The Leaky Ship of Human Terrain Systems
December 15th, 2008In summary, the U.S. military is aware that “American Culture” is a strategic weapon that is capable of defeating an enemy, or entire populations, without necessarily having to kill them. The U.S. military, however, must and will kill in order to allow “American Culture” into a society in order to repurpose it. Military failures will result from failing to thrust, “that bayonet into an enemy’s heart.”
Via: Counterpunch:
The Human Terrain program is the brainchild of anthropologist Montgomery McFate, whose longtime interest in supporting the suppression of insurgent groups through the adoption of counterinsurgency tactics led to the formation of Human Terrain Systems based at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas and run through BAE Systems contractors. Human Terrain Teams (HTT) are designed to supplant or complement roles that Civil Affairs units have traditionally played in assessing the needs and conditions of occupied populations. As the recently leaked Handbook states, “Human Terrain Teams bring another aspect of the population: the average persons’ perspective, when the HTT incorporates the “grass-roots” perspective with government and tribal perspectives.” These Human Terrain Teams are designed to incorporate military-embedded anthropologists and other social sciences who interview members of local populations in war zones, often with armed Team members, sometimes wearing uniforms.
Because of the complex ethical issues involved in conducting ethnographic fieldwork for occupying military forces in war zones, the Human Terrain Program is viewed by most anthropologists as being highly problematic. In November 2007, the American Anthropological Association’s Executive Board produced a statement condemning the Human Terrain program for its inattention to basic anthropological ethical concerns for voluntary informed consent and the well-being of studied populations.
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The Handbook states that, “the end-state of Human Terrain Team support is to provide the unit the reasons why the population is doing what it is doing and thereby providing non-lethal options to the commander and his staff.” This statement expresses the Handbook’s internal logic that: anthropologically based non-lethal subjugation = good; lethal subjugation = bad. The Handbook ignores more traditional political and ethical considerations of anthropologists’ responsibilities following a logic more aligned with notions that subjugation of other cultures = bad. Such traditional anthropological considerations are outside the logical scope of the Handbook; it takes anthropologically aided subjugation as an acceptable goal from the outset.
