The film “Charlie Wilson’s War” is about an American Congressman who in the 1980s organized the clandestine funding to fight the Russian Occupation of Afghanistan. Wilson arranged for over $1 billion to be sent to Afghan groups fighting the Russians on the idea that anyone who would fight the United States’ Cold War enemy was America’s friend, including the admittedly courageous fighters who would later become Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and who got their start on large dollops of money Congressman Wilson sent their way.…
Tag: Human Terrain System
Message to HTS Anthropologists: You Need an Experimental Control
Colonel Martin Schweitzer testified before two House Armed Services Committee Subcommittees on April 23 about the Human Terrain Team operating in Afghanistan. After reading it, I was not sure whether to jump up and down and yell yippee! because the military is discussing the role of culture in rural Afghanistan, or simply groan because so little of how social scientists think seem to have gotten through yet.
The statement was interesting for outside social scientists to read for a number of reasons, especially for how the military talks about culture, how the military’s understanding of culture works, and general social science research methods.…
Human Terrain System: Too Little, Too Late, and So What?
Ok, Mark Dawson finally wrote often enough about the Human Terrain System for me to investigate what this military program actually is. I have some sympathy for the idea of using anthropology in the military because I have seen too many anthropologically incorrect lieutenants proclaiming to the press something along the lines of “You gotta be here to understand the bad guys. All the bad guys understand is strength/power/force/money. It is just their culture.…