Page 44 of 48 FirstFirst ... 344243444546 ... LastLast
Results 861 to 880 of 945

Thread: Human Terrain & Anthropology (merged thread)

  1. #861
    Council Member Sparapet's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    District of Columbia
    Posts
    10

    Default Fish out of Water

    First off let me say this is a great little debate. I have interacted with HTTs in Iraq quite a bit and instead of pursuing my love of Anthropology and Political Science into grad school chose to pursue my love of the M1A2 after college. My experience with HTTs and other non-targeting intel gathering is that the whole concept of "understanding" my environment is somewhat foreign to the officer corps.
    120mm points out his experience in OEF with assessing the environment but I would hazard a guess that he is a rare, rare exception. In general, Tom's opinion of piss-poor implementation of non-targeting intel is spot on. I have observed time and again Bn and Bgde commanders absolutely clueless about what the HTTs do, while the HTTs are confused about what they are supposed to do and get creative or settle into an atmospherics routine.
    Whatever our ideological leanings, occupations require local understanding. The more distant the cultures of occupiers from occupied the more the learning curve and the greater the distrust (WWII is a prime example).
    As a maneuver leader I spent several months putting together a coherent tribal/leadership picture in my sector because the units before me never got past the key leaders whom they could pay to get things done. My anthro/poli sci background helped me ask the right question and notice the right patterns. By the end, the sector made sense. A year or two of an HTTs effort in a 7 yr occupation would have cut that learning curve and allowed me to implement effective IO in early/mid tour instead of at the end.

    At the end the bigger point is the one that started this thread. The anti-intellectualism, especially against the social sciences, in the officer corps is borderline criminal. Considering we are often the de facto governors from Company and up for months and years at a time the fact that we rarely value anything that is education while thinking that training is all you need (current article series on Design is a perfect example) is one of our biggest handicaps and I am convinced it has cost lives, many of them.

  2. #862
    Council Member Pete's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    North Mountain, West Virginia
    Posts
    990

    Default

    When I did Army medical supply work in Bahrain years ago some military people thought I was out touristing around if I wasn't in the warehouse kicking boxes. I needed to know the area of operations, such as where I could rent forklifts and trucks, where the good hardware stores are, and which compressed gas companies could test our medical oxygen cylinders. It also helps to know your way around town so you don't have to take the same routes every day, as well as which neighborhoods are Sunni, which are Shia, and areas to avoid during periods of ethnic tension.

  3. #863
    Council Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Fort Leavenworth, KS
    Posts
    133

    Default Smart People Wanted

    Quote Originally Posted by Steve the Planner View Post
    I think there is a big tendency in this discussion toward a typology of social sciences that inaccurately implies that social science folks are all academic theoreticians. I suspect that most people with economics degrees are, in fact, gainfully employed in very practical day to day real life things that could never be defined as "soft."

    The implementation failure for HTS, in my opinion, was to become lost in academia and "soft" theoretical analysis. They would have been better of at the HR/Recruiting stage to avoid academia completely and go after "hard" social scientists with deep reasoning skills in real world applications.
    Steve:

    To be honest, I could care less what someone does for a living, academic or otherwise. The bottom line is that we need people who can think - whether we find them in academia or "real world" occupations is irrelevant.

    I did my first graduate thesis on the relationship of experience to job performance. I found (stunningly), that cognitive ability, rather than experience, is the single best predictor of future performance. In simplistic terms - smart people are better at almost everything.

    I understand where you are coming from, but the choice between academics and "real world" social scientists is a false dichotomy.
    Last edited by M.L.; 10-21-2010 at 10:48 PM. Reason: Typo
    There are two types of people in this world, those who divide the world into two types and those who do not.
    -Jeremy Bentham, Utilitarian Philosopher
    http://irondice.wordpress.com/

  4. #864
    Council Member Pete's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    North Mountain, West Virginia
    Posts
    990

    Default

    It's everyones' responsibility to learn about the Area of Operations where they are -- it's not just an intel function, or something that somene else should inform you about via distribution. First off, scout the lay of the land in the area, so if you have to conduct infantry operations you'll have a feel for the area. With more recon and scouting around you'll learn a bit about the demographics, ethnic and sectarian things, road networks, so forth. Learning how to say and understand things in the local language helps too.

    The main impression of the U.S. Army intelligence community I've gotten is that they mainly like to fiddle around with organizational charts about how info is processed. They also like their secret handshakes and Walther PPKs, it makes them feel important. Years ago I went to OCS with the guy who now commands Fort Hootchie-Coochie, but as they say, "Three tears in a bucket ... "

    Right before I got the old heave-ho out of the Army a former Special Forces guy begged me to join SF, he said I was the sort of guy they needed. I was amazed, I could barely pass the PT test.

  5. #865
    Council Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Fort Leavenworth, KS
    Posts
    133

    Default The Billiard Table of the Gods

    Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
    "Complex variables" is better than "unknowns" in some ways, but it still implies some form of absolute value from the implication of causality and, as you noted, context changes "absolutes", which means that a) they aren't absolutes and b) the implied causal model is operating at the wrong level (i.e. it's trash at prediction).
    Marc,

    I'd be the last person to claim that either absolute values or causal relationships exist in great abundance in social systems. Both are extremely rare, yet our craving for deterministic models (the perfect billiard table) leads us to imagine absolutes and causal relationships where none exist.

    (Perhaps it is instructive to remember that Newtonian physics do not describe the universe as it really is, but we stick with Sir Isaac because: 1. He was pretty close. 2. Quantum Theory and Relativity Theory are too "spooky" for everyday life. Do we prefer comfortable lies to uncomfortable truths?)

    My use of the term "complex" implies a variable which is dynamic, interactive, and is inextricably linked to its environment, as in a complex system.

    Given such a system (and all social systems can be described as complex), the best thing we can shoot for is continuous iterative approximations of the system structure, function, process, and emergent properties.
    There are two types of people in this world, those who divide the world into two types and those who do not.
    -Jeremy Bentham, Utilitarian Philosopher
    http://irondice.wordpress.com/

  6. #866
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Posts
    3,189

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by M.L. View Post
    I did my first graduate thesis on the relationship of experience to job performance. I found (stunningly), that cognitive ability, rather than experience, is the single best predictor of future performance. In simplistic terms - smart people are better at almost everything.
    This fits to my experiences as and with consultant(s).

    We usually got tasks which we never had done before and proceeded to embarrass very experienced employees who had been in and failed on their job for years. They had failed to do what we succeeded to do in a matter of weeks.

    Most of them were rather simple minds who weren't able to think unconventionally, creatively or even to raise their own level of expectation high enough to recognize obvious problems. Some recited what they were told, completely devoid of own thinking. Some were even too dumb to grasp what they were told.
    Others were very experienced at one or two tasks - and failed every time when the application of their very narrow experience mislead them.

    Once I even got into trouble because I wasn't able to hold back my astonishment when I was asked in response to an extremely stupid question. All I had done wrong was to ask why they hadn't thought about this consequence before their action (they had violated a rule and expected me to help them cover up their mess).

    I'll never forget how I once solved a mystery for a corporation's medium-level management with a half-time effort over only three weeks. They had been clueless for years (they fell prey to several conflicting lies and half-truths). All I had to do was to use my university education, google, the phone, an intern, pen & paper and the brain.

  7. #867
    Council Member
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Posts
    4,021

    Default Hey Pete,

    That SF guy (probably a laid back type himself):

    from Pete
    Right before I got the old heave-ho out of the Army a former Special Forces guy begged me to join SF, he said I was the sort of guy they needed. I was amazed, I could barely pass the PT test.
    simply recognized your natural talent to sit atop a mountain trading Bravo Sierra with the indigenous types in their own lingo.

    Which ain't a bad talent for any interviewer and/or intel type.

    Regards

    Mike

  8. #868
    Council Member Pete's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    North Mountain, West Virginia
    Posts
    990

    Default

    But I wasn't bucking for Special Forces, I thought that learning all you could about the AO was what military professionals did as a matter of course. Patrolling, recon, "Pick Up Your Weapon and Follow Me."

  9. #869
    Council Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Location
    Maryland
    Posts
    827

    Default

    120's comment about DoS: Obviously, not every DoS PRT was worth the effort to ship them in in the first place--especially in Afghanistan. My buds there tell me they are basically just in lock-down, so it doesn't surprise me that the main batch there are just the types collecting pay.

    Even within DoS, the in-fighting was merciless, and very few groups were tapped into what was going on, versus what they were doing as a bureaucratic mission. Just goes to show---if you put enough bureaucracy on the ground anywhere, it will do what it does best---spin around itself.

    We had our own list of contacts---everybody crossed the Palace---but, like in the civilian world, most of the best information sharing occurred at the pool or the Off-Site. The good stuff seldom found its way into the internal reports.

    I do have to disagree with Spar, though.

    I went as part of the batch of senior civs in late 2007. All of us responded ASAP to a call by Amb. Crocker to come and help. It was a very different recruiting pool for a very unique call for our expertises applicable to Iraq matters. Most of the actual experts went back home to do what we do.

    I joined up with a new MND-N staff that damned sure had their heads screwed on. Between us, the Iraqis, and them, there was a constant and effective effort to drill for change---get us out of the way and let them find the route. Granted, we were running against a very embedded pattern to the contrary.

    Hate to ruin the myth created by years of very poor history, but the military I was working with was exceptional.

    Even with that, our MND-N counterparts understood that there were parts the civs were more appropriate for, and parts that they were more appropriate for. LTG Hertling had it down with helicopter diplomacy (bringing ministers to sites in the North) and regional conferences, and that gave us access to the ministers, senior staffs and contacts. And we had cover and contacts from the Green Zone to Al Faw.

    When you put Iraqi technical managers together with US ones, the expertises, problems and solutions are all common, and they really graved what we could make available to them (especially through DivEng, mobility, etc...). That created an entirely different value to the relationships and information flows than if you just send a bunch of folks to bother them.

    Like 120 in Afghanistan, I never felt any constraints about movement or access to anything I wanted to see or anybody I needed to meet with, and we always found enough venues and side-contacts to get the full story. I had my full body armor stowed at Speicher for trips in the North, and lightweight DoS vests to go under suits when we undercovered through Baghdad in the old beat-up Buicks.

    Only time we ever had movement trouble was in September 2008. A minister called and said he was surprised that he had managed to get several key ministers together to meet next week (scheduling was always a bear). So we jumped at the chance.

    On the morning of, we got alarming calls that security had descended on the ministry and wanted to do the full dogs and shake-downs of everybody.

    Then, when we went out the door at the Palace, instead of our usual low-key convoy, there was a driveway full of big stuff. We forgot that it was 9/11, so the ministers were available because nobody else had scheduled, but the security on our side was too much to allow the meeting with us. So, instead, they all got together, which was, as we found out later, a very productive session (without us). I count that as a win.

    G: The folks I travelled with were mostly Syrians, Iraqi-Americans, Iraqis, and UN's international experts, etc... and very good at interpreting what was going on. They wrote the books that the academics were reading.

    Not everybody in Iraq was blind, deaf and dumb all the time.

    Last week, Foreign Policy had an article bemoaning the fact that the census was cancelled (again). Anybody who actually understands Iraq's Ottoman bureaucratic past, and its actual census system and capabilities would know that they have always known exactly how many Iraqis are where. Just because they don't say, doesn't mean they don't know. (Hint: Food rations are as accurate as any census would every be.)

    But I can assure you that HTS didn't have a clue. Populations, settlement patterns, tribal. ethnic, religious. Wasn't that a key factor?

  10. #870
    Council Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Location
    Maryland
    Posts
    827

    Default Team Ninewa Article

    PS- Team Ninewa Article provides a good overview of what things had to become. Iraq focused. Smaller, sustainable projects. Better integration from Nahias, Qaddas to Governate to Baghdad. Expanding scope and participation beyond "the regular suspects."

    Rocket science is not a precondition.

    Interesting, but one of the biggest execution stumbling blocks in the North was a US guy they just arrested in PA--graft, corruption, kick-back allegations. Go figure?

  11. #871
    Council Member sgmgrumpy's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Location
    Ft Leavenworth Kansas
    Posts
    168

    Default

    All good points. As 120 has experienced the processes of the program, and some of the crazy stuff you cannot make up as an example of below article on the latest with one of these so called "smart people", the never ending saga of the misfits continue.


    Apparently, the young woman likes to wear the monkey outside the wire because she thinks it reduces the hostility of the locals by presenting a soft friendly fuzzy American face, offsetting the threat implicit in the weapon she wears on her hip.
    http://www.seven-shots.com/spanking-...l-sensitivity/
    Last edited by sgmgrumpy; 10-22-2010 at 07:10 PM.

  12. #872
    Council Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Fort Leavenworth, KS
    Posts
    133

    Default Education ≠ Smart

    Quote Originally Posted by sgmgrumpy View Post
    All good points. As 120 has experienced the processes of the program, and some of the crazy stuff you cannot make up as an example of below article on the latest with one of these so called "smart people", the never ending saga of the misfits continue.
    Who, exactly, accused a woman with a sock monkey of being smart? Is is because she was educated? Cognitive ability and education are most certainly not the same.
    There are two types of people in this world, those who divide the world into two types and those who do not.
    -Jeremy Bentham, Utilitarian Philosopher
    http://irondice.wordpress.com/

  13. #873
    Council Member Pete's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    North Mountain, West Virginia
    Posts
    990

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by jmm99 View Post
    That SF guy (probably a laid back type himself):
    simply recognized your natural talent to sit atop a mountain trading Bravo Sierra with the indigenous types in their own lingo.

    Which ain't a bad talent for any interviewer and/or intel type.
    Bravo Sierrra? Wait a minute, I'm not sure that's a compliment. I've had some serious posts on this forum:

    Ridgeway Caps
    known-distance marksmanship training
    loop and hasty slings
    Blanton's Bourbon
    five-paragraph field orders
    how to shine M1943 buckle-top boots
    M1 thumb
    "Ain't no use in lookin' down"
    "Ain't no discharge on the ground"
    Article 15s
    raccoons on my deck eating the cat's food
    Field Artillery gunnery
    fixing flat tires for female Ordnance officers who are maintenance experts
    John S. Mosby confounding the U.S. Army

    ... and that's just to name a few. So there, take that.

  14. #874
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    7

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by 120mm View Post
    Actually, a fairly talented person with even a modicum of information can increase a commander's knowledge incredibly even in a short period of time.

    The security environment you describe is largely a myth; someone with just a little bit of fieldcraft can navigate most of Afghanistan quite easily with very minimal security.

    The ethnographic interview is a very flawed technique; people lie and they most often lie to themselves. Observation ethnography and looking at societal outputs actually make rapid ethnographic surveys very do-able and are usually more accurate, to boot.

    The problem is, most Anthropologists are wonks, who work slowly, pedantically and often come from white-bread America with no experience in anything but academia.

    Someone with a broad background, especially with one in agriculture, mechanics, history and linguistics and who is sensitive to nuance and has good perception can make rapid assessments and be correct.

    I once sat on a hill in Helmand for four hours, and was joined by a US DoS guy who engaged me in conversation. I proceeded to tell him things he'd never heard before about "his" district that he'd never imagined before, based solely on that morning's observations of things like architecture and planting patterns. That guy had been there five years.

    I just returned from a district that was reputed to have "no industry" by so-called "experts" who'd been there since 2002. I spent less than one day in the district and was able to identify a thriving brick-making industry, a combine factory and a large and apparently expanding machining business along the route we took through the district.
    Based on your experience, or based on fact? Do you really believe that you "engaged" a DoS guy in a conversation he's never had? Seriously?

    E.
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 10-23-2010 at 08:57 AM. Reason: Edited post down and PM to author

  15. #875
    Council Member 120mm's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
    Location
    Wonderland
    Posts
    1,284

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Ethereal View Post
    Based on your experience, or based on fact? Do you really believe that you "engaged" a DoS guy in a conversation he's never had? Seriously?

    E.
    Yes. I am not some kind of wunderkind. What I do is actually go out into the district, armed with a bit of of research, and look at the countryside with a critical eye.

    The problem is as I state it. The kind of person who gets assigned to the field often does not have a discriminating eye, or they lack relevant real world experience. Frankly, if I were in charge of picking folks to send downrange, I'd look very hard at guys and gals with agricultural experience, and experience with the mechanical arts.

    What I don't mention is what a rich resource the ADTs and USDA representatives have turned out to be. I cannot praise highly enough the insight these guys have pretty uniformly had.

    The problem you run into, of course, is finding the right mix of ag/mechanical experience and a basically curious outlook on the world and knowledge of history/culture.

  16. #876
    Council Member
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Posts
    4,021

    Default To say nothing of possums, Pete,

    to say nothing of possums.

    Yup, actually a compliment - metaphor would be talking with Montagnard types - making like a practical, field anthropologist (vs the office bound type), sitting on the edge of the village until accepted and then eventually getting to participate some in the local activities. Something like Dayuhan has done.

    As I said, BSing with the indigenous folks "ain't a bad talent for any interviewer and/or intel type."

    Now, if you've been reduced to BSing with possums, that's where I draw the line.

    Regards

    Mike
    Last edited by jmm99; 10-23-2010 at 06:43 PM.

  17. #877
    Council Member Pete's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    North Mountain, West Virginia
    Posts
    990

    Default

    Thanks for the compliment. My main downfall as an officer, besides a fondness for beer, was in the area of leadership -- I was never entirely comfortable or confident in leadership positions. My college degree fast-tracked me into OCS after I enlisted. Had I spent more time enlisted I would have either developed my leadership skills through experience and attendance at junior NCO schools, or barring that I would never have been considered for commissioning in the first place. Nobody ever doubted that I was intelligent or a nice guy.

  18. #878
    Council Member
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Location
    Just outside the Beltway
    Posts
    203

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by M.L. View Post
    Tom,

    If memory serves, R-square values are a numeric expression of the probability that a given model will predict future behavior. Perhaps the problem is social scientists are trying to predict behavior. This seems somewhat difficult to accomplish in a social system where the agents have a choice, emotions, subjective rationalities, cultural forces, etc...
    M.L.

    R^2 measures the amount of variance in the observational data described by the model. Thus, it describes a correlative relationship in past data.

    If your model captures a causal relationship, then your R^2 will give you a sense of how well you might predict future outcomes. However, many folks commit statistical malpractice because they 1) don't understand what makes a model a good model and 2) confuse correlation with causation, and so they only interpret the model through the R^2.

    As you talk to, in the end, human behavior is subject irrationality and involves a complex interdependence, and so R^2 values tend to be low in the social sciences (this may not be problematic for your model depending on what you are trying to do, but that's a tangent not needed for the thread).

  19. #879
    Council Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Fort Leavenworth, KS
    Posts
    133

    Default

    Thanks. Been a while since I did any research that required me to work with R-sqd.

    One small thing - the term "irrationality" is something of a pet peeve of mine. It implies an objective viewpoint of "what is good for me." However, people act according to a subjective perception of rationality. Emotion and culture also influence decision making.

    When other people act differently than we think they should, we (Americans and American military types especially) tend to dismiss the behavior as irrationality, or worse, stupidity.

    The truth is that everyone has good reasons for acting the way they do according to their individual perceptions. Its our job to figure out why they do what they do.
    There are two types of people in this world, those who divide the world into two types and those who do not.
    -Jeremy Bentham, Utilitarian Philosopher
    http://irondice.wordpress.com/

  20. #880
    Council Member
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Location
    Just outside the Beltway
    Posts
    203

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by M.L. View Post
    Thanks. Been a while since I did any research that required me to work with R-sqd.

    One small thing - the term "irrationality" is something of a pet peeve of mine. It implies an objective viewpoint of "what is good for me." However, people act according to a subjective perception of rationality. Emotion and culture also influence decision making.

    When other people act differently than we think they should, we (Americans and American military types especially) tend to dismiss the behavior as irrationality, or worse, stupidity.

    The truth is that everyone has good reasons for acting the way they do according to their individual perceptions. Its our job to figure out why they do what they do.
    M.L.,

    I was not referring to an ethnocentric view of rationalism, but instead was talking to how we use heuristics that are fraught with systemic biases that result in irrational choices (e.g., framing choices as lives saved vs. deaths will usually result in different choices that are mathematically (objectively) inconsistent).

    You point about ethnocentric viewpoints is on the mark, and I love the example of the Iraqi Perspectives Project to point out that Saddam, who was seemingly irrational, was actually acting in a highly rational manner.

Similar Threads

  1. Terrorism in the USA:threat & response
    By SWJED in forum Law Enforcement
    Replies: 486
    Last Post: 11-27-2016, 02:35 PM
  2. Human Terrain Team study
    By Michael Davies in forum RFIs & Members' Projects
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 10-02-2011, 01:20 AM
  3. Human Terrain Team Member Killed in Afghanistan
    By SWJED in forum OEF - Afghanistan
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 05-09-2008, 08:05 PM

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •