The US military was and is desperate to understand the human terrain of the Afghan battlefield. The chief sources of expertise lay in the field of anthropology, but the “American Anthropological Association issued a report condemning the Human Terrain program as a violation of professional ethics”.
But that didn’t stop them, ten years on, from publishing books on the subject:
Noah Coburn’s “Bazaar Politics” is the first extended study of an Afghan community to appear since the Taliban fell. It follows an ambitious history of Afghanistan by the Boston University anthropologist Thomas Barfield, and an impassioned essay by Rory Stewart, the Conservative M.P., author-adventurer and Kabul preservationist, that faults the international effort in Afghanistan for its neglect of ethnographic insight. Whatever anthropology has to say about America’s longest war, it’s saying it now.
Well, thanks for nothing. We’ve spent the blood of nearly two thousand US soldiers, burnt through the federal fisc like it didn’t matter and are at risk of leaving Afghanistan to the tender mercies of those who like flogging women for sport, prefer soccer pitches for their executions and execute homosexuals by pushing purpose-built walls down on their heads.
But at least your hands are clean, and soon your pockets will be full.
“Citizens of the world,” my ass.
Being a Professional, I have noted that “Professional Ethics” are something honored more in the breach, or at least when it’s convenient for the registration boards to go after you when they have the desire to do so.
In this case, however, it’s a matter of they don’t want to support the military in any way. Screw the fact it might end the war sooner and save lives, Afghani lives, they have their principles and that’s that.
Another term for it is hypocrisy.
That Gramscian criminal Franz Boas pretty much destroyed honest (i.e., physical) anthropology. We are still suffering from the damage to this very day.
Speaking of professional ethics, I’m sure you’ve all heard the reason that sharks don’t attack certain professionals of the legal persuasion…
As well as snakes…
Cheap shot…
as soon as i here someone talking about “professional ethics” i take that to mean they are essentially amoral in their behavior and bereft of what a civilized person might think of as a “moral compass”.
How is the the study of Anthropology, the study of dead things, remotely related to what is happening out in the real world??
Have I missed something critical about the field of anthroplogy???
Sean:
In a word, yes. I suggest that you look up the word “anthropology”. If you still don’t understand, I suggest that you go back to school. In your case, pre-school might be something you could cope with.
Paul
Paul, isn’t Sean referring to necromancy?
Having worked as an archaeologist for about 13 years I can say with some certainty that the vast majority of American anthropologists are socialist to the core. Had BHO started the war in Afganistan they would have fallen all over themselvs to help out the cause, but alas, a republican initiated the war so no dice.
Forensic Anthropologists, not so much. They have to deal with actual facts, such as bones. They say they can reliably assign a race to a dead body after just looking at a coupla bones, and I believe them. Race is not just skin color. Sorry to get all HBD, here.
I have met several different forensic anthropologists and they were every bit as left leaning as any other anthropologist. They graduate from the same anthro departments, taught by the same liberal professers who push the same marxist theories that the rest of us anthro majors were subjected to. As a rule they are no different in their political outlook than their cultural anthro, arc or linguistics bretheren.
JTG, just to get really OCD, I prefer the term “breed” to “race” in this context. It seems both more appropriate as well as more accurate.
Both words mean just about the same thing. The only difference I can see is that “races” just happen naturally, and “breeds” are, well, bred. Let us not muddle the subtleties of expression we are allowed by the English language.
Marine83/
Who was that forensic anthro guy a few years back that was black-balled from the peer review process and practically had his book suppressed who proved the Anastasia Indians were cannibals? Or the other cultural anthro guy whose book about inter-tribal warfare and torture of captives amongst Plains Indian tribes was also suppressed on PC grounds as bad for the multi-culti, non-euro-white, post-colonial image?
Virgil Xenophon
When I was in school in the late eighties, we were taught the Anasazis just “dissapered” nobody knows why. Since then archaeologists have discoved the Anasazies civilization tore itself apart with evidence of slaugter and canibalism, fortified cliff dwellings were besieged and the inhabitants slaugtered and eaten. But that kind of thing goes against the whole “Native Peoples always live in peace with each other” crap that anthropologist use to denounce wesetern civilization. I havent kept up with the literature in years, but I have no doubt that blacklisting was done for the sin of telling the truth about the Anasazi.
Military directed by Republicans/conservatives are “icky”.
Military directed by progressives are hunky dory.
Most social scientists will say or do things that cause any sentient human being’s BS meter to go on full red alert.
And actually “red alert” is the most appropriate term to describe what’s going on.
You utterly cynical, jaded thing, you…for shame..
You’re undoubtedly a red-baiting McCarthyite war-monger..
And also probably raaacist and homophobic too..and lets not forget misogynistic..
You ARE a conservative ex-member of a “killing society” after all….
As the cultural-anthro types will be the first to remind you
But look on the bright side–maybe being a member of the bar with the word “Esquire” after your name absolves you of all of this..
(sorry–couldn’t resist that last bit….
)
” ‘Citizens of the World’ my ass.”
Lex at his disgusted best..
It’s amazing how easily money can soothe the guilty conscience.
It’s even more amazing the mental hoops one can jump through to justify the money.
This is apparently not a new phenomenon.
http://s221.photobucket.com/albums/dd50/Censport/Bloom%20County/?action=view¤t=000610.gif&sort=ascending
Good one, Max.
Three straight pieces of tripe from the NYT?
Lex, you need to get out more.
It’s worth pointing out that Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan, alone, unarmed, unafraid from one side to the other back in early 2000. Wrote an excellent book on the epic journey called The Places In Between. Book was published in 2002. He was very upfront but didn’t do much more than an FAO would have had they been permitted to do the same sort of thing. The knowledge was out there for the taking but when was the last time the CINCs listened to expert cultural advisers?
Having inhaled enough AFGHN dust and such to lop a few years off my life, the key issue as I see it is that Afghanistan is a land that will not fit into the Western mold of what we see as “civilized”.
I’ve said it before, the place is 12th century to hell. If we looked at Europe in the medival years, it would be a whole lot like what you see in AFGHN. No excusing the behavior or that they refuse to join us in the 21st century….I say we drop as many ” Progressives” as possible in there as the LIBS and the AFGHNs deserve each other. The LIBS say they want to help, I say let them.
There are many Afghanis I met who are eager to embrace the West and throw off the Taliban’s ways of murder, rape and terror. I wish it was a simple issue but my time there tells me that this will requires years more of finding the “cancerous” parts of the populace and culling them out of the herd.
Ah Virgil,you’e a tough player. Let’s just say that I’ve spent enough time around highly credentialled people–lawyers, professors, academics of a lot of different stripes, and well paid expert witnesses to have the needle on my BS meter permanently bent.
It IS a tribal world–just as much in academia as in Afghanistan (or in military aviation for that matter). Mankind hasn’t progressed all that much since he and she dropped their fur clothing and put on suits and skirts.