I believe.)

All that notwithstanding, it is probable that a large portion of this conflict with one group trying to impose its views on another, is a reflection of a power struggle that seems to be typical within the social sciences (political science and economics being notable exceptions). Specifically it is between the "Ivory Tower" scientists who traditionally have power in professional associations, almost always have PhD's, and so on, and the practitioners, or rather those who go and work for government, think tanks, or in general try to change the world we live in.

This little scrum is almost analogous to our current experience in Iraq. The military doesn't have enough knowledge of the human terrain to make good decisions, and apparently inadvertently has wandered into a turf fight in an unrelated area. It is almost like the military needs HTT's for academia. :)

Sincerely though, the keys to success here are the same as anywhere. In fact they are in the first two paragraphs of an OP Order. First you must know your own strengths, and weaknesses, which in this case is our own prejudices. You don't have to overcome them. just know them, and account for it in your planning. Next know what is going on with your enemy or target, in this case the people we want to woo to the cause. Then you have to know exactly what you want to accomplish. Once you know all that, everything else is much simpler.

There are a lot of emotions involved in this issue. And while the analogy is not perfect, this situation is a lot like the teenage dramas where the nerd feel slighted by the jocks, because they don't get to play ball. And the jocks feel slighted by the nerds because the nerds look down on them. The analogy is not completely apt, because in this case both sides (military/academia) feel like outsiders, and cast the others as the insiders in their own minds.

While it is fun to call names, and it makes for an extremely long thread, it doesn't accomplish anything. If we have learned anything in Iraq it should be that trampling all over the feelings, value system, and political issues of another culture does not get us what we want, understanding, accounting for, and capitalizing on them does. Just like the bumper sticker says, "Love begins at home," and so does political comity.

goesh

11-09-2007, 02:11 PM

I think the intent of the governing body of Anthros is to pick and choose what war they will participate in and under what circumstances the recipients of their sacred knowledge will apply the data. Power is the ultimate end of politics - that's the point here, not Academic contentions of inalienable rights of expression. Their stated political agenda keeps them in the status of being camp followers with moral issues and unable to deal with the reality of the fact that some in their camp will not hesitate to collude, sub rosa, with political opponents. Where comes this notion that the elite and top thinkers amidst the Anthro community are needed by DoD? Fat grants can get many Masters level Anthros with solid credentials and experience. Weeping Jesus! DoD is dynamic, not static and desperate.

SteveMetz

11-09-2007, 03:00 PM

Let me clarify by saying that I have no doubt whatsoever that there is an anti-military bias within anthropology and many other social sciences. To be utterly fair, though, there is also an anti-academia bias within the military. If you doubt this, look at all the name calling on this site. I cannot speak knowledgeably on involvement in general, but anecdotally when I took anthropology I was told a story about a man who became peripherally involved in his PhD. thesis, and when it came out a fist fight erupted between the the PhD. candidate and the Dean who wanted the document back, because it violated the norms of the science. (In the interest of full disclosure, that anecdote may actually relate to Sociology, I have forgotten. The similarity between the two fields allows some leeway in anecdotes, I believe.)

All that notwithstanding, it is probable that a large portion of this conflict with one group trying to impose its views on another, is a reflection of a power struggle that seems to be typical within the social sciences (political science and economics being notable exceptions). Specifically it is between the "Ivory Tower" scientists who traditionally have power in professional associations, almost always have PhD's, and so on, and the practitioners, or rather those who go and work for government, think tanks, or in general try to change the world we live in.

This little scrum is almost analogous to our current experience in Iraq. The military doesn't have enough knowledge of the human terrain to make good decisions, and apparently inadvertently has wandered into a turf fight in an unrelated area. It is almost like the military needs HTT's for academia. :)

Sincerely though, the keys to success here are the same as anywhere. In fact they are in the first two paragraphs of an OP Order. First you must know your own strengths, and weaknesses, which in this case is our own prejudices. You don't have to overcome them. just know them, and account for it in your planning. Next know what is going on with your enemy or target, in this case the people we want to woo to the cause. Then you have to know exactly what you want to accomplish. Once you know all that, everything else is much simpler.

There are a lot of emotions involved in this issue. And while the analogy is not perfect, this situation is a lot like the teenage dramas where the nerd feel slighted by the jocks, because they don't get to play ball. And the jocks feel slighted by the nerds because the nerds look down on them. The analogy is not completely apt, because in this case both sides (military/academia) feel like outsiders, and cast the others as the insiders in their own minds.

While it is fun to call names, and it makes for an extremely long thread, it doesn't accomplish anything. If we have learned anything in Iraq it should be that trampling all over the feelings, value system, and political issues of another culture does not get us what we want, understanding, accounting for, and capitalizing on them does. Just like the bumper sticker says, "Love begins at home," and so does political comity.

Very thoughtful post. Having lived at the intersection of academia and the military for 20 years, though, I personally think there is less hostility toward academia in the military than there is hostility toward the military in some niches of academia. In fact, I was amazed at the deference I received when I left civilian academia and went to work with the military.

I'll admit I've done a lot of the name calling myself in these exchanges but, to be frank, I think I have the academic credentials to justify my criticism of academia. I kind of feel like I have the right to criticize things that I "am"--academia, Southerners, Appalachia, etc. And, let me note, my name calling has not been targeted at academia in general but what I personally consider some of the hypocrisy and blindness that is common in some niches of academia, specifically the tendency, in this case, to couch what is, in reality, a ideological attack in terms of professional ethics, and a longstanding propensity to cast American actions as evil while failing to grapple with the real evil that lies at the root of many of the conflicts we become involved in.

I'll stand by my contention that doctors Gonzales and Price, as well as the Executive Board of the AAA are hypocrits with badly distorted ethics.

invictus0972

11-09-2007, 04:10 PM

invictus0972

11-09-2007, 04:16 PM

To be utterly fair, though, there is also an anti-academia bias within the military. If you doubt this, look at all the name calling on this site.

Hi Abu Suleyman!

I agree! However, this is not just limited to the military. It seems to me that there is an anti-intellectual bent across the spectrum of American society. Unfortunately, this feeling manifests itself in too many military leaders.

SteveMetz

11-09-2007, 04:20 PM

Here is a thought on the macro level concerning this issue. Although I support the HTT concept, I think it is a sad commentary on the American education system that the military needs to hire anthropologists to teach soldiers about other cultures. One of the most important requirements in understanding cultures is to understand some basic history; but Americans, as a general rule, tend to abhor the study of history. On the other hand, Muslims have a deep understanding of at least their own history. If one were to ask any Muslim youth between the ages of 10-17 who Saladin was, they would probably be able to tell all about his heroic efforts to repel the "infidel crusaders". Now, ask any Western youth in the same age group who Charles Matel was, and they will probaby give you a blank look even though he is the main reason we are all not running around saying, "Praise be to Allah!"

The point I am getting at here is that the American education system used to better prepare citizens to understand other cultures. We used to receive a classical education in which history, literature, and philosophy were studied. Now, public schools only give a cursory look at these subjects. The result is a population, from which military personnel are drawn, that is ignorant of culture. This is why we need to hire anthropologists to assist us in understanding the human terrain of the Middle East.

I take your overall point but I sure wouldn't use the word "understanding" to describe the accepted view of history in the Arab world (or many other places as well, such as the Balkans). It's more of a consensus on myth more than an understanding of history.

But you're exactly right that Americans have no sense of the power of communal or primal ties, and of place. Let me give an example. When I taught at Leavenworth in the 1980s I had a student from Lebanon. This guy was a Maronite Christian. Lebanon's civil war flared up while he was there and he was totally out of touch with his family. Didn't know whether his wife and young son were even alive.

Of course, it was distraught so his American classmates tried to engage him in conversation to make him feel better. One American asked him where he would move to if things were so bad that he had to leave Lebanon. The guy got a puzzled look on his face and said--"You don't understand. My family has lived in the same house for 500 years. No matter how bad it gets, we could never leave."

Since most Americans tend to pack up and move across the country if their neighbor's dog barks too much, this was a totally alien idea to the Lebanese major's American classmates. To me, it was a poignant example of how deep our inability to understand other cultures runs.

selil

11-09-2007, 05:04 PM

Hi Abu Suleyman!

I agree! However, this is not just limited to the military. It seems to me that there is an anti-intellectual bent across the spectrum of American society. Unfortunately, this feeling manifests itself in too many military leaders.

I find it interesting that Shows like Bull####! on Showtime with Penn and Teller have more intellectualism and scientific skepticism than the evening news. Sad or scary it is hilarious.

Sargent

11-09-2007, 07:40 PM

FM 3-24 does not draw its formal authority from an auditable trail to the source material, but rather from the two flag officers' signatures that annoint it as the doctrine of two services. In practice, it gains added strength from the value, relevance, and effectiveness of those ideas. Not from how well they are cited.

The current iteration of the COIN field manual came out of a recognition that how things were done before was no longer good enough. If that sort of a critique is valid for the substance of the manual, it is not that far off to suggest that the process and form of such a manual might require reworking as well. I think we are beyond the point where it is enough that "two flag officers' signatures...annoint it as the doctrine." From what I know of LtGen Mattis, I can't imagine he'd want his signature to serve as a barrier to a rigorous critiqe of the document, in either its contents, the final form it takes, or the process by which it was created.

Cheers,
Jill

SteveMetz

11-09-2007, 08:06 PM

The current iteration of the COIN field manual came out of a recognition that how things were done before was no longer good enough. If that sort of a critique is valid for the substance of the manual, it is not that far off to suggest that the process and form of such a manual might require reworking as well. I think we are beyond the point where it is enough that "two flag officers' signatures...annoint it as the doctrine." From what I know of LtGen Mattis, I can't imagine he'd want his signature to serve as a barrier to a rigorous critiqe of the document, in either its contents, the final form it takes, or the process by which it was created.

Cheers,
Jill

Rigorous critique is fine. "It doesn't have enough citations" does not constitute a rigorous critique. Ideological potshots at American involvement in Iraq do not constitute rigorous critique.

invictus0972

11-09-2007, 08:34 PM

You are exactly right! One only has to look at the dramatic arts to get a reflection of America's intellectual state. Some of the so called comedies out there are intellectually bankrupt, to put it mildly ("Dumb and Dumber", "Napoleaon Dynamite", etc.). I don't mean to sound like a prude; but if we want to understand why we must hire anthropoligists, we have to do a little self-examination. The facts are that our kids are more interested in watching these types of movies than learning about the real world. I am probably taking this too seriously, though! As my own kids tell me, I am just a "big ol' fuddie-duddie"!

invictus0972

11-09-2007, 08:41 PM

I take your overall point but I sure wouldn't use the word "understanding" to describe the accepted view of history in the Arab world (or many other places as well, such as the Balkans). It's more of a consensus on myth more than an understanding of history.

Hi Steve,

Yes, you are absolutely correct about their conception of history! One of the challenges of IO professionals is to figure out how to deconstruct Muslim conceptions of history. How do we get them not to view events that occured in the 10th Century as the apex of their civilization? Talk about a difficult challenge!!! That being said, at least they do not have the Western self-loathing that prevents them from learning at least a mythological version of the heroes of their civilization.

SteveMetz

11-09-2007, 08:53 PM

SteveMetz

11-09-2007, 08:56 PM

Hi Steve,

Yes, you are absolutely correct about their conception of history! One of the challenges of IO professionals is to figure out how to deconstruct Muslim conceptions of history. How do we get them not to view events that occured in the 10th Century as the apex of their civilization? Talk about a difficult challenge!!! That being said, at least they do not have the Western self-loathing that prevents them from learning at least a mythological version of the heroes of their civilization.

I'm a bit skeptical of the ability of IO professionals to alter a lifetime of acculturation.

But, of course, every culture, including our own, has a mythological version of its own past. I've found myself having to explain to officers from abroad that the author of the Declaration of Independence owned slaves, and that the the freedom of religion that the Pilgrims came so far for was, in fact, the freedom to impose their benighted religion on everyone within reach.

Rex Brynen

11-09-2007, 10:33 PM

The facts are that our kids are more interested in watching these types of movies than learning about the real world. I am probably taking this too seriously, though! As my own kids tell me, I am just a "big ol' fuddie-duddie"!

For what its worth, I've taught an awful lot of university students (well over ten thousand by my reckoning), and I usually find them a pretty impressive bunch--engaged, interested, active.

Just to provide an example: a couple of years back, a UNDP colleague in Africa needed an intern for 3-4 months to work on a host of urgent issues (AIDS, food security). There was free accommodation, but no pay, and the student would have to finance their own travel.

I mentioned it to my senior class of 105 students. By the end of the week I had 23 volunteers. The one that we ultimately selected had a straight-A record and was joint honours in development studies and microbiology. By all accounts, she did a superb job.

I can't go anywhere these days without running into ex-students in the field--with the UN, NGOs, as FSOs or with aid agencies or as soldiers, as translators or analysts, or teachers and researchers. They are at least as committed as "my" generation, and have a range of networking and IT skills (on top of everything) that didn't exist a couple of decades ago.

(I don't agree as to the quality of contemporary popular culture either, I'll leave that one aside for now!)

selil

11-09-2007, 11:01 PM

Rex I agree with you, my students are motivated, smart, giving, and they volunteer like crazy to help each other and people they've never met.

Sargent

11-09-2007, 11:18 PM

Rigorous critique is fine. "It doesn't have enough citations" does not constitute a rigorous critique. Ideological potshots at American involvement in Iraq do not constitute rigorous critique.

That the work doesn't have adequate citations is as good a place as any to start a rigorous critique of the process and the form of the work. The only answers given to this are first, that this is how it's done, and second, the document is signed by two flag officers, and only their wisdom matters. Both of these answers have been given as a means to end any discussion regarding the form of the manual, or the process by which it was put together. I'll go out on a limb and suggest that these justifications are weak.

Whatever his intentions or motivations, Price has pointed to a flaw in the manual. I don't much care about the messenger, but I do think the message bears consideration beyond that which it has received here. I have no ideological axe to grind, but as an historian, I think these things are important.

Again I will say, if the content of the doctrine was worthy of reconsideration, then it's not too far-fetched to suggest that other aspects of the doctrine might not suffer from fresh round of thought.

Pretend that somebody you respected identified the problem.

Regards,
Jill

SteveMetz

11-09-2007, 11:33 PM

That the work doesn't have adequate citations is as good a place as any to start a rigorous critique of the process and the form of the work. The only answers given to this are first, that this is how it's done, and second, the document is signed by two flag officers, and only their wisdom matters. Both of these answers have been given as a means to end any discussion regarding the form of the manual, or the process by which it was put together. I'll go out on a limb and suggest that these justifications are weak.

Whatever his intentions or motivations, Price has pointed to a flaw in the manual. I don't much care about the messenger, but I do think the message bears consideration beyond that which it has received here. I have no ideological axe to grind, but as an historian, I think these things are important.

Again I will say, if the content of the doctrine was worthy of reconsideration, then it's not too far-fetched to suggest that other aspects of the doctrine might not suffer from fresh round of thought.

Pretend that somebody you respected identified the problem.

Regards,
Jill

We'll agree to disagree. I think the only "flaw" Price has pointed out is that the manual isn't an academic document. I think that's about as valid as me critiquing one of Price's articles because it doesn't have a mission statement and alternative courses of action. In fact, I think it's amazing hubris on his part to assume that all the rest of the world should conform to the standards of his profession.

I would respectfully submit that if someone wants to critique how doctrine is developed, it's incumbent on them to actually find out how doctrine is developed rather than just assuming that the process is one they're familiar with. So what I think of Price isn't my point; I don't think he has, in fact, identified a "problem." He simply claims to as a wedge to expound his personal ideology.

Watcher In The Middle

11-10-2007, 02:50 AM

Originally posted by Steve Metz:

As long as my dander is up and I'm in mid-rant, let me throw out another point. While some trained anthropologist who consult with the government undoubtedly do so because they believe in the cause, I suspect there are other who do it just because it's a job. So the profession generates more anthropologists than the academic market can absorb, and then carps when they seek other ways to make a living.

A much under appreciated point. Facts are, the Anthropology market isn't exactly a white hot job market, but there is and has been (and will be) a market for consultant/contract type work for anthropologists who have field experience in what would qualify as "developing nations" - from multi national corporations.

But the point is, these places are all about money (big, multi year development contracts), and as a result, they need to put people on the ground with field experience who can perform "out of the box", if you will. Straight academic types are of very little use to these folks - they bring little to the table that is of value. Well, if a HTT vet is a candidate for one of these types of job vrs. a bunch of academic types with limited developing nation field experience, that HTT vet is going to have a better chance of getting through the door and ending up on the short list.

This whole deal seems to an outsider to be an elitist attempt by the Anthropology "Haves" to stop the rest of the Anthropolgy marketplace from being polluted by issues like "Making a living", or getting a chance at credible developing nation field expertise.

From a purely economic basis, this stance by the AAA seems to be completely illogical - you want to try and grow your marketplace for your graduating students, not wall it off and limit it's growth.

One last point to consider - just as everybody notes how the military adopts processes and technology from the marketplace, don't forget that the reverse is also true. The marketplace also looks at how the military innovates, and both learns and adopts. The AAA might want to take that into consideration if they want to expand opportunities for their membership.

invictus0972

11-10-2007, 04:23 AM

Rex I agree with you, my students are motivated, smart, giving, and they volunteer like crazy to help each other and people they've never met.

Hi Rex and Selil!

In my haughty mood, I may have been too hard on the education system in my posts. I am glad to hear that there are so many motivated students. However, I would like to clarify that I was referring to the common education kids receive in the public school system (K-12). I would expect the students at the university level to be more motivated, but they are not the pool from which the Army is drawing recruits. In COIN, the things that occur at the street level between a private and the citizens of a village may have more important strategic consequences than the decisions of a general in his headquarters. The reality of this situation has triggered some debate in the military about how we develop the "strategic private". In other words, how do we take an 18-24 year old kid who has been consumed with nothing but pop culture his whole life, I work with these kids every day, and turn him in to a strategic thinker who considers the role of history, religion, culture, and geopolitics in his decision making process, while at the same time maintaining the necessary situational awareness required to stay alive in a combat zone? This is a tough nut to crack! It may be impossible! I just think a step in the right direction would be to change the anti[intellectual sentiment in America. Of course that requires changing a culture, and we all know how hard that can be.

DISCLAIMER: I don't mean to come off as being intellectually arrogant. On the contrary, I have the most to learn and should be farther along than I am, and there are PLENTY who are brighter than me.

Schmedlap

11-11-2007, 03:35 AM

Schmedlap

11-11-2007, 04:13 AM

I would like to clarify that I was referring to the common education kids receive in the public school system (K-12). I would expect the students at the university level to be more motivated, but they are not the pool from which the Army is drawing recruits. In COIN, the things that occur at the street level between a private and the citizens of a village may have more important strategic consequences than the decisions of a general in his headquarters. The reality of this situation has triggered some debate in the military about how we develop the "strategic private". In other words, how do we take an 18-24 year old kid who has been consumed with nothing but pop culture his whole life, I work with these kids every day, and turn him in to a strategic thinker who considers the role of history, religion, culture, and geopolitics in his decision making process, while at the same time maintaining the necessary situational awareness required to stay alive in a combat zone? This is a tough nut to crack! It may be impossible!
My impression was that most of my Soldiers "got it". Although they were quick to put up their impression of what a tough guy is and says, always being quick to make a dumb statement like "kill em all and let God sort em out", this was just an expression of frustration. They understood that this is just a dumb phrase and not the way to go about our jobs. So long as their squad and team leaders set the example and did the right thing, the Soldiers were happy to emulate that good example. Fortunately, once a Soldier was faced with the responsibility of being a team leader or squad leader, he quickly began to understand why getting to know the people in a neighborhood is more important than killing them. I doubt that many would be considered strategic thinkers - nor would I consider myself or other leaders in the company to have been so - but they were smart guys who could quickly learn and apply the lessons from people who are strategic thinkers.

marct

11-11-2007, 04:03 PM

I'd have to agree with Rex and Selil - most of my students are quite interested in learning and, in many cases, quite mad that they were not challenged in High School.

Originally posted by Steve Metz:

As long as my dander is up and I'm in mid-rant, let me throw out another point. While some trained anthropologist who consult with the government undoubtedly do so because they believe in the cause, I suspect there are other who do it just because it's a job. So the profession generates more anthropologists than the academic market can absorb, and then carps when they seek other ways to make a living.

A much under appreciated point. Facts are, the Anthropology market isn't exactly a white hot job market, but there is and has been (and will be) a market for consultant/contract type work for anthropologists who have field experience in what would qualify as "developing nations" - from multi national corporations.

And other areas as well :D. This situation, too many PhD's for the academy, has existed since the late 1970's, and the AAA has had the problem of a polarized membership for at least that long. Organizationally, I'm not surprised to see this - it is an inevitable consequence of the way the discipline has developed. In some ways, it mirrors the split in Mathematics (Theoretical vs. Applied).

marct

11-11-2007, 04:14 PM

Hi Steve,

We'll agree to disagree. I think the only "flaw" Price has pointed out is that the manual isn't an academic document. I think that's about as valid as me critiquing one of Price's articles because it doesn't have a mission statement and alternative courses of action. In fact, I think it's amazing hubris on his part to assume that all the rest of the world should conform to the standards of his profession.

One might almost consider accusing him of politically correct cultural relativism :rolleyes:.

I would respectfully submit that if someone wants to critique how doctrine is developed, it's incumbent on them to actually find out how doctrine is developed rather than just assuming that the process is one they're familiar with. So what I think of Price isn't my point; I don't think he has, in fact, identified a "problem." He simply claims to as a wedge to expound his personal ideology.

That the work doesn't have adequate citations is as good a place as any to start a rigorous critique of the process and the form of the work.

Steve, I think Jill has an excellent point and that the two of you are,in effect, arguing apples and oranges. I think that it is important to distinguish between a critique of the process of doctrine writing and a critique of the doctrine itself. I certainly ave no difficulty with your comments on Price's critique of the process, he doesn't seem to know what he is talking about there, but I think that Jill is right about the citations being a good place to start for a critique in the area of content. If nothing else, the definitions used contain assumptions of reality that may, or may not, be the best available (I know they aren't for the definition of ritual).

So, where to start on the critique of the doctrine itself? While I'll admit that doctrine is about satisficing behaviour (i.e. good enough to work, not necessarily the "best"), I think it is also important that it be extensible in a theoretically coherent manner. For example, the definition of ritual is highly limited and extensible only to observable behaviour - not a position that Turner held in his later work and inherently problematic if we wanted to extend the work to include IO and PSYOPS.

Marc

Steve Blair

11-11-2007, 04:37 PM

I'd have to agree with Rex and Selil - most of my students are quite interested in learning and, in many cases, quite mad that they were not challenged in High School.

I'll have to join the chorus here. Many (but not all) of the students I come into contact with (either as an instructor or informal adviser) are looking for some sort of intellectual challenge. Some of them get quite frustrated when they start finding "more of the same" in college.

Penta

11-11-2007, 09:40 PM

I'll have to join the chorus here. Many (but not all) of the students I come into contact with (either as an instructor or informal adviser) are looking for some sort of intellectual challenge. Some of them get quite frustrated when they start finding "more of the same" in college.

(I apologize in advance if this sounds like a rant.)
As one of those recent students....Yes, yes, yes.

For me, the only reason I suffered through high school (where I was bored and depressed) was to get to college. I had mental health issues at the time, too, so I was desperate to get away (even from the alt school I was placed in in 11th grade).

I get to college, figuring "I have just 4 years left"...And find out there that, for a political science major (and most liberal arts majors, really), to really have a chance to get a job where you might do relevant things with your education, you need...a grad degree. (ROTC is another route, yes; but given my disabilities, not an option for me.)

I was, still am to an extent, pissed at that. I was lucky - the school I picked (University of Scranton, for those who care) was a decent school, if a horrible choice for someone like me who was stuck on campus and not a social butterfly. I had a few profs (my advisor especially) who wouldn't let me fail out (as I pondered on many an occasion) and could occasionally throw me things to chew on.

But overall, college was a fair number of required courses I could have done without (Political philosophy, I'm looking at you...Dept required course that gave me fits...), with only some that were unexpectedly useful (The required theology sequence (UofS being a Jesuit school)), the rest being obvious requirements or whatever.

Issues I see in education?

1) College costs a lot of money. As I have friends and family at college age, or their last years of HS, I'm seeing this in a way I admit I didn't when it was my turn. I'd be surprised if I saw a four-year school with tuition UNDER 22k per year - before adding on room, board, books, fees, etc, etc. I don't know anybody going through college, or about to go through college, who does not work or is not planning to work just to make the money work. Only reason I didn't is because parents had the ability to cover me (I'm the youngest of two; the equation is different if you're, say, the eldest of three or something), helpful given that it was hard enough to pull off 15 credits (18 being a "normal" courseload at my school) without working. Scholarships and (non-loan) aid are not available for a lot of them (too poor to pay out of pocket, too rich to qualify for need-based aid); If they're spending the time they aren't in class, sleeping, or trying to study for classes that seem to see monster papers as somehow indicating rigor (Uh, no. Minimum 10 pages does not equal rigor, not if I'm a good enough writer to say what I have to say in 6!), to enable college to BE a time of intellectual exploration. It's basically a lot like HS in terms of being "on the hamster wheel"; difference is, you're away from home, and you pay for the privilege of being a hamster.

2) There's a glut of people with undergrad degrees vs jobs that will take only undergrad degrees. Maybe it's a cyclical thing, but right now, it's hard to actually get a job within a few months of leaving school. (Hence why many of the people I graduated HS with are in law school or grad school if they can pull it off) And forget a job that actually uses the degree you put six figures towards getting.

2A) College has a problem. Undergrad programs, funding, etc. are designed for 4 years. Personally, while I admit to making mistakes aplenty (in some ways, I wonder if I was ready for college, with my disabilities, when I started; I hate to admit that, but it comes to mind), it took me 5 and a half years, including a semester break for a vocational rehab program. 5-6 years seems to be becoming more common - yet there's still a black mark, it feels like, if you don't get that degree in 4 years. Is it just where I live (The Shore area of NJ; Monmouth-Ocean Counties to be more precise), or have others felt that? (Folks who hire people? Any view from that end?)

In short: Everybody says college is supposed to prepare you for a career. Or at least, that's what's pitched to students (current and prospective).

Meanwhile, I'm left with the feeling that, no, it's really just meant to weed people out of going to grad school, where one is really prepared for a career...And if you don't make the jump to grad school, you just wasted time and money, and in many cases are left with crushing debtloads.

...Yes, this did turn into a rant.:( Not what I intended. Hopefully, though, amid my rantings, some can see something of use.

Ken White

11-11-2007, 10:06 PM

My daughter would totally agree, particularly with the emphasis on an advance degree and taking more than four years to complete. We have really skewed the system a bit too much...

Penta

11-11-2007, 11:43 PM

A bit? A bit?

*falls off chair with laughter*

Let me show my hand: I screwed up a few semesters, came out of college with a 2.3 GPA. Not because I was lazy, but because I...Well, I gave up. I began wondering where the hell the payoff would be, all the doors that were supposed to open for me once I'd gotten to college.

I wonder whether to laugh bitterly or just cry when friends from my younger days say that "last I knew, you actually were the smartest one around", and mean it. (I'm the classic "bright kid who burned out in college", I suppose.) Because I don't see the evidence. So, yeah, I saw someone bring up the issue of education, and I pounced. Because I suppose I feel a little screwed.

Is grad school in my future? I hope so, but I'm not optimistic (unless someone here has an in with an MA program in security studies/int'l relations or similar). Painful to realize, especially when, on an intellectual level, I'd begun "priming myself" for (I hoped) a career in government (hey, I'm disabled - job security is important, and the intel community ain't gonna be outsourced to China or India!) when I was in my early teens and had given up the idea of doing anything that required eyesight, the ability to drive, or much in the way of physical ability.

So, unless and until I get a grad degree, I could have my major in something completely random, and it'd be the same thing.

I doubt, I really doubt, that I'm the only one who can say that among my peers - there are opportunities, yes. But we were promised that once we got into college, we were at least going to have a vaguely decent job.

That promise...Ain't happened. I'm happy to have the job I have, but I imagined that by this point I'd be starting my career, not just in a job I took because my career seems to be slammed shut to me. And I don't have student loans or the like to worry about. I have no credit history, but no debt, either.

I'm going to sound bitter here, but...I don't care about your political views. Every side of the spectrum is at fault.

Those 30 and older made a lot of promises to my generation, able-bodied or not, many to keep us from giving up totally over the years.

Promises come due, and imagine the surprise when we come to find that the ladder's been yanked up, the door shut, and the sound we just heard was the lock clanking closed. (When the average tab for college is $20k+ per year for tuition alone, increasing at twice the rate of inflation, with textbook prices (to name a small part) going up by three-digit percentages over the past ten years, I fear to think what the situation is for those, say, 5-8 years younger than me.)

Either doors open soon on a large scale, or the verdict is going to be that we all got screwed, and have no realistic chance of actually having a decent life.

selil

11-12-2007, 12:09 AM

This video talks about some of the problems with the education system (CLICK HERE) (http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/66). Take the time about fifteen minutes to watch it and it might change your mind about education.

Schmedlap

11-12-2007, 02:04 AM

I have to agree with all of the points made about college. A few more gripes, just because...

I'm enrolled in an MBA program. I took one semester of courses prior to my latest deployment to Iraq. To be blunt, it was an obscene waste of my time and money and my grades reflect not what knowledge I obtained, but rather the quality of homework that I turned in.

Although I was in school, I still remembered that I was a military professional FIRST and a college student SECOND. When I am given a homework assignment that has 20 problems that take about 30 minutes each to complete, that all utilize the same concept, applied over and over, and I am in a time crunch where work competes with school, then work is going to win and I am going to blow off doing the next 15 repetitive problems to a high standard. This is not a complaint about getting a B instead of an A, but just an observation that, to me, shows that something is wrong. In this particular course, I aced each of the 3 tests. I mean that I literally attained a score of 100 on each test, to include the final exam (it was a statistics course and I'm an analytical guy). However, due to my aforementioned decision to focus on work when the homework proved mindlessly repetitive and a detriment to my professional duties, my homework grade dragged down my overall grade to the point that while I was the only person to even get a 90 or higher on each test, let alone 100, I got a solid B. What does that grade reflect? I say it reflects my priorities. If I were applying to a PhD program or something else that cares about grades - which thankfully I am not - then I suspect that the grade would be interpreted as an inadequate mastery of the material or a deficient intellect.

Another course - the title escapes me now - was basically a course in "dealing with people 101". It was such a simple, basic, dumbed-down, intellectually insulting waste of my time that I considered dropping out of the program altogether. I requested that I get credit for it based on "life experience" but commanding an infantry company in urban combat did not pass the muster. The professor did nothing but preach to us for 2 hours a week, not only failing to encourage questions, but actively repelling them and discouraging any discussion whatsoever. Basically, we took notes on material that we were never tested on, wrote a research paper on a narrow human resources topic, and then got a grade that seemed to be randomly generated (I got an A, though I am not sure why).

The most maddening experience was a case study that we did in groups that reminded me of the MDMP drills that we do in IOBC and ICCC. Just a finger-drilled procedure that we will never use again, that does little to generate or justify a decision, and is basically just a briefing format that is contrived to fit the course of action that is determined ahead of time.

I have actually been considering a transition to an anthropology and/or international affairs program. My only reservation is that I suspect that I will lack the patience to write research papers on simplistic topics with set page restrictions (I took one course in which the maximum was 10 pages - my draft was easily over 50) that are skimmed over by a disinterested graduate assistant who sharpshoots my citations and ignores the content.

The most disappointing aspect of my cynical view of graduate school in general, and business school in particular, thus far, is that I now have enough money to easily go to school without working and still maintain my standard of living, but it seems less interesting. I worked through undergraduate school, lived on ramen noodles, had no social life, and graduated flat broke. I always thought about how nice it would be to go to school simply for the intellectual pleasure or to learn something useful, rather than to just get a degree. Now I've reached the point where I can do just that, but I have also reached the conclusion that I was aspiring for an experience that business school does not offer. Everybody here seems to be focused on getting a degree and not at all interested in learning anything. Almost every question that is asked begins with "if this were asked on the test..." or "will this be on the test?" or "how would you ask this on a test?" It is disappointing.

I would love to find an intellectually stimulating program where I learn something interesting and useful - regardless of obtaining a degree - but it seems like schools have fashioned themselves into factories that churn out degree holders.

Norfolk

11-12-2007, 03:29 AM

I can't remember now who wrote it, or on which thread they posted it, but someone here at SWC a few weeks ago said that the best way to learn was to get a bunch of good books and just read them yourself. While there are some real limitations to that way of learning, it is still one of the best, and one of the few that anyone can do on their own initiative and without having to attend classes of some sort or formal schooling and the like.

Without adding the experiences of my own academic career to the Parade of Higher Education Horrors already recounted, I simply have to say that I largely concurr. The gross over-expansion of Higher Education over the last generation or so in response to the "demand" for degrees in order to pursue careers has led to institutionalized mediocrity throughout much of that system. The pressure to recruit, "educate", and accredit more students, create new programs/departments/faculties, etc., and to increase the prestige and "reputation" (amongst other things) of colleges, universities, faculties, and individual faculty members, has resulted in a general lowering of academic standards and integrity throughout. Much of the function of colleges and univerisities has been reduced to that of degree mills, instead of as places of learning. There is a disturbing consistency to such observations across North American institutions of higher learning such that it forms a discernable pattern; it is long past being just a trend.

When Higher Education is turning out far more people with degrees than can ever hope to gain employment "commensurate" with the "educations" that they have supposedly received, a growing loss of confidence in the worth of higher education is a long-term consequence. When people think of (as they have been raised to believe - and as employers demand) a university education as a path to a career, then when the "supply" of such "educated" carreer-aspirants far exceeds what the workforce seeks, people feel cheated - and all the more so when they have played by the rules that were laid out for them with the "promise" of a career at the end. This is potentially lethal consequence Number 1.

Now, when the "education" that many of these people receive is in many cases little more than a contrivance in order to create more programs for more degrees for more "careers", never mind those that are simply ideological tripe passing for learning, those students who really are looking for an intellectual challenge are quite likely to feel disappointed - or worse. Even more so than the "career-aspirants", these people who have a genuine love of learning may find themselves either stulted or simply turned-off by the often rote, unimaginative, and just plain lame curriculae they may find themselves presented with. Few things turn-off bright and keen students than a professor or curriculum that is just going through the motions. When such sharp, eager young minds encounter this - and remember, they are often still quite idealistic at this stage - , it is all too easy for them to conclude that Higher Education has been dumbed-down. The result is frequently that they settle for doing just the minimum to get decent marks, their degree, and then get out and never look back, except for having a poor opinion of Higher Education. Potentially lethal consequence No. 2.

Take these 2 Potentially Lethal Consequences, and you have a simple, and increasingly widespread lack of confidence in Higher Education. When the same people are faced with making great financial sacrifices in order to send their own children to college or university, and when considering that they themselves may have insufficiently benefitted by it, parents increasingly may find themselves simply unwilling to do so, even if they are financially able. A general loss of confidence in the usefulness (never mind worthiness) of higher education by the public at large may develop into a real problem in the future.

If it does, then someone a couple generations down the road may find themselves in the same shoes as Senator Cassiodorus in the early 6th Century, when, having founded a monastery far from the ruined and depopulated cities of Barbarian-occupied Italy, he found himself having to write a book of basic grammar for his monks to help him teach them how to read and write, since literacy had nearly evaporated in the years preceding the collapse of the Western Empire. Furthermore, Cassiodorus assembled a basic educational curriculum of seven subjects that he intended to serve as a basis for which to keep the flame of learning lit until such time as civilization could be restored. Of course, thus it was from Cassiodorus himself that we directly received the Seven Liberal Arts, from which our own system of education ultimately derives.

The day may be not too far off that it may be a very good idea to build one's own library stocked with the materials necessary for a solid basic level of education - at home.

Penta

11-12-2007, 04:03 AM

Wonderful theorizing, Norfolk...

But unfortunately it doesn't really help matters now. Which is important because, to put it plainly, if you thought the home mortgage crisis sucks, think about what the student loan crisis will be like, especially when you consider that student loans are one of very few types of debt that cannot be discharged through bankruptcy.

All hail the creation of the new American underclass, that tried to join the middle class like their parents...and found that the ladder had been pulled up behind the old folks.

Rex Brynen

11-12-2007, 04:06 AM

Norfolk

11-12-2007, 04:20 AM

I'm sure that there are a great many mediocre educational experiences, and a great many students who feel that they didn't get what they wanted out of their education. However, Norfolk, in general I just don't agree.

I think, in general, we do a better job now of teaching undergraduates than we did 25 years ago when I was studying for my BA. As I've said before, the students I see are bright, motivated, frequently bi- or trilingual, plugged in (in an academic sense, of course). They've also got access to information that was beyond our wildest dreams in the pre-web days.

You see, feel, and experience far more in Higher Education than I ever have Rex, and mine is only one person's view. You may well be correct, and you are certainly in a better position to judge that than I. But from my own observations and from what my friends and I experienced at university, this is what things seemed to boil down to, more or less, and I can't seem to help but perceive that that's how things have become. As I said though, this may well be a mistaken conclusion.

But I have seen more than enough of people in Penta's predicament to really wonder just what is indeed occurring vis-a-vis higher education and the workforce. It is increasingly unsettling to my mind.

SteveMetz

11-12-2007, 11:11 AM

You see, feel, and experience far more in Higher Education than I ever have Rex, and mine is only one person's view. You may well be correct, and you are certainly in a better position to judge that than I. But from my own observations and from what my friends and I experienced at university, this is what things seemed to boil down to, more or less, and I can't seem to help but perceive that that's how things have become. As I said though, this may well be a mistaken conclusion.

But I have seen more than enough of people in Penta's predicament to really wonder just what is indeed occurring vis-a-vis higher education and the workforce. It is increasingly unsettling to my mind.

Having a kid who is a college sophmore and one who is in the application profess right now, I've taken 17 college visits over the past 24 months, I too feel that vast improvements have been made in undergraduate education. To give on example, I'm sure I was a very low priority for my undergraduate adviser following his research, teaching graduate students, and teaching undergraduates. At my daughter's university, they had full time advisers.

To be frank, I wanted to slap Penta and scream, "No one promised you anything but an opportunity. Just get over the whiny sense of entitlement."

If the sole reason for pursuing higher education is employability, a kid should go to a tech school. This reminds me of a story I read in the Chronicle of Higher Education a few years ago. It interviewed a number of people who had gone through Duke's new Ph.D. program in--and I'm not making this up--Queer Studies. Then they were complaining because after all the work they'd put in, for some strange reason they couldn't find jobs. Moral of the story: adults accept responsibility for their own decisions including bad ones.

Dang, when did I become my grandfather?

skiguy

11-12-2007, 12:13 PM

Well, Steve, I AM a grandfather, so here's my take.

I doubt, I really doubt, that I'm the only one who can say that among my peers - there are opportunities, yes. But we were promised that once we got into college, we were at least going to have a vaguely decent job.
Who promised you this?

I'm an old guy going for his UG degree, no one promised me anything. Yes, ultimately I hope to get employment in something that is at least closely related to my field of study, but there may be some problems (security clearance issues). I'm not going to let that hold me back. If it causes a problem, then I'll do something else, like not get a graduate degree in intelligence, or find some other alternative.

Penta, you should be getting an education because you have the desire to learn, not because you want to get a job. Math sucks. I hate it. It's boring and depressing, but it's a required course. I'll work just as hard to get an A in that class as I would in any other class I take.

JMO

selil

11-12-2007, 01:39 PM

I tell my students I am there to offer them the opportunity to become educated. I also tell them often that I don't do training I'm there to educate them. What's the difference? In a nutshell do you want your daughter receiving sex training or sex education? I have long discussions with my students about the fact that I may give them the opportunity to become educated I am also the gate keeper on the discipline and like some fat sphinx they must answer my questions to pass.

This year I'm on a "half" sabbatical while I finish my PhD course work. I'm teaching half my normal load and all of that distance learning. The students are despondent as I'm not there for normal office hours and usually I have a line. The students think they are coming there to get a piece of paper to get a job. I disabuse them of that trite thought rapidly. I've whacked on my Dean and Vice Chancellors when they say things like we're training the future work force. I'm not popular at dinner parties. I know that my discipline is going to be out of date before they graduate. I have to educate my students to think. I am teaching my students to get the job that hasn't even been created yet (http://selil.com/?p=86).

I have ran across interesting phenomenon with my students. Companies work hard to recruit my students, the name of the University, the discipline, the history of the program, but the success of past graduates is the real reason they're sought after. The companies talk about being positive, and great places to work. If the companies lied my students quit. BS my students and they'll walk and find other employment. Employers who tell students it's hard work, long hours, and we pay you well get dreadnoughts on task. It could be the same person. It's kind of fun to get the baby-boomer calling complaining that my students don't trust anybody over 30, and are more interested in sex than say assembly language programming... Uh.. DUH!

Norfolk

11-12-2007, 04:42 PM

To be frank, I wanted to [] scream, "No one promised you anything but an opportunity. Just get over the whiny sense of entitlement."

If the sole reason for pursuing higher education is employability, a kid should go to a tech school. This reminds me of a story I read in the Chronicle of Higher Education a few years ago. It interviewed a number of people who had gone through Duke's new Ph.D. program in--and I'm not making this up--Queer Studies. Then they were complaining because after all the work they'd put in, for some strange reason they couldn't find jobs. Moral of the story: adults accept responsibility for their own decisions including bad ones.

Dang, when did I become my grandfather?

Excellent post Steve. There is simply too much taken for granted, and (most of) the younger generation has never really had to face harsh adversity. Two full generations, and a third underway, have mostly grown up without having to overcome the real, grinding hardships, rejection, and consequences of failure that even our grandparents had to. Even for them, in some cases it was still do-or-die.

My maternal grandparents survived the Great Depression living in a log shack in the forest (literally), my grandfather taking jobs as they came available until WWII and he joined the Air Force. My paternal grandfather likewise worked odd jobs until WWII, joined the Army, and survived (barely) a German POW camp in Bavaria- and was ever grateful to the US Army for liberating him. When the GIs, shocked by the condition they found him and the other POWs in, asked how they survived, my grandfather told them about the horse's head a farmer gave them to put in their soup. That's how they survived. It ain't like that now, not for a long time. People take much too much for granted now, and are encouraged wherever they turn in such expectations.

skiguy and selil make excellent points too, and about the real purpose of Higher Education, namely, to educate, not train/indoctrinate/prepare-for-a-career, etc., but to learn, and to learn how to learn. It is not enough to say that this is to encourage creativity and to develop critical thinking; it is rather that the purpose of higher education is to develop proper judgement, and this is not only universally applicable, but universally necessary. No number of "school-trained" businessmen gathered around the executive conference table can make the proper decision about economic trends and where to make investments if all they have are school solutions - the recurring losses of huge corporations over and over, often in the stupidest ways, are blunt testimony to the dearth of good judgement in the corporate/financial worlds.

The expectation that colleges and universities exist to prepare people for jobs and careers is a false one, and it is an abuse of the purpose of higher education. Unfortunately, it is encouraged by institutions of higher education themselves, and parents and their children can hardly turn on the TV or open a newspaper without being exhorted to go to university so they can get a job or a career. When far too many people are going to university with these manufactured expectations in mind, and uncomfortably many are coming out and never even approaching their expectations in job or career, a problem is brewing, and not just a small one. It is going to grow over time, and if it isn't dealt with properly, it may become a societal one in due time.

I would have to add the qualification though that here in Canada, there is quite an overabundance of people with degrees and a quite a dearth of employment opportunities for them; I suspect that in the U.S. the situation is perhaps a little more encouraging - in Canada it is certainly developing into a problem - I believe marc mentioned something along these lines on this or another thread some time ago.

marct

11-12-2007, 05:15 PM

Hi Norfolk,

The expectation that colleges and universities exist to prepare people for jobs and careers is a false one, and it is an abuse of the purpose of higher education. Unfortunately, it is encouraged by institutions of higher education themselves, and parents and their children can hardly turn on the TV or open a newspaper without being exhorted to go to university so they can get a job or a career.

Good point, but it is tricky, especially in Canada. There are three, inter-twining expectations running here:

A university education is job / career preparation;
A university degree will get you a job; and
A university degree is the minimum qualification for a job.On the first, I agree - a university degree should not be viewed as preparation for either a job or a career. BTW, I think it is important to point out a couple of things in this area. First, "job" is moving back to it's pre-1840 meaning of a "morsel" or "piece" of work (from the Irish Gaelic Gob, beakfull or bite), and "career, in its 1840+ meaning is disappearing (it comes from the French and means the systematic holding of offices within an organization - that died in the 1970's). Second, the "average" number of careers is running at about 8 per working lifetime in North America right now.

Expectation #2 is just not supported by the data, while expectation #3, which is a root assumption of much of the recent (say past 10 years) HRIS systems is quite valid (I did a conference paper on this back in 1999 available here (http://marctyrrell.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/surfing.pdf)).

I would have to add the qualification though that here in Canada, there is quite an overabundance of people with degrees and a quite a dearth of employment opportunities for them; I suspect that in the U.S. the situation is perhaps a little more encouraging - in Canada it is certainly developing into a problem - I believe marc mentioned something along these lines on this or another thread some time ago.

Actually, I would say that t already is a problem and has been for the past decade or so. Put bluntly, the "value" of a degree has been watered down so badly that a 4 year BA is worth less than what a 1960's high school degree used to be worth. The last data I saw on school to work transitions in Canada, from 2005, showed that under 10% of people with only a BA were actually working in the field they trained for.

I suspect that this over credentialization is partially responsible for the increasing emphasis on job training vs. education. I know that in Ontario, the government created a rather large pot of funds that were split amongst the universities who placed the highest number of their graduates in jobs, while the lower placing universities got nada from it.

Rex Brynen

11-12-2007, 05:33 PM

The last data I saw on school to work transitions in Canada, from 2005, showed that under 10% of people with only a BA were actually working in the field they trained for.

I'm not sure what this means in the social sciences and liberal arts, however--we're not teaching people to become, say, political scientists or anthropologists, but rather to develop research skills, think analytically, write well, and hone their mental agility so that they can fulfill a variety of roles in the private and public sectors. (This quite in addition to the intrinsic personal value in higher education.)

This is why most universities (my own included) have moved in the last decade to lessen the degree of required specialization, emphasize minor as well as major programmes, etc.

Norfolk

11-12-2007, 06:57 PM

Hi Marc,

Could not agree more.:cool:

Incidently, the situation that has developed in Canada, and I rather suspect is developing in the U.S., brings to mind some of the things that have occurred in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, et al. One of our other threads has been describing and discussing at some length how there is a significant body of middle-class people in their 20's and 30's who have university educations (particularly in engineering as well as computer science, medicine, etc.), many of whom cannot find worthwhile job opportunities in their home societies, and have formed an underclass of sorts that now serves as a recruitment pool for extremist groups and terrorist organizations.

Before I go too far in creating an impression that such is the future for North America with a growing population of disaffected university graduates, I would say that other conditions that strongly contribute to the development of extremist groups and terrorists organizations have not reached, for the most part, a critical level. This is not to deny that North America is not host to more terrorists organizations than anywhere else; but it is to make a distinction between the nature of most of their activities here (recruitment, fundraising, political lobbying, planning, etc.), and actual operations overseas.

But I am proposing that a growing "underclass" of university graduates with unreasonable expectations (admittedly raised and encouraged in those expectations by society as a whole and higher education itself in particular - not to single out higher education for disproportionate blame) encountering harsh reality and giving in to disillusionment and disaffection is a potential base in the future for real trouble. In the not-so-distant future we may be faced with our own home-grown malcontents and extremists, particularly if conditions in the future are considerably changed from now - serious economic downturn, social fragmentation, identity politics, the personal and social effects of isolation, etc.

Hi Rex,

I quite agree. The universities must somehow accomplish two things at the same time: 1. offer an education to students that is above all else about developing their learning, their thought, and their judgement - specific, "technical" skills and knowledge being secondary and complementary to that; and 2., pry open and escape from the deadly hold of the popular expections of universities as existing principally for job and career preparation, and that said "should" lead to employment more or less commensurate with the level of "preparation" received.

This is certainly not to say that universities should not fully educate, for example, biology students in the scientific aspects of their discipline, or English students in their craft; but it is to say that in all cases, the development of the student's mind and judgement is the paramount consideration of higher education; former business students without developed critical thinking, learning skills, and good judgement may be disasters waiting to happen when placed in charge of large resources, or students of history who have been indoctrinated in the fashionable theories or views of the day, but could not turn around someday and teach their own students any better about the history of their country or the consequences of certain events other than to offer some half-baked nonsense that leaves their charges in more or less ignorance. (Please do not deduct marks for my dreadfull run-on sentence here:o.)

marc: thanks for the link - I rather enjoyed your piece, and I've saved it on my hard-drive.:)

SteveMetz

11-12-2007, 07:18 PM

SWJED

11-12-2007, 07:28 PM

... 19 and pissed off.

... and with few constructive options.

SteveMetz

11-12-2007, 07:34 PM

... and with few constructive options.

Thing is--and this is a point I tried to make in my Rethinking Insurgency monograph--they have to be constructive options that appeal to a 19 year old. The Bush strategy of allowing people to vote every few years and creating some menial jobs ain't gonna cut the mustard (to put it in technical terms).

Norfolk

11-12-2007, 07:53 PM

I think you've touched on a key security issues that is seldom analyzed in any rigorous way: how does a society channel off and control the aggression of young males? This sounds glib but I'm serious--things like sports and video games help. The problem in much of the Islamic world (and I realize this a gross generalization which many people won't like) is that the only outlets are making babies and venting through extremism. I really think we'd to more to augment our security if exported X Boxes as enthusiastically as we exported democracy.

The best solution is universal conscription IMO - putting young men under the eagle eyes and firm hands of professional officers and NCOs. Next best is sports - until you think of Brit football fans and Central American republics going to war over soccer matches.:rolleyes:

X-Box is effective, though, at keep the rabble off the streets; but like the Roman forums and their gladitorial and animal matches, this also serves to ennervate them, and that's not good for society as a whole. A good chunk of the male working-age population sitting around at home after work (if they're working) playing X-Box and not engaging in family life leads to all sorts of other serious societal problems.

Besides, some bored and innovative individuals just might get the same idea someday as that professor at MIT and hook up a few together to produce his own supercomputer, which he claims is capable of wreaking all sorts of havoc - though he in fact uses it for research to counter said. We might just be trading in suicide bombers for cyber bombers.

I don't foresee a solution for youthful male aggression in the Near East, because as far as I see it, the conditions, issues, and problems are so far out of reach of any thinking that I've ever been able to grasp. Hopefully there are others who can.

As for the potential for young male aggression in Western socities, universall conscription is a must in my view. Young men must learn duty, order, discipline, obedience, and self-control; and particularly within the context of assuming their responsibilites as citizens. There has been far too much emphasis and leeway given on "rights", and responsibility has largely been ignored and even maligned. Time for a permanent change, and to help head off "underclass" situations. By extension, tt is also time to redress in the U.S. the neglect of the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution, the right to bear arms and the accompanying duty of all citizens to be part of a "well-regulated militia". Both sides in the gun-debate tend to emphasize one half of this while ignoring the other.

Norfolk

11-12-2007, 09:40 PM

Steve, I think Jill has an excellent point and that the two of you are,in effect, arguing apples and oranges. I think that it is important to distinguish between a critique of the process of doctrine writing and a critique of the doctrine itself. I certainly ave no difficulty with your comments on Price's critique of the process, he doesn't seem to know what he is talking about there, but I think that Jill is right about the citations being a good place to start for a critique in the area of content. If nothing else, the definitions used contain assumptions of reality that may, or may not, be the best available (I know they aren't for the definition of ritual).

So, where to start on the critique of the doctrine itself? While I'll admit that doctrine is about satisficing behaviour (i.e. good enough to work, not necessarily the "best"), I think it is also important that it be extensible in a theoretically coherent manner. For example, the definition of ritual is highly limited and extensible only to observable behaviour - not a position that Turner held in his later work and inherently problematic if we wanted to extend the work to include IO and PSYOPS.

Marc

I concurr, though I would qualify that first paragraph by saying that while I agree with Jill that statements of Doctrine should have full citations, references, etc., they should be provided for the reader to have a full grasp of what it is he is reading, and to enquire into these other sources in order to expand his knowledge; not as a sort of academic "check" or system of "proof". Steve is utterly correct in that the manuals are written for non-academic purposes and in a non-academic form, but I would add that the provision of citations and the like is strictly intended to provide brief additional information/explanations on specific matters as well as additional sources to consult in-depth - not to provide an academic-style system of verification.

Furthermore, and I believe that it was Steve who also mentioned something like this, there should be a separation of the doctrinal material into at least two complementary documents, perhaps more. FM 3-24 may have been better written as even more of a "capstone" manual than it was, with full citations, references, sources, the works. But, it should also have been published in tandem with a complementary, but substantially more practically-oriented manual for field use that does not bother in particular with formalities. TTP's in particular perhaps should have been dealt with less in FM 3-24 than they are are, and instead have left that much more strictly to that of an actual companion "field" manual. I have observed that U.S. Army manuals tend to be rather "wordy" by comparison to their USMC and Commonwealth counterparts, and FM 3-24 certainly follows in that tradition.

As far as the COIN Doctrine itself goes, I'm not sufficiently comfortable with criticquing it myself, but I would say that any "Capstone" Doctrinal Pub should concern itself more with developing - helping to educate rather than indoctrinate - its readers thinking about its particular subject matter, and leave more of the practical matters of the subject to complementary pubs for field use. If FM 3-24 is succeeding in helping its readers to educate themselves properly on COIN, then it's doing its job, and that's the only reason it should have citations and the like, to enable its readers to continue to educate themselves, not to serve as a sort of academic verification system.

As for some of the present criticisms from some quarters of academia, they are clearly out of their league with the subject matter, and they should leave such criticism to people who are masters of the subject. Amateurs need not apply:

skiguy

11-12-2007, 09:50 PM

how does a society channel off and control the aggression of young males?
What about sports? Soccer, wrestling, etc. Introduce American football to them (that'll channel the aggression!)

Ken White

11-12-2007, 10:05 PM

Worked for me...

SteveMetz

11-12-2007, 10:28 PM

Worked for me...

That's the exact reason that I argued in Rethinking Insurgency that women's empowerment should be a central component of counterinsurgency. If you look at inner city gangs you see that it's not JUST have girls, but it's having empowered girls that constrains male aggression. After all, Sageman notes that most terrorists have families or girlfriends. The Timothy McVeigh--I'm-going-to-blow-something-up-because-I-can't-get-a-girl phenomenon is relatively rare.

SWJED

11-12-2007, 10:35 PM

That's the exact reason that I argued in Rethinking Insurgency that women's empowerment should be a central component of counterinsurgency.

Sorry for being so short on words, multi-tasking at the moment. One word does, however, sum up your observation - bingo.

marct

11-12-2007, 10:38 PM

Hi Steve,

I think you've touched on a key security issues that is seldom analyzed in any rigorous way: how does a society channel off and control the aggression of young males?

It's a perennial problem in all societies that I've ever looked at < sigh>. I don't think Norfolk's suggestion of universal conscription would work, at least if it was limited to the military. I think it *might* work if it was general "government service" which could include, but not be limited to, military service. Also, it would have to be for both men and women, and should be available at the end of high school rather than based on age. Think of a combination of conscription with Roosevelt's New Deal...

One of the big problem with North American society in general is that we don't have any really good rites of passage, and this could act as one. In many societies, these R-o-P's act as the defining mechanism to shift a child into being an adult (teenager is not a normal cultural category!).

SteveMetz

11-12-2007, 11:57 PM

One of the big problem with North American society in general is that we don't have any really good rites of passage,

Well, for those who grew up in the Southwest, there was a ritual involving a case of beer, a trip to Tijuana, a spooky hotel room, and a donkey.

Penta

11-13-2007, 02:39 AM

Steve,

I really didn't want that image. It was all well and good until you brought up the donkey.:P

On that note, to defend myself:

Yes, yesterday, I vented. Loudly.

I understand your points in re undergrad education being to open up opportunities...But those opportunities aren't opening. At all.

And, to be blunt...20-40 years ago, when (I'm guessing), most of those speaking here were actually of traditional college age, maybe you could reasonably speak of a college's purpose being to "educate" in some broad sense.

I don't remember any time in the past 10 years in which that was any more than lip-service.

Yes, I'm a bit more...embittered because of my disabilities. I grant that. College was supposed to be the great, if not equalizer, then at least it was supposed to give me a fighting chance to compete on remotely the same playing field.

I know damn well I'm not entitled to anything, thanks. It's actually insulting to hear someone say that, because I didn't slack off during college. I didn't have a social life; I didn't go to a single party at all during my time in college. Insofar as I could focus, I was focused to near-obsession on grades. Exactly, I thought, like I was supposed to be.

Yes, I screwed up. Repeatedly. I haven't denied that in this thread, notice.

But I'm not just hearing this from me, I'm hearing the same general complaint from my peers: That going to college screwed us over.

For most of my peers, our working lives haven't even begun. To begin them, most had to take out loans nearly equal to what Steve's generation (guessing at your age, you're about 55-60, Steve?) would have had to take out to buy their first home.

You get equity in a house, at least; not really in a degree. Degree is more like a car, in my estimation - it loses value as soon as you get it.

So, yeah. There are a lot of us who are bitter, disaffected, and grumpy.

Because it's the rare 18-19 year old who goes to college completely because they want to - in a large part, it's because our parents (your generation, speaking broadly) expected it, demanded it of us. Because we were led to believe that it'd be the essential key to becoming independent - not that it'd be the only thing required, but that it'd be an essential component. Not just for a few years, not as a fad...But for our entire lives. Yeah, in case someone forgot, we've had the life-or-death necessity of college preached to us since almost as soon as we could talk.

So we did. We went. To a greater or lesser extent, depending on the person, we worked. Because at the end of all of this, we expected a payoff. That if nothing else, we'd at least get a chance to prove ourselves.

That hasn't happened, and now we're deemed spoiled brats for pointing out the contradiction between what we were led to expect and what the reality has turned out to be?

Norfolk,

...Universal conscription would not work. Not only do you have to deal with the substantial problem of what to do with those (like me) who, through no fault of our own, will never be physically qualified for military service (unless you'd like to say that not only am I lazy and spoiled, but that retinopathy of prematurity and cerebral palsy are my fault?), but you have to deal with the, ahem, complete and total hypocrisy of the fact that the generation that burned their draft cards now wants to have the younger generations get drafted.

And that's just to start.

Norfolk

11-13-2007, 03:40 AM

I understand your points in re undergrad education being to open up opportunities...But those opportunities aren't opening. At all.

And, to be blunt...20-40 years ago, when (I'm guessing), most of those speaking here were actually of traditional college age, maybe you could reasonably speak of a college's purpose being to "educate" in some broad sense.

I don't remember any time in the past 10 years in which that was any more than lip-service.

Yes, I'm a bit more...embittered because of my disabilities. I grant that. College was supposed to be the great, if not equalizer, then at least it was supposed to give me a fighting chance to compete on remotely the same playing field.

I know [] I'm not entitled to anything, thanks. It's actually insulting to hear someone say that, because I didn't slack off during college. I didn't have a social life; I didn't go to a single party at all during my time in college. Insofar as I could focus, I was focused to near-obsession on grades. Exactly, I thought, like I was supposed to be.

Yes, I screwed up. Repeatedly. I haven't denied that in this thread, notice.

But I'm not just hearing this from me, I'm hearing the same general complaint from my peers: That going to college screwed us over.

For most of my peers, our working lives haven't even begun. To begin them, most had to take out loans nearly equal to what Steve's generation (guessing at your age, you're about 55-60, Steve?) would have had to take out to buy their first home.

You get equity in a house, at least; not really in a degree. Degree is more like a car, in my estimation - it loses value as soon as you get it.

So, yeah. There are a lot of us who are bitter, disaffected, and grumpy.

Because it's the rare 18-19 year old who goes to college completely because they want to - in a large part, it's because our parents (your generation, speaking broadly) expected it, demanded it of us. Because we were led to believe that it'd be the essential key to becoming independent - not that it'd be the only thing required, but that it'd be an essential component. Not just for a few years, not as a fad...But for our entire lives. Yeah, in case someone forgot, we've had the life-or-death necessity of college preached to us since almost as soon as we could talk.

So we did. We went. To a greater or lesser extent, depending on the person, we worked. Because at the end of all of this, we expected a payoff. That if nothing else, we'd at least get a chance to prove ourselves.

That hasn't happened, and now we're deemed spoiled brats for pointing out the contradiction between what we were led to expect and what the reality has turned out to be?

Norfolk,

...Universal conscription would not work. Not only do you have to deal with the substantial problem of what to do with those (like me) who, through no fault of our own, will never be physically qualified for military service (unless you'd like to say that not only am I lazy and spoiled, but that retinopathy of prematurity and cerebral palsy are my fault?), but you have to deal with the, ahem, complete and total hypocrisy of the fact that the generation that burned their draft cards now wants to have the younger generations get drafted.

And that's just to start.

Yes, Penta, as both marc and I have observed, higher education is in great part sold on a false promise that it is a ticket to upward mobility, and parents and children are subjected to it constantly. I finished my M.A. in 2004, and absolutely nothing has come out of it employment-wise; I've simply had to make do working at factory jobs that haven't surpassed $13.25/hr, with long hours and minimal benefits, so I have experienced no shortage of grief and frustration in my own case.

Most of my university friends have been little better off (one did exceptionally well - as a tax lawyer); a few were still working the jobs they had in high school (working for a moving company), despite the fact that one had a BA and the other both a BA and an MA. Go figure. And there's been no shortage of bitterness in some of the phone calls exchanged, despite us having more degrees than you could shake a stick at. But in time I have learned the utter futility of resentment, and simply to carry on. And this is what our grandparents and prior generations had to deal with; life's not fair, and it only aggravates the situation to dwell on that. Move on as best one can, because nothing good will come of the alternative. That's how they survived in the old days.

Now, as to conscription, hehe.;): Both Penta and marc are quite correct that Universal Conscription, if strictly Military, cannot work. I do not conceive of universal conscription as a cure-all, just as a treatment, so to speak, and as marc pointed out, National Service can take many forms - Germany is the most comprehensive example of this. But universal conscription for military service is the backbone of any such program; bear in mind however, that even in the late 19th Century, the British Army performed a survey that found only 60% of the male population of military age to be medically fit for military service. Given trends observed by military doctors since WWII, that figure is probably down to about 40% now (at best). As such, those inducted for National Service would have better than even chances of ending up working in a hospital ward, public works, or an administrative post rather than the military.

However, there are problems with National Service in general, and Universal (Military) Conscription in particular. The first is that many people, not least voters, will not like the idea of public service "imposed" upon them. They don't seem to mind the benefits of public institutions, and the rights and freedoms that those institutions preserve and promote; but many people also consider that they have a right to avoid, limit, or flout the public duties and responsibilities that they themselves must bear as part of their share in preserving and promoting those rights and freedoms. Freedom ain't free; someone, somewhere, someday, somehow, must pay the price, and it's only fair that all citizens do so. It's also only practical that they do so, for the sake of the common good, rather than the entire burden being off-loaded onto the backs of a few.

What I am describing is piety, the old Roman word for the assumption and carrying out of duties and responsibilities that are not freely chosen, but are demanded by the common good. They can be shirked, avoided, denied, but they cannot be be justly abrogated. The present ethos of our society, so self-consciensously celebrated and pursued (and passed on to the offspring) by elements of a certain generation born after WWII, is by contrast one of impiety, the shirking of just but unwanted duties for the pursuit of selfishness. The political opposition, practically speaking, to consciption or any form of National Service is at present, overwhelming. But as time goes on, that may change.

The second problem with National Service is that perhaps 60% or more of the young male population will not be handed over to the tender care of the Military. In some cases, such as in serious physical or psychological disability, that is an irreducible reality and obviously such people would perform National Service in another capacity, although that still may be as a civilian employee of the military or of the defence department. Where it becomes somewhat problematic is in the cases of the majority of the 60% who are not seriously disabled, but are still not medically fit for military service - and the best place for these is in some sort of Public Works system - not unlike the German Labour Services - to let the young males still work off their aggression under supervision.

I can offer no clear solutions, but I do propose some partial remedies, and National Service together with Universal Conscription is about the best that I can come up with that also provides a long track record of achievement (good and bad) that can be looked at and thoroughly considered.

Ken White

11-13-2007, 03:42 AM

...
...Universal conscription would not work... but you have to deal with the, ahem, complete and total hypocrisy of the fact that the generation that burned their draft cards now wants to have the younger generations get drafted.

Good shot, Penta. :D

Norfolk

11-13-2007, 03:53 AM

Good shot, Penta. :D

Good thing I'm not much over 30!:D

Ken White

11-13-2007, 04:45 AM

boomers ... :D

SteveMetz

11-13-2007, 10:02 AM

Steve,

But I'm not just hearing this from me, I'm hearing the same general complaint from my peers: That going to college screwed us over.

Get some peers who opted NOT to go to college and compare career prospects with them. Then maybe your situation won't seem so glum. (My father was a plumber and my grandfathers were a truck driver and a factory worker, so I have a foot in both "collars").

While I'm not quite *that* old, I did pay most of my way through college. It took more than a decade to pay off my debts. Sure the total wasn't as high as today's students but my first job with a BA paid $9K. Everything is relative.

I'm sorry, but I still think that you imagined the "promises" made to you. I have one kid in college and another getting ready to start. They've never been promised anything but opportunity.

I'll tell ya, Tom Brokaw needs to write another book: The Whiniest Generation

selil

11-13-2007, 01:13 PM

I think a lot of people in college see the adds for "Get your degree in six weeks", and then apply the same logic to a university education. Before the industrial revolution there were basically two degrees. A bachelors of science and bachelors of arts and letters were the only two options. A lawyer got the arts degree and a doctor got the science degree. Now the university is filled with options and degrees. Somebody posted that they got a MA and couldn't find a high paying job. There is no gurantee of a high paying job. Worse some degrees set you up for working for free. A seminary degree isn't known for being a high paying wage degree.

A university degree isn't supposed to be easy. Part of the problem in higher education is that people expect to get a degree. I make my students work for it. Hard. Students arrange their entire schedule around taking my classes. If they whine about the course work being hard their fellow students tell them to suck it up. I have some of the highest student ratings in the University system, and especially high for STEM. Not all my students survive but most who are willing to try thrive. They are motivated and do the work because they can see results. If somebody complained that they had to do a problem 20 times in my classes their fellow students would descend on them like wolves wondering what their fellow student thought a job meant. I don't do behavioristic education as I think Pavlov's dog was an idiot.

I shouldn't post before my first cup of coffee.

Steve Blair

11-13-2007, 03:07 PM

Penta, IMO, makes some very valid observations. Many of the kids I see here are in school because they are more or less forced to go by their parents. Some don't have the faintest idea why they're in college aside from that.

And Steve...when people complain about this generation being whiny, maybe they should look at the parents. Many of these kids have been indulged, ignored, pampered, and generally held to lower (or 'special' in the case of athletes) standards for a good deal of their lives. I've seen some kids really turn around when given a challenge, only to have the parents complain that someone might be "expecting too much" of their precious little child. You may not have promised your kids anything, but there are parents out there that do. "Get an engineering degree and you'll start at 50k a year." It's often the parents pushing their kids into these majors, or feeding them false expectations about college and its outcomes. Popular media quite often does the same thing (when was the last time you saw a struggling, working class family on TV or in a movie that wasn't British?).

Sure, there's whiners in the group. But all generations have them. What concerns me more is the condescension that seems to come with much of the higher education push. One of my good friends ended up leaving college and going to technical school to get his mechanic certification. He got all kinds of crap for that decision, especially from his Boomer parents who considered anything less than a college degree a failure. But he's happier now than he was then and making much more than quite a few of his degree-endowed peers. I don't believe that a tech school is somehow "less worthy," though that is the image that I tend to believe started with the '60s generation who often used higher education for reasons other than education ("avoiding their junior year overseas" is one way I've heard it described). To justify that evasion, they had to somehow endow higher education with qualities it never really had before (universal entitlement for one) and then push it on their kids as the only way to success. That's my personal rant on the subject, anyhow.

marct

11-13-2007, 03:52 PM

If you folks don't mind (and even if you do :D), I'm going to relate his back to a case of bad popularized theology.

Back when universities started, ~ 13th century +/-, the concept of the Great Chain of Being was pretty much a "given" in the West. A university education was designed to bring out the skills necessary for gentlemen and clerics to fulfill their role in life. Certainly by the 17th century, a university education was, probably, the fastest route out of your birth rank and into the upper middle classes (aka the bureaucracy or <shudder> becoming a lawyer :(</shudder>). The system was designed to be hard, especially on those from families who were not of the right class and upbringing (don't speak Latin? Don't bother applying!).

While this class based system was eroded in he 1920's and 30's, the death knell was after WW II, especially in North America. The theology inherent in the Great Chain of Being was still present, in the collective unconscious as it were (i.e. degree = white collar job), but the old Protestant Ethic (and Catholic vocation) components were missing as they were, and are, in most of modern society.

Penta is, understandably, angry and, while I have a lot of agreement with Steve M's position of "suck it up", it just doesn't do much good to say that without talking a bit about the system that makes it that way. Selil noted that he works his students hard - so do I. One of the greatest personal moments for me as a teacher was having a student I failed in a course thanking me for failing him :eek: - not something you hear every day, and certainly not PC!

If we look at the way the university system is structured, at least in Canada, profs get slammed if they have high failure rates before they get tenure. Class sizes are increasingly large (I've taught classes of over 450 students), and the skills required for a class that size have less to do with education than with entertainment :wry:.

The reality is that, as far as a university education is concerned, you get out of it what you put into it IFF you realize that you must educate yourself. Some of your profs will be glad to help you with that process, but many are swamped and others, I'm sorry to say, just don't give a rats' posterior. The "trick" that I used and I encourage my students to use is simple - talk to your profs, find out the ones who do care and ask them for their advice. Or, to put it another way, find yourself one or more rabbi's (mentors) - tag into their personal networks, pick their brains and create the education you should be getting.

infsid

11-15-2007, 04:46 AM

Interesting read about antropologists deploying in support of US Forces and interests and the debate it has caused. Again, it is the selfish American who can not see beyond his nose that we are really trying to give these people a better opportunity and the HTTs will help. All to often we (Americans) are focused on the what we can do to help someone and then move onto the next someone, great for triage, but bad if we want to develop an understanding of other cultures and peoples and help them move forward.
At the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, we have incorporated a Human Terrain Team into the rotational brigade so they learn what the other is about. The HTT members learn what a day in the life of a Soldier is like, by going through patrols in sector and interacting with civilians on the battlefield and the brigade combat team gets an idea on what the HHT will give to them, a better understanding of the local culture along with a better ability to forsee how US actions might be percieved by the local population and how the unintended consequences might be averted or contained (long sentence I know). Yeah, these academics are helping US forces, but they are helping us understand the population so that we can end our involvement overseas by setting conditions to allow our withdrawal without a collapse of the government. As for the nay sayers, they can't get over themselves and don't have the stones to step out of the school yard and actually be apart of history instead of reading about it.

skiguy

11-15-2007, 11:38 PM

More crap (http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2643.shtml) from the anti-COIN/HTT crowd. :rolleyes:

But a second development in the ongoing militarisation of State has been courtesy of the military’s new allies in the diplomats’ own Ivory Tower colleagues. The US Army and Marine Corps recently published its new Counterinsurgency Field Manual (No. 3-24), its new Little Red Book, at the prestigious University of Chicago Press, tastefully printed in a camouflage, faux-field ready edition, designed to slip into flack jackets or Urban Outfitter accessory bags. General (Dr) David Petraeus himself wrote the forward along with posterboy Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, and Harvard JFK School of Government’s Sarah Sewell wrote the introduction. It has spawned a minor media orgy, with sexy Nagl decked out in parade dress pitching it in Newsweek and on all the TV networks as Petraeus’s intellectually fuelled “smart bomb” -- the secret weapon for victory in Iraq. In what looks like a surprise meeting of minds with the armchair diplomats, the Manual is being hyped by all as a move away from the crude logic of “shock and awe” in the common goal of pacifying the natives, or as it’s called in newspeak, “winning hearts and minds," through a new appreciation of local culture. The big stick’s “speak softly."

A co-author, one of a supposedly new breed of warrior-anthropologists, Montgomery McFate (curiously a woman), PhD (Yale), is currently the US Army’s Human Terrain System’s senior social science adviser. Human Terrain Teams (HTTs) -- I’m not making this up -- are now embedding anthropologists with troops operating in Iraq and Afghanistan, using ethnographic knowledge to advise and inform troops in the field, while travelling with armed escorts (Blackwater, anyone?) and are, in some instances, themselves armed and wearing uniforms, yet McFate incredibly maintains that these anthropologists are in compliance with basic anthropological ethical standards, that terrified locals used in research projects participate under conditions of “voluntary informed consent." When asked how voluntary ethical informed consent was produced in the presence of occupation soldiers and mercenaries, McFate told writer and anthropologist David Price that was not a problem because “indigenous local people out in rural Afghanistan are smart, and they can draw a distinction between a lethal unit of the US military and a non-lethal unit.”

Ken White

11-16-2007, 02:03 AM

snide, condescending, trite and mellifluous in one article.

J Wolfsberger

11-16-2007, 12:59 PM

...that terrified locals used in research projects participate under conditions of “voluntary informed consent."

Are these people really so dim that they think Iraq is a research project? I understand the ROE for the forum, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a way to describe this kind of thinking that doesn't use harsh language.

goesh

11-16-2007, 02:14 PM

-ultimately we want a war where nobody gets hurt so I think it is a valid concern

Penta

11-16-2007, 05:06 PM

Are these people really so dim that they think Iraq is a research project? I understand the ROE for the forum, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a way to describe this kind of thinking that doesn't use harsh language.

Perhaps I'm being charitable, but I think the concern is that non-affiliated researchers would be vierwed with the same fear as the military, possibly even after the conflict's end. Not so much a concern in Iraq, perhaps, but possibly valid in other places.

Abu Suleyman

11-17-2007, 03:22 PM

At the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, we have incorporated a Human Terrain Team into the rotational brigade so they learn what the other is about. The HTT members learn what a day in the life of a Soldier is like, by going through patrols in sector and interacting with civilians on the battlefield and the brigade combat team gets an idea on what the HHT will give to them, a better understanding of the local culture along with a better ability to forsee how US actions might be percieved by the local population and how the unintended consequences might be averted or contained (long sentence I know). Yeah, these academics are helping US forces, but they are helping us understand the population so that we can end our involvement overseas by setting conditions to allow our withdrawal without a collapse of the government. As for the nay sayers, they can't get over themselves and don't have the stones to step out of the school yard and actually be apart of history instead of reading about it.

Sorry for the somewhat salty verbiage in the title. Nevertheless, I feel like we have tapped into a huge zit of discontent. And unfortunately that zit is not only particularly discontented, it also seems fairly irrelevant. Although this is a particularly heartening as it is a confirmation of my belief that there is a anti-academia bias (please remember that biases can be justified, and the biased always think that they are), although it seems to be considerably more widespread than the military. Nevertheless, whether it is a waste of time to go to college or frustrating to spend years to get a PhD. and then not be able to find a job is thoroughly outside the scope of the Small Wars Journal.

However, the use of HTT's at the NTC is germane. That we have clawed together enough knowledgeable people to help the military at least in the training box. I think this is a huge step forward. An even better option would be to allow people who are curious, or perhaps want peripheral and not as integral a role to participate in the NTC rotations. This would allow people to see that soldiers are just people like everyone else, and that indeed the military is interested in saving lives, and not taking them.

In the end, this all goes to the thesis I originally introduced, that better communication will lead to better results. Let the light shine in!

120mm

11-19-2007, 03:29 PM

Grinding an axe "that way" leads to an inferior edge. Puts too much "curl" on the point of the edge.

My grandpap taught me that as a young pup.

When I saw the title of this thread, I thought you were all talking about me, behind my back.

Norfolk

11-19-2007, 03:34 PM

Grinding an axe "that way" leads to an inferior edge. Puts too much "curl" on the point of the edge.

My grandpap taught me that as a young pup.

Well, they did say CHEAP N'EASY!:)

120mm

11-19-2007, 03:43 PM

We had our first run of HTTs at JMRC in Europe. In general, it was a collision/train wreck/whatever you want to call it. Big Green doesn't want to give HTTs game play, and HTTs don't know how to play nice with Big Green.

As a writer, the initial HTT offering for training scenarios were pathetic, but I'll chalk that up to inexperience and the late nature of their entry into the field. We'll see what happens in the future.

One problem we have, is that everyone who comes from "the outside" feels compelled to give a lecture on how they contribute, regardless of the situation. When the ChOPS gives you the opportunity to introduce yourself, feel free to use 3 minutes, not 50.

Tom Odom

11-20-2007, 04:21 PM

More along the lnes of what Drew just said from the Weekly Standard. Understand there is much I find disagreeable about this piece and like most neocon scribbiling the devil is defintely in the details. Still it is worth the look as a snap shot (with a filtered lens).
Best,
Tom

Anthropology Goes To War (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/368ixgbj.asp)

There are some things the Army needs in Afghanistan, but more academics are not at the top of the list.

By Ann Marlowe

At this point in the war on terror, even people who think David Galula is a trendy new chef are quick to point to the need for cultural understanding in successful counterinsurgency. Often, they are quicker still to beat up on our military for supposedly ignoring this. They are quite sure that if we just understood the Iraqis/Afghans/Shiites/Sunnis better, we would have made fewer mistakes. The military is ready to beat up on itself, too, although if you scan military journals, it seems to have spent much of the last few years retooling to fight small rather than large wars, and to emphasize counterinsurgency and nation-building rather than mere kinetics (aka killing).

We should learn the lessons of Vietnam and Algeria, we are earnestly told. Well, perhaps the most successful counterinsurgency operation ever mounted, David Galula's in Algeria, doesn't build the case for the overweening importance of cultural knowledge. The Algerians pacified thanks to Galula's insights were French-speaking (some of the leaders of the FLN barely spoke Arabic). The French took back territory from the rebels not because Galula convinced them that he understood their culture, but because he convinced them that their interests were better served by affiliation with France. (A dozen pages of Galula are worth more than anything written by anyone mentioned in this article. His 1963 Pacification in Algeria, reissued by RAND last year, is a witty, snappy, pre-PC read.)

Rex Brynen

11-20-2007, 07:15 PM

More along the lnes of what drew said from the Weekly Standard. Understand there is much I find disagreeable about this piece and like most neocon scribbiling the devil is defintely in the details. Still it is worth the look as a snap shot (with a filtered lens).
Best,
Tom

Actually, although I could find lots to disagree with too, I found it a VERY useful piece.

First, she's absolutely right about nuance being everything.

Second, just because you're a newly-minted PhD with excellent references and field experience doesn't mean that you really understand the intersection of culture and politics. I know a great many PhDs that I wouldn't put anywhere near the field, because I think they would be more hindrance than help--and possibly even dangerous. There is a risk the HTS programme doesn't filter well enough, or that the need is so high that they let recruitment standards slip.

Third, I'm glad she called McFate on her use of the Patai book to provide insight into the "Arab mind.". I actually think its one of the worst books ever written on the ME, full of all kinds of stereotyped tripe. I was quite alarmed too when I saw McFate refer to it--its kind of like saying that one can get insight into COIN by watching Rambo.

Advanced graduate training in the social sciences means that you know lots more facts, and ought to have language skills. It hopefully means that you have honed your analytical, research, and writing skills. It means that you are equipped with all sorts of theoretical perspectives, which may be useful, useless, or counterproductive. It absolutely does not mean that you have any automatic political insight or diplomatic skills (which is precisely why MFAs don't rely on university transcripts when hiring FSOs), or can generate the empathy necessary to understand local needs and grievances, and anticipate and predict local behaviours.

Tom Odom

11-20-2007, 07:56 PM

Third, I'm glad she called McFate on her use of the Patai book to provide insight into the "Arab mind.". I actually think its one of the worst books ever written on the ME, full of all kinds of stereotyped tripe. I was quite alarmed too when I saw McFate refer to it--its kind of like saying that one can get insight into COIN by watching Rambo.

Agreed and has been a long standing issue with me when quoted by wanna be "Arabists"

On Rambo, I do think we should have compound bows with explosive-tipped arrows (I can't wait to get a quiver full for next hunting season).

best

Tom

marct

11-20-2007, 08:08 PM

Advanced graduate training in the social sciences means that you know lots more facts, and ought to have language skills. It hopefully means that you have honed your analytical and research skills. It means that you are equipped with all sorts of theoretical perspectives, which may be useful, useless, or counterproductive. It absolutely does not mean that you have any automatic political insight or diplomatic skills (which is precisely why MFAs don't reply on university transcripts when hiring FSOs), or can generate the empathy necessary to understand local needs and grievances, and anticipate and predict local behaviours.

What is scary about getting that training or, to be more specific, the degree, is the assumption on many people's part that you do have the skills, training and temperament (a labeling effect). In many ways, I would far prefer to have Anthropology graduate level training available rather than making Anthropologists available - at least that way it would be in-house.

Tom Odom

11-20-2007, 08:26 PM

What is scary about getting that training or, to be more specific, the degree, is the assumption on many people's part that you do have the skills, training and temperament (a labeling effect). In many ways, I would far prefer to have Anthropology graduate level training available rather than making Anthropologists available - at least that way it would be in-house.

Truthfully what really needs to happen is have the FAO field broadened to include cultural anthropology as a subfield rather than continuing with strictly an area studies approach. I believe, Marc, that would address your concerns and improve the FAO field with greater grounding in anthropolgy. Now whether Big Green is willing to do that on a sustained basis is a large question; the fact that Dave Kilcullen is an anthropologist should add weight to the idea.

Although I did not address it in posting this, there is also some almost endemic sniping from the CA side of the house. That too has been a problem when reviewing possible fixes. I have seen CA authored studies that push cultural awarness to a degree that is simply not doable. Gratefully this author does make the point (in round about fashion) that the military is already improving in this arena, regardless of the HTT program.

Best

Tom

marct

11-20-2007, 08:37 PM

Hi Tom,

Truthfully what really needs to happen is have the FAO field broadened to include cultural anthropology as a subfield rather than continuing with strictly an area studies approach. I believe, Marc, that would address your concerns and improve the FAO field with greater grounding in anthropolgy. Now whether Big Green is willing to do that on a sustained basis is a large question; the fact that Dave Kilcullen is an anthropologist should add weight to the idea.

That would, IMO, certainly be a very good start. I would also like to see much more work done on the Anthropology side as well in the Military Anthropology sub-field. The more I look at the problem, however, the less sanguine I am that it will be institutionally solved in a way that benefits both Anthropology and the military. Maybe it's time to bring back something like the military orders...:confused:

SWCAdmin

11-21-2007, 12:43 AM

I got this e-mail, arriving in my inbox as if it was sent from me to me, but with a return path nestled within its header. Thanks to Alex for helping me send this to myself. :p

Greetings--

bill@smallwarsjournal.com (bill@smallwarsjournal.com) thinks this will be of interest to you:

"Montgomery McFate was exceptionally bright and articulate, but with the nervous manner of someone trying to sell a lemon."

http://savageminds.org/2007/11/17/montgomery-mcfate-was-exceptionally-bright-and-articulate-but-with-the-nervous-manner-of-someone-trying-to-sell-a-lemon/ (http://savageminds.org/2007/11/17/montgomery-mcfate-was-exceptionally-bright-and-articulate-but-with-the-nervous-manner-of-someone-trying-to-sell-a-lemon/)

Enjoy.

--
http://savageminds.org (http://savageminds.org)

Beelzebubalicious

11-21-2007, 12:59 PM

According to the article by Anne Marlowe, in which she likens Dr. McFate to someone selling a lemon, she also states that:

They disparaged the Army’s approach in Afghanistan—where neither one of them has any meaningful experience—in order to market their program.

I find that a bit far-fetched and it's not supported by direct quotations - just her interpretation. I imagine that Dr. McFate might have pointed out that the Army's approach in Afghanistan could benefit from (more) Anthropological knowledge, training and advice and she certainly has been advocating for this. I don't see what's wrong with this. She's not saying there isn't any cultural knowledge or that HTT is supposed to be the source of it all, etc (which is essentially what Marlowe is writing).

Marlowe's piece is another poorly produced and through out piece which an agenda. From what I can see, Marlowe's agenda is show that she's really the expert and knows it all. The whole article is about her...

SWJED

11-21-2007, 01:52 PM

My humble response (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/11/on-anthropology-goes-to-war-1/) to the Marlowe article.

Tom Odom

11-21-2007, 02:02 PM

My humble response (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/11/on-anthropology-goes-to-war-1/) to the Marlowe article.

Dave

Great response. You put into words the crux of what was bothering me about the piece.

I still sense a "set up" of a naive observer from CA with criticisms against the HTT concept. Maybe I am reading too much into it but I have seen similar situations, as I know you have.

best
Tom

11-21-2007, 02:15 PM

While Marlowe may have been very disappointed in not embedding with a HTT, I do not see what substantive insights a very brief embed with a very new capability would have served her. http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/11/on-anthropology-goes-to-war-1/

A potential answer is as follows: If one has an axe to grind about an organization's inability to perform its assigned function, what better way to "prove" that thesis than to join up with the organization while it is still in the throes of organizing itself.

marct

11-21-2007, 02:48 PM

Hi Wayne,

A potential answer is as follows: If one has an axe to grind about an organization's inability to perform its assigned function, what better way to "prove" that thesis than to join up with the organization while it is still in the throes of organizing itself.

Good point. At the same time, one has to wonder what the CA people think about the HTTs? Since they operate with an overlap, I suspect that there is some organizational friction involved.

I do find the critique of Montgomery McFate not being an area specialist somewhat moot - in which area and what defines a specialist? Her area, judging from her PhD research (which is always somewhat problematic) is insurgency / counter-insurgency. I also suspect that she has done an immense amount of reading and on the ground work in both Afghanistan and Iraq - certainly more than Anne Marlowe has! Does the fact that she has not published in academic, peer-reviewed journals make her less of a "specialist"?

At the same time, I found Marlowe's work frustrating - just anther example of a frustrated neo-con flailing out upon discovery that the "golden BB" of the HTS wasn't so. I can certainly understand why this happened; the marketing of the HTS as a "system" (i.e. in technological terms) would encourage surface thinkers to equate it with AI Expert Systems, but it is disappointing. All in all, I think that Marlowe's article exemplified just why Anthropologists should be more active in the real world - as a counter to the shallow logorhea that passes for "thought" in some circles if nothing else :cool:.

Humans do organize themselves in systems: systems of meaning, systems of kinship, systems of production / consumption / distribution, etc. These systems are, for the most part, homeostatic and subject to chaotic fluctuations (refs available on request :D). My perception of what the HTTs are trying to do is to a) figure out what the specific local systems are, b) identify their isomorphic vectors (feedback loops pulling them in certain directions towards catastrophe points), and c) offer suggests on how to steer local systems back towards a homeostatic point that can be called "peace". If Marlowe can't understand this, and it is obvious to me that she doesn't, then she should either a) learn about it or b) keep her mouth shut.

selil

11-21-2007, 03:10 PM

Humans do organize themselves in systems: systems of meaning, systems of kinship, systems of production / consumption / distribution, etc. These systems are, for the most part, homeostatic and subject to chaotic fluctuations (refs available on request :D).

Common systems analyst joke. "The system ends/fails at the squishy keyboard to chair interface".

marct

11-21-2007, 03:15 PM

Common systems analyst joke. "The system ends/fails at the squishy keyboard to chair interface".

I'd respond with the classic "how do you tell a real Post Modernist from a Post Modernist manque, but it would be pulled :D.

For another look at the Marlowe piece, see here (http://www.registan.net/index.php/2007/11/18/is-the-human-terrain-system-worth-its-spit/).

11-21-2007, 03:21 PM

Good point. At the same time, one has to wonder what the CA people think about the HTTs? Since they operate with an overlap, I suspect that there is some organizational friction involved.
Thanks Marc. Since Marlowe spent spent time within the CA world first, your point might well be a second reason for her less than kind words about the HTT. I suspect the traditional CA and PSYOPS organizations are feeling some turf challenges from the HTT.

My perception of what the HTTs are trying to do is to a) figure out what the specific local systems are, b) identify their isomorphic vectors (feedback loops pulling them in certain directions towards catastrophe points), and c) offer suggests on how to steer local systems back towards a homeostatic point that can be called "peace".

In my view, the HTT is an entity very much like the engineer topographic/terrain team that used to support me --its mission was to provide terrain analysis support as part of the intel prep of the battlefield (IPB) process. We had a an acronym for the militarily significant aspects of (geographic) terrain--OCOKA--Observation and fields of fire, Cover and concealment, Obstacles, Key terrain, Avenues of approach. (I guess the acronym has been slightly realigned based on posts I've seen from RTK.)

I see your list above as a first cut at trying to list out the militarily significant aspects of human terrain. I think we might view the HTT work as identifying another OCOKA--Organizational structures, Common traditions and language, Other ethnic considerations (religion e.g.), Key actors, Affiliations (alliances, family and tribe/clan structures for example). I admit this is a very rough first cut at something that is much more detailed. I hope the doctrine developers are expending a lot of effort in developing and vetting such a list. Without such, I think each HTTs will do a lot of wheel spinning as it truies to figure out exactly what it is up to in its deployed location

Stan

11-21-2007, 03:43 PM

Thanks, Marc !
Fantastic reading material ;)

I'd respond with the classic "how do you tell a real Post Modernist from a Post Modernist manque, but it would be pulled :D.

For another look at the Marlowe piece, see here (http://www.registan.net/index.php/2007/11/18/is-the-human-terrain-system-worth-its-spit/).

Going toe-to-toe with an academic on sources, especially as a lay freelancer with, frankly, sketchy or no credentials at all, does take balls—I will give Ms. Marlowe that much. Afterall, she is “as neocon as they come”—surely that gives her some cachet, somewhere.

Ouch !

Tom Odom

11-21-2007, 03:46 PM

Thanks Marc. Since Marlowe spent spent time within the CA world first, your point might well be a second reason for her less than kind words about the HTT. I suspect the traditional CA and PSYOPS organizations are feeling some turf challenges from the HTT.

I believe you are very correct. CA's mission is civil military operations and yes that clearly implies working with locals. It does not, however, make them regional specialists in any sense of the words. That said, CA as an institution tends to take on the cultural specialist mantle when it suits CA to do so. That tendency gets them into trouble in the field and in the rear. HTTs are most definitely a challenge to that inclination.

best

Tom

12-07-2007, 11:14 AM

Article from DoDhere (http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=48349) about FAOs and AFRICOM support, FYI.

Stan

01-01-2008, 02:44 PM

A quick and interesting update from Wired's Blog Network (http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/12/exploring-baghd.html). Some good links and a little history as well.

This is the first official dispatch I've seen out of Iraq on the Human Terrain program -- the Army's controversial effort to embed social scientists in combat units. It's unusually informative, for a military public affairs release. And it sheds light on how American armed forces are slowly learning to tap Iraq's social networks, with some seemingly positive results. Here's a snippet:

Even though Operation Iraqi Freedom is in its fifth year, Villacres said many in the U.S. military still fail to appreciate the differences between Arab and Western culture.

“We try to find the assumptions and motivations behind what people do,” Matsuda said.

Surferbeetle

01-01-2008, 09:13 PM

I would like to run through some quick data points that I am aware of: FEST Teams ( http://www.hq.usace.army.mil/cepa/pubs/jan04/story12.htm http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3723/is_200502/ai_n9521476 ), RTI Teams (http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr185.pdf ), FBI Teams (http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june07/iraq062907.htm ), PMC Teams (http://www.blackwaterusa.com/ ), DOS PRT’s (http://www.army.mil/professionalwriting/volumes/volume5/september_2007/9_07_2.html ) and HTT’s (http://iraqht.blogspot.com/ )

Each of these teams in addition to bringing desperately needed specialized knowledge to the battlefield are also evidence that the actual execution of the oft spoken DIME concept is moving forward…..however haphazard the execution has been.

As a CA Bubba I say “GO TEAM GO!” We sure as hell need all the help we can get, and I am glad to see that people are starting to recognize the need for highly trained folks to help fight the 'graduate level of war'.

Steve

Beelzebubalicious

01-09-2008, 06:42 PM

Not much new here, but I did like the quote about clubbing seals...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080109/us_nm/iraq_anthropologist_dc

Stan

01-09-2008, 09:22 PM

Not much new here, but I did like the quote about clubbing seals...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080109/us_nm/iraq_anthropologist_dc

Great post ! And on a positive note, what I did like reading was:

"I'm a Californian. I'm a liberal. I'm a Democrat," he says. "My impetus is to come here and help end this thing."

"There's been a knee-jerk reaction in the anthropology community, that you've been co-opted, that you're a warmonger, like you're clubbing baby seals or something," he said. "I came here to save lives, to make friends out of enemies."

Short, sweet, and to the point.

Mike Innes

01-25-2008, 10:10 PM

There I was about to start querying SWC on the HTT issue, when I stumbled across this thread. It looks like it's been kicking since October of last year, and has maybe died off in the last few weeks. Not necessarily looking to resurrect it, except to state that I'm researching HTTs in general, and will eventually be looking to mine this thread for all its worth.

As a fair exchange, I offer the following: http://www.terraplexic.org/human-terrain-teams-readings/. It's essentially a bibliography of readings and resources either directly pertaining to HTTs or informing the issue. I don't believe a similar resource exists anywhere else. The media section is far from complete - I do have a day job I have to go to sometimes - but the peer-reviewed/formally published literature section is fairly comprehensive.

marct

01-25-2008, 10:18 PM

Hi Mike,

There I was about to start querying SWC on the HTT issue, when I stumbled across this thread. It looks like it's been kicking since October of last year, and has maybe died off in the last few weeks. Not necessarily looking to resurrect it, except to state that I'm researching HTTs in general, and will eventually be looking to mine this thread for all its worth.

Sounds like a plan. I'll be interetsed in seeing your research, since I am very interested in the HTTs.

As a fair exchange, I offer the following: http://www.terraplexic.org/human-terrain-teams-readings/. It's essentially a bibliography of readings and resources either directly pertaining to HTTs or informing the issue. I don't believe a similar resource exists anywhere else. The media section is far from complete - I do have a day job I have to go to sometimes - but the peer-reviewed/formally published literature section is fairly comprehensive.

Excellent! Thanks for posting it.

Marc

Mike Innes

01-25-2008, 10:33 PM

Hi Mike,

Sounds like a plan. I'll be interetsed in seeing your research, since I am very interested in the HTTs.

Marc

Groovy, we can share.

I'm just getting started with it, but essentially it'll be one thread of three woven through the book I'm working on (under contract with Hurst & Co Publishers), the other two "terrains" being material/physical and cognitive (broadly understood). Another way of looking at it is in terms of the "cultural turn", "geo" turn, etc., in the way researchers, investigators and military planners navigate the shoals of extremism and political violence.

I've been beating the "terrain complexity" mantra in a couple other threads, which is an outgrowth of research and writing I've been doing on sanctuaries. Basically, so the logic goes, one can't look at "sanctuary" without looking at the system/context/environment from which it sets itself apart (in turn based on the notion that sanctuary is as much process/condition as it is place/space, all of which are metaphors for exemption/exception/intermediacy).

Rex Brynen

01-26-2008, 01:38 AM

I've been beating the "terrain complexity" mantra in a couple other threads, which is an outgrowth of research and writing I've been doing on sanctuaries. Basically, so the logic goes, one can't look at "sanctuary" without looking at the system/context/environment from which it sets itself apart (in turn based on the notion that sanctuary is as much process/condition as it is place/space, all of which are metaphors for exemption/exception/intermediacy).

Indeed. Moreover, the socio-political processes that provide "sanctuary" to insurgent groups are not only paramilitary enablers (that is, creating sheltered physical space within which military preparations can be made), but those processes themselves may be linked to insurgent interests that are primarily non-military in nature (for example, growing economic interests, or a political space within which insurgent decision-making can occur relatively free from external pressures and constraints).

Marie-Joelle Zahar (Université de Montreal) has done interesting (and largely unpublished) work on the Lebanese Forces and Serb militias which points to the growing role that institutional and economic interests can play in efforts to preserve militia cantons. You might also want to take a peek at my own work on the PLO's management of insurgent-sanctuary relations in Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s.

Mike Innes

01-26-2008, 06:38 AM

Marie-Joelle Zahar (Université de Montreal) has done interesting (and largely unpublished) work on the Lebanese Forces and Serb militias which points to the growing role that institutional and economic interests can play in efforts to preserve militia cantons. You might also want to take a peek at my own work on the PLO's management of insurgent-sanctuary relations in Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s.

Hi Rex

Right on. Zahar's works sounds like a very close match to what Peter Andreas at the Watson Institute/Brown has been working on wrt to clandestine political economies (BiH), the criminalizing consequences of sanctions, embargo busting (Serbia), etc. He's done quite a bit of work on it, outgrowths of the greed and grievance school.

Wrt yours: Sanctuary and Survival! I know it well and have become intimate with it over the years. I've been trying to find a hardcopy that I can call my own, but no luck so far.

marct

02-11-2008, 03:14 PM

FYI

Military spies invade anthropology conferences?

The U.S. military is not only interested in employing anthropologists. Now, they have started attending anthropology conferences. Anthropologist Caroline Osella from the University in London and one of the editors of Social Mobility In Kerala, is worried.

Much more here (http://www.antropologi.info/blog/anthropology/anthropology.php?title=military_spies_invade_anthr opology_confe&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1)

See also

Final report launched: AAA no longer opposes collaboration with CIA and the military (http://www.antropologi.info/blog/anthropology/anthropology.php?p=2937&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1)

ASA Globalog category n Counterinsurgency (http://blog.theasa.org/?cat=37)

Marc

Mike Innes

02-11-2008, 03:55 PM

Activism is activism, no? If I'm a qualified anthropologist and professional academic committed to objective scholarship, then I shouldn't allow my services or knowledge to be directly deployed through me in a military environment... but I can engage in protest politics at will? My unconsidered, knee-jerk thought is that a lot of this is nothing more than left/right BS, not justifiable concern with ethical and professional standards.

Beelzebubalicious

02-11-2008, 05:27 PM

Wait, isn't this big news?

Final report launched: AAA no longer opposes collaboration with CIA and the military

What happened? I suspect that the Anthropology Establishment realized that the military can be a source of employment. I mean, practically, there aren't a whole lot of savages left...the new frontier of savageness is the military! Okay, I'm being tounge and cheek here, but what was the turning point?

marct

02-11-2008, 05:43 PM

Wait, isn't this big news?

What happened? I suspect that the Anthropology Establishment realized that the military can be a source of employment. I mean, practically, there aren't a whole lot of savages left...the new frontier of savageness is the military! Okay, I'm being tounge and cheek here, but what was the turning point?

Yes and no - in general, it isn't opposed, but I have yet to find a single specific where it is encouraged :wry:. BTW, the HTS is now verbotten.

In the context of a war that is widely recognized as a denial of human rights and based on faulty intelligence and undemocratic principles, the Executive Board sees the HTS project as a problematic application of anthropological expertise, most specifically on ethical grounds. We have grave concerns about the involvement of anthropological knowledge and skill in the HTS project. The Executive Board views the HTS project as an unacceptable application of anthropological expertise.

The Executive Board affirms that anthropology can and in fact is obliged to help improve U.S. government policies through the widest possible circulation of anthropological understanding in the public sphere, so as to contribute to a transparent and informed development and implementation of U.S. policy by robustly democratic processes of fact-finding, debate, dialogue, and deliberation. It is in this way, the Executive Board affirms, that anthropology can legitimately and effectively help guide U.S. policy to serve the humane causes of global peace and social justice.

More here... (http://www.aaanet.org/issues/policy-advocacy/Statement-on-HTS.cfm)

Mike Innes

02-11-2008, 11:03 PM

Is that this is mostly left/right BS....

In all seriousness - well, not seriousness, since I was serious before, just a bit more measured now - I can understand the concerns in principle, but it strikes me as egregiously short sighted and wrong-headed. It also sets an interesting precedent.

Questions:

How many PhDs are there in government/service?

What's the breakdown by discipline (ie. how many historians, political scientists, sociologists)?

How many professional academics are also military reservists?

How many of those belong to professional or discipline-specific associations?

How have other professional or discipline-specific associations addressed or dealt with this, if it all?

What's the view/position from across the academy? (I include non-social science disciplines here as well - like mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, etc.)

What's their view of the AAA's report/position?

How have other disciplines dealt with problems/issues/subjects related to the war? (I'm thinking of, for example, how legal scholars have tangled directly with some very thorny issues).

If one were to survey all of the above on other issues, eg. political belief or patterns of voting behaviour, what would we find in terms of distribution across the disciplines?

Does it matter? In purely academic terms, I'm curious.

Again, I'm looking forward to writing up the HTS study. Someone is sure to be shocked to find that abstractions and ethical concerns of people sitting in offices will only be one part of the story.

marct

02-11-2008, 11:20 PM

Gottta say, Mike, they are interesting questions. I don't know if we will ever get the answers to hem, though...

Marc

Mike Innes

02-11-2008, 11:34 PM

Gottta say, Mike, they are interesting questions. I don't know if we will ever get the answers to hem, though...

Marc

I know. Sigh...

selil

02-11-2008, 11:44 PM

Ron Humphrey

02-12-2008, 12:04 AM

Ron Humphrey

02-12-2008, 12:07 AM

I would guess they will remain somewhat of a fence setter on this until there is either a full success to take credit for or a failure to use as an excuse for future refusal to participate.

Mike Innes

02-12-2008, 12:27 AM

marct

02-12-2008, 02:18 PM

I've got answers but my daddy always said i shouldn't curse to express myself. Oh, and now 4 weeks into my Sociology doctorate classes I can say social sciences suck. I'll take engineering any day of the week. A light switch is on or off. It does not have transcedental states of understanding or statistical significance averaging out to maybe.

So I guess this isn't the time to talk about quantum potentiality or thermal switches :D.

On a (slightly) more serious note, it's not surprising that social science is still in the "schools" phase. Engineering would be there as well if it purposefully excluded large amounts of data, which is what the social sciences tend to do (cf The Adapted Mind (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adapted_Mind), by Barkow, Cosmides and Tooby, 1992 and Sometimes the Bus does Wait (http://myweb.dal.ca/barkow/MissingIntro.htm) - the introduction to Missing the Revolution (http://books.google.ca/books?id=aHftFG0vdU0C&dq=%22missing+the+revolution%22+barkow&pg=PP1&ots=XdI1MVg0Bh&sig=-Vg44MvAfrZamc9zh9nNiWoGjv4&hl=en&prev=http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL_enCA228CA230&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=%22missing+the+revolution%22+barkow&spell=1&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail) by Barkow, 2006).

Of course, if you start quoting Jerry's stuff in your Soc classes, they will probably role their eyes ..... :rolleyes:.

As for the knowledge of social scientists vs. the know-how of engineers - in this forum, I will refrain from passing negatives on my colleagues who had the misfortune of choosing to study the latter. Good keggers, though - so I hear... :wry:

Having done a fairly intensive field study on that question, I'd have to say that engineers are better keggers ;).

Marc

Hacksaw

02-13-2008, 09:06 PM

Given that I am not the brightest bulb on the tree, I will refrain from commenting on all previous discussion regarding whether it is ethical for anthroplogists to throw their lot in with the military....

However, I do think it is ironic that for all the hand wringing and statements of the AAA, that neither has had an impact on the fielding of HTS teams. In fact, if my sources are corrent (and they are very good sources), they have more supply than they can effectively train. It seems young anthropologists are more interesting in applying and learning their craft, then they are concerned about the hystrionics of College professors who have been cemented in their instutions for decades. Viva the Vibe Generation

Live well and row

Beelzebubalicious

02-19-2008, 03:10 PM

This whole saga gets weirder and weirder....A former HTS staff member speaks at a AAA conference supporting the need for social science in the military, the mood turns ugly and she ends up crying (based on reports below). These Academic Anthropologists are tough. I mean, she basically got fired from the HTS and went to the AAA to tell them that the program wasn't working and they jeered her anyway. Don't need to go to Iraq to get attacked...

Academics Turn On "Human Terrain" Whistleblower
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/12/the-fight-betwe.html

Questions, Anger and Dissent on Ethics Study
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/30/anthro

Former Human Terrain System Participant Describes Program in Disarray [on Zenia Helbig]
by David Glenn
The Chronicle of Higher Education
December 5, 2007
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4586

Hacksaw

02-20-2008, 06:39 PM

B.

Thanks for the post, its always great to be pointed to "good" content as opposed to swimming in the www ocean without a lifepreserver. What does AAA stand for? Arrogant A$$h0/es Anonymous. What a bunch of self-important/self-marginalizing miscreants. :mad:I wasn't sure if I should laugh or cry, but I have to admit it reminded me back to fonder days of beer bongs. tailgates and skipping boring lecture hall classes.:D

Beelzebubalicious

02-21-2008, 08:15 AM

It's worth quoting directly from the insidehighered article regarding the alleged "crying" incident. Kudos to Gusterson, one of the founders of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, who had the guts to stand up and slap down these idiots. In general and as usual, there a fewer number of idiots, but it's how the saner ones react that shows something.

At one point Helbig said that she couldn’t disengage from the military role in Iraq because it includes her fiancé, and she noted that if someone in the military refuses to deploy as ordered, that person would go to jail. At that point, a number of people in the audience shouted that her fiancé should have resisted nonetheless, and at that point, she started to wipe tears from her eyes and face.

Gusterson, the George Mason professor, urged the audience to show Helbig some respect, and said that she “showed courage” in expressing her views before an audience she knew didn’t share her opinions. Gusterson’s comments received applause as well and several of those who subsequently criticized Helbig’s views made a point of praising her for attending the meeting.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/30/anthro

SWCAdmin

02-21-2008, 01:22 PM

Steve Blair

02-21-2008, 01:34 PM

Just goes to show the total ambiguity of that vocal minority. They'll encourage someone to break the law to support their point of view, but damn someone to hell for disagreeing with them. It's a shame we don't have more sane ones standing up and telling them to shut the hell up.

Jedburgh

02-27-2008, 08:51 PM

Mar-Apr 08 Military Review: Human Terrain Mapping: A Critical First Step to Winning the COIN Fight (http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/CAC/milreview/English/MarApr08/MarrEngMarApr08.pdf)

....When it deployed to Iraq in mid-2007, TF Dragon inherited a heavily populated (400,000 people) area southeast of Baghdad. The AO was volatile, in part because it straddled a Sunni/Shi’a fault-line. The majority of the Sunnis lived along the Tigris River, the task force’s western boundary. Shi’a tribes resided in the north (close to Baghdad) and along the eastern boundary (the Baghdad-Al Kut highway).

The requirement for new ethnographic information on its AO weighed heavily on the task force. Thus, the entire unit began focusing on systematically collecting and collating ethnographic information. Ultimately, TF Dragon worked the collection through a process the staff labeled “human-terrain mapping,” or HTM.

Developing the HTM process amounted to creating a tool for understanding social conditions. As it collected and cataloged pertinent information, the task-force staff tailored its plan in order to capture a broad range of details. An important aspect of the process involved putting the data in a medium that all Soldiers could monitor and understand. Once the formatting and baseline information requirements were set, TF Dragon employed the shared situational-awareness enhancing capabilities of the Command Post of the Future (CPOF (http://www.darpa.mil/sto/strategic/cpof.html)) computer system. Each company was allocated a CPOF to post the results of its mapping on a common database, a matrix that included information about religious boundaries, key economic structures, mosques, and important personalities such as sheiks....

120mm

03-01-2008, 02:11 PM

selil

03-01-2008, 08:45 PM

Well, then, it would probably frustrate you to no end to discover that a light bulb has at least 3 positions. "On", "Off" or "Null State". And that's before you start discussing existential questions about the bulb, and whether it is a particle or a wave.

Sorry. I couldn't resist the temptation....

In one of my early graduate classes the professor was trying to make a point about engineering methods and perspective leading to design failures. He said that we see the light on or off, but the light bulb has a perspective of does it want to be on or off. One of my fellow students quipped "The light bulb more likely wants people to stop applying 120V AC to it's posterior". You have to have perspective.

J Wolfsberger

03-02-2008, 12:34 PM

In one of my early graduate classes the professor was trying to make a point about engineering methods and perspective leading to design failures. He said that we see the light on or off, but the light bulb has a perspective of does it want to be on or off. One of my fellow students quipped "The light bulb more likely wants people to stop applying 120V AC to it's posterior". You have to have perspective.

ROFLMAO!!

Let me guess. I have to ask: was it an anthropologist anthropomorphizing the light bulb?

(Slapout, isn't that illegal in Alabama?)

Mike Innes

03-03-2008, 04:07 PM

In one of my early graduate classes the professor was trying to make a point about engineering methods and perspective leading to design failures. He said that we see the light on or off, but the light bulb has a perspective of does it want to be on or off. One of my fellow students quipped "The light bulb more likely wants people to stop applying 120V AC to it's posterior". You have to have perspective.

Or, as German post-structural historian Reinhart Kosseleck put it, asymmetric counterconcepts are generated through narrative concept formation that's contingent on hegemonic perception and counter-perception.

Or, light bulbs have feelings too.

Ron Humphrey

03-03-2008, 04:36 PM

Or, as German post-structural historian Reinhart Kosseleck put it, asymmetric counterconcepts are generated through narrative concept formation that's contingent on hegemonic perception and counter-perception.

Or, light bulbs have feelings too.

But they do seem quite human in that they have a tolerance up to a certain point after which they do one of two things

1- Quit

2-Blow

:eek:

marct

03-08-2008, 05:52 PM

The entire February issue of Anthropology Today (http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/anth/24/v1) is on "the War on Terror" with lead article by Roberto Gonzales on the HTTs and a response from Montgomery McFate & LtCol Steve Fondacaro. Blackwell (the publisher) has grouped over 30+ articles from previous issues there as well.

Mike Innes

03-12-2008, 08:17 PM

Excellent! Thanks for posting.

Mike Innes

03-19-2008, 09:06 PM

http://www.sciasolutions.com/index.htm

marct

03-19-2008, 09:09 PM

http://www.sciasolutions.com/index.htm

I'm getting that queasy feeling again :eek:!

Tom Odom

03-20-2008, 01:50 PM

I'm getting that queasy feeling again :eek:!

The company is led by Swen Johnson, a former U.S. Army counterintelligence special agent

Hmmm a CI type as a cultural expert? Well alrighty then...:cool:

marct

04-13-2008, 04:51 PM

posting by Oneman at Savage Minds

Anthropology and Global Counter-Insurgency Conference in Chicago, April 25-27

I’ve been invited to speak at a conference hosted by the University of Chicago later this month on the topic of “Anthropology and Global Counter-Insurgency”. Other speakers will include David Price and Hugh Gusterson, who are doing yeoman’s work on the issue. Despite the fact that my introduction to Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War discusses issues related to counter-insurgency at some length, it is because of my work here at Savage Minds that I’ve been invited to speak. Take that, traditional publishing models!

More... (http://savageminds.org/2008/04/11/anthropology-and-global-counter-insurgency-conference-in-chicago-april-25-27/#more-1196)

selil

04-13-2008, 06:04 PM

I wonder if they'd allow a walk in.

marct

04-13-2008, 06:18 PM

I wonder if they'd allow a walk in.

Probably. I'd be surprised if they didn't. You could always contact the U of C Anthropology department and ask :).

Jedburgh

04-14-2008, 07:45 PM

Newsweek, 21 Apr 08: A Gun in One Hand, A Pen in the Other (http://www.newsweek.com/id/131752)

.... implementation of the $40 million project, which was handed to British Aerospace Engineering (BAE) without a bidding process, has fallen short, according to more than a dozen people involved in the program and interviewed by NEWSWEEK. Of 19 Human Terrain members operating in five teams in Iraq, fewer than a handful can be described loosely as Middle East experts, and only three speak Arabic. The rest are social scientists or former GIs who, like Griffin, are transposing research skills from their unrelated fields at home.....

....Recruitment appears to have been mishandled from the start, with administrators offering positions to even marginally qualified applicants. The pool of academics across the country who speak Arabic and focus on Iraq, or even more broadly on the Middle East, is not large to begin with. Some of the best potential candidates probably grew leery of the program when the American Anthropological Association declared participants would most likely be violating the ethics tenets of their profession if they signed up (because they would be contributing data that could be used in military operations). Several team members say they were accepted after brief phone interviews and that their language skills were never tested. As a result, instead of top regional experts, the anthropologists sent to Iraq include a Latin America specialist and an authority on Native Americans. One is writing his Ph.D. dissertation on America's goth, punk and rave subcultures.....

....Tompkins, who is 29 and working on a doctorate in political science, says that for every success in Iraq, he has suffered multiple frustrations and failures. And he doesn't believe his team members were uniquely qualified to provide the input they did. Tompkins says many of the officers and grunts he worked with had more-relevant knowledge and experience than the anthropologists, having served in Iraq twice or three times before. "These are dedicated individuals who are often intimately familiar with many of the nuances of the society and culture they are trying to engage with,"....

...But Fondacaro, whose program recently received an additional $120 million in funding, does not necessarily believe it was wrong to send over anthropologists with no background in the region. "Research methodologies are universal," he says. Interpreters help fill in the gaps. That he clings to this concept raises concern among people who want the program to succeed, including Thomas Johnson, an Afghan expert at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. Johnson served in Afghanistan on a pilot Human Terrain team last year. A Pashto speaker, he spent much of his time there interviewing Afghans in their homes. "If you don't have a good knowledge of the actual country and language, all the methodology can go for naught," he says.....

marct

04-14-2008, 09:20 PM

From what I understand, recruitment has been a problem - especially amongst Anthropologists. The idea that "research methodologies are universal" is one of those things that is a true statement that is, in this instance, irrelevant. I could as easily say that "precision guided ordinance kills insurgents", and that would be "true", but inapplicable in a discussion on the best way to separate insurgents out from the general population.

One of the concerns I have had with the HTTs, as a concept and in what I have heard from the field, is that there appears to be a real disconnect in their roles (note the plural, it's important). First, I think I have a feel for how difficult it is to "translate" between Anthrospeak and Militarese - conceptually, the two are very different "languages". Second, there is, I believe, a misunderstanding of what the relative roles are of a social scientist on the HTTs. Are they there to analyze social data? Collect it? Interpret it? Translate it to the military?

The HTS is quite a new system and the bugs still need to be worked out of it. On the whole, I stil think it is valuable - more valuable now that more of the military have experience with other cultures :D.

Stan

04-14-2008, 09:38 PM

Ken White

04-14-2008, 10:09 PM

Thanks for saying what I was thinking about that sadly lacking article... :D

selil

04-15-2008, 12:26 AM

In a book I recently read the author said that too many people equate language skills to cultural and ethnic understanding. To do so was the same as saying if you know English you know engineering. I think to much is made of language skills and not enough of thinking skills.

Ron Humphrey

04-15-2008, 12:38 AM

The article's authors spend an exorbitant amount of time pondering over language skills. I've known NSA and Agency folks with 10 times my language abilities, yet lacked the ability to negotiate a deal in an African Flea Market... LMDAO.

Far too many complex and unexpected issues resulting from lack of cultural knowledge to hinge the entire outcome on language abilities alone, and certainly not enough time to accurately gauge an outcome to the program anywhere on creation.

Now we go and judge one of the only two "language qualified" candidates based on a beer night out with a bunch of soldiers, who later ends ups engaged to a classmate. Huh ??? Pathetic !

When I was stationed in Korea I would quite often find that I was more able to work with the ROK and Katusa's then many of the linguists who were far more linguistically capable than I. For the most part it generally came down to the fact that I got along better with them then those other guys and thus they were more willing to excuse my failings on a linguistic front and actually spent a lot of time trying to help me become more proficient.

More often than not most of the problems I saw occur with many of the linguist was that because they understood what the Korean soldiers said, they assumed this actually equated to understanding what they meant. Which quite often would turn out to not be the case.

Ken White

04-15-2008, 01:11 AM

...More often than not most of the problems I saw occur with many of the linguist was that because they understood what the Korean soldiers said, they assumed this actually equated to understanding what they meant. Which quite often would turn out to not be the case.More often than not, I'd bet... ;)

Waa an de Oh.

Jedburgh

04-15-2008, 02:32 AM

Discussion thread (https://forums.bcks.army.mil/secure/CommunityBrowser.aspx?id=542144) on BCKS in answer to this question:

Are Transition Teams in theater sharing information with Human Terrain Teams? Are the HTTs providing useful information back?

AKO Log-In required.

Surferbeetle

04-17-2008, 02:42 PM

All,

The recent EBO thread got me started on considering HTT's and their effectiveness. On the one hand I am glad to see that we recognize the importance of this type of work and are able to recruit dedicated professionals to help us integrate this important part of the battle into our operations. On the other hand, taking a civil affairs-centric view, I see it as contracting out civil affairs functions which speaks to an inability by 'in-house staff' to deliver a product that our 'customer' needs. Once upon a time we used to commission people with these skills...

Surfing through this mornings news offering on SWJ (nice reorg with the headers by the way) led me to this article's (http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/04/gates-human-ter.html) discussion of Newsweek's recent article (http://www.newsweek.com/id/131752) on HTT's and the resulting rebuttals concerning fact checking issues. The same article led to some additional links on HTT's and the methods used to address the many dimensions that need to be considered in a counterinsurgency, and of course strategic formulations of policy:):

Mr. Gates provides a thoughtful analysis, as usual, in this speech (http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1228) about a partnership between academia and the USG called the Minerva Consortia.

Finally, there is the New Disciplines Project. Earlier I mentioned game theory and Kremlinology, two fields developed during the Cold War. In the last few years, we have learned that the challenges facing the world require a much broader conception and application of national power than just military prowess. The government and the Department of Defense need to engage additional intellectual disciplines – such as history, anthropology, sociology, and evolutionary psychology.
These are just a few of the ideas for the Minerva Consortia, and I imagine that there are many more that we would be willing to entertain. The key as we move forward is to be candid with one another. The relationship between DOD and the social sciences – humanities in particular – for decades has covered the spectrum from cooperative to hostile. Bob and I have already discussed some of the thornier issues, such as how to deal with sensitivities like those surrounding the military’s relationship with anthropologists in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Let me be clear that the key principle of all components of the Minerva Consortia will be complete openness and rigid adherence to academic freedom and integrity. There will be no room for “sensitive but unclassified,” or other such restrictions in this project. We are interested in furthering our knowledge of these issues and in soliciting diverse points of view – regardless of whether those views are critical of the Department’s efforts. Too many mistakes have been made over the years because our government and military did not understand – or even seek to understand – the countries or cultures we were dealing with.
As Schlesinger said, we must again embrace eggheads and ideas – and the Minerva Consortia can move us in that direction. (The bold font is mine)

This article (http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/milreview/English/MarApr08/Smith_AnbarEngMarApr08.pdf) has some interesting lessons learned about 'on the ground integration' of cultural knowledge into operations.