Human Terrain & Anthropology (merged thread)

[Norfolk]

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.

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]

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]

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]

Worked for me...

[SteveMetz]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

...
...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.

[Norfolk]

Good shot, Penta.

Good thing I'm not much over 30!

[Ken White]

boomers ...

[SteveMetz]

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]

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]

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]

If you folks don't mind (and even if you do ), 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 - 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 .

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]

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]

More crap from the anti-COIN/HTT crowd.

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]

snide, condescending, trite and mellifluous in one article.