Is the Pentagon truly going to deploy an army of cultural relativists to Muslim nations in an effort to make the world a safer place?
A few weeks ago this newspaper reported on an experimental Pentagon “human terrain” program to embed anthropologists in combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan. It featured two military anthropologists: Tracy (last name withheld), a cultural translator viewed by American paratroopers as “a crucial new weapon” in counterinsurgency; and Montgomery McFate, who has taken her Yale doctorate into active duty in a media blitz to convince skeptical colleagues that the occupying forces should know more about the local cultural scene.
How have members of the anthropological profession reacted to the Pentagon’s new inclusion agenda? A group calling itself the Network of Concerned Anthropologists has called for a boycott and asked faculty members and students around the country to pledge not to contribute to counterinsurgency efforts. Their logic is clear: America is engaged in a brutal war of occupation; if you don’t support the mission then you shouldn’t support the troops. Understandably these concerned scholars don’t want to make it easier for the American military to conquer or pacify people who once trusted anthropologists. Nevertheless, I believe the pledge campaign is a way of shooting oneself in the foot.
Where were these intelligent “scholars” when the war started 9/11?? The silence of their voices was thunderous.
[i] Inappropriate comment deleted by elf. [/i]
If Richard A. Shweder is truly an anthropologist then he should know a great deal more about that form of human behavior called warfare and, specifically, much much more about that realm of human warlike behavior called “insurgency” and “counter-insurgency.”
But he obviously doesn’t have this knowledge or he has chosen intellectual dishonesty in order to discuss key issues regarding low intensity conflict in the midst of differing ethnic/religious groups.
His rant is nothing more than a rant. He sounds like a ‘political hack’ of the far left. A political grouping that seems to oppose anything that might support our servicemen in ‘harm’s way’ and instead seeks to mobilize political support for our enemies to the serious detriment of our servicemen.
As I see it, his statements are not those of open discussion and debate, but rather those of a man who does not have the best interests of our country at heart.