The San Antonio Express and the San Antonio Current interview Human Terrain co-director James Der Derian before special screenings of the film at Trinity University and the University of Texas San Antonio. The screenings presented by the Bihl Haus Arts will be followed by round-table discussions with James Der Derian and adviser to the film, John Philip Santos.
Der Derian told the Express that Human Terrain attempts to “bring out of the shadows a program that is having a profound impact on American academics working with the military .”
You can read more about the coverage here.
Anthropology + Military = Bad Things Happening to Good People???
By Major David Underwood, U.S. Army Wounded Warrior, Battery Commander OIF 2005-2008
This week I saw a screening of a new movie on Iraq and Afghanistan called “Human Terrain Program – The War Becomes Academic,” and then listened to a panel of academics whine about anthropologists working with the military to better understand the cultures in the Middle East, and how this is morally objectionable because of the professions code of “do no harm”. The panelists described us (the military) as a bunch of blood thirsty ‘kill-them-all’ types, like the ‘former Marine Colonel’ in the movie Avatar – who are incapable of getting anything done without pointing a gun at someone. In fact, the filmmaker, James Der Derian, PhD, of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, introduced the movie as a low budget (real world) Avatar.
The movie was beautifully shot and edited, and showed the Marines going through their counterinsurgency training at Twenty-Nine Palms Marine Base in California. It showed the Marine officers and Commanding General talking about the importance of every Marine being able to operate in the culture in the Middle East without offending the local population. It followed them over to Al’ Anbar province in Iraq, and showed engagements (dialogue) between the Marines and local Sheiks, the precursor to the work done by General David Petraeus that led to the ‘Surge’ in Iraq in 2007-8. And it showed a few inflammatory examples of things done by Soldiers and Marines that were wrong, but very little about the successes and compassionate dealings between ‘these killers’ and the local populations, that have paid such huge dividends.
The movie then moved to the story of one of their own (Michael Bhatia), a graduate student, who decided to try and make a difference by joining the Army’s “Human Terrain Program”. Showed e-mails from this individual from Afghanistan describing how he was helping units at the tactical level meet with and form relationships with local leaders. It is clear from his e-mails that he felt he was doing something important, and gratifying, however after he was killed by an IED, his colleagues in the film took the “oh what a waste, he could have done so much if he had just remained safely in the ‘Academy’ attitude”. In the words of my Commanding General, Major-General Rick Lynch, “You can either write about history, or you can make history”, and the young man in the film choose to make a difference on the ground, not just allow others to do it, while he sat back and wrote about it. Nothing was said of his contributions, an interview with members of the unit he was helping would have most likely yielded feelings of extreme gratitude that this young man had come to help them negotiate the intricate details of a foreign culture – but this was not done.
It was not the movie that got me worked up, it was the group of panelists and a few in the crowd that made the argument that “we as intellectuals have the duty to protect other cultures from our own government and military,” wow, really!! We have now become that cynical and arrogant, as to think that ‘our knowledge’ is so powerful, and our government so untrustworthy, that we are going to stay hold-up and not play out of fear that we might cause harm. Brilliant!!
The examples given were anthropologists working with the government and “we” the military to do in the American Indians in the late 19th Century, and to incarcerate Japanese Americans during WWII. These examples are extremely dated, in our own country, and show how this argument is being made outside of the context of current conditions. Additionally, the anthropologists used in these ‘old’ programs were used at the strategic level, where the information from the Human Terrain Teams is being used in real time engagements with local leaders and communities at the tactical level.
It would appear that these ‘brilliant people’ have not noticed how much America and with it the Army has changed in the last 60 years, or even since Vietnam. Today’s wars are fought “house to house” as the movie says, at the squad or platoon level, by men and women whose age averages about 21. These ‘intellectuals’ don’t seem to understand that it is the military (not State Department) that is protecting, living with, working with, engaging with, and fighting for and with the people in these cultures. They were concerned about us using their information for targeting. Again arrogance and lack of understanding. If a member of an HTT has an engagement with a local leader, and is told the bad guys are doing X, Y, Z, what is wrong with the military using that information, when the local leaders are asking us to fix the problem. Furthermore, it takes all forms of intelligence to accurately target, not just information from an anthropologist on the battle field. We are very good at Kinetic Ops and extremely accurate – guy has gun, he is shooting at us, we kill him, no culture required – we need help in the cultural engagement with the population we are not fighting. Additionally, the insurgents know this which is why they hide in villages, and behind women and children for protection, often without our knowledge until the fight is over – which creates a splash in the world press.
Not all members of the ‘Academy’ feel this way. In online discussions about this after the showing one of my Professors, Dr. Brian Davies, Professor, UTSA History Department posted this:
“I’m an old lefty, but it really irks me that so many “progressive” academics have no understanding of war or military life and no curiosity to learn about them. As long as they remain stubbornly ignorant about military policy they’ll stand no chance of shaping military policy constructively. A few years ago I spent a summer at West Point in a symposium about writing operational history. The officer faculty I met were very thoughtful people who had serious misgivings about the Rumsfeld strategy in Iraq and over-reliance on uncontrolled private contractors and they were furious about the shame Abu Ghraib was bringing to the Army. Academics could learn a lot by dialoging with them instead of demonizing them.”
Additionally, the ‘evil’ military and government did not just decide to corrupt anthropologists. General David Petraeus, PhD, after being a Division Commander in Iraq, conducted research and focus groups with other intellectuals, including Dr. David Kilcullen (Lieutenant Colonel, Australian Army, Counterinsurgency expert) to determine the most effective approach to gaining the trust of the Iraqi people, while countering the propaganda of Al ’Qaeda in Iraq. From that research ‘The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual’, or ‘COIN Manual’ was published, the ‘Surge’ in Iraq was designed, strategy and doctrine were changed, and executed. It was from this intellectual effort that the “Human Terrain Project” got its boost, and anthropologists got to ‘play’. It is just amazing how the ‘Academy’, our best and brightest, have no trust in “us” (the military) at all…
Just because we join the military, and receive the “evil training” in how to kill without hesitation does not mean that is all that we are – or that we can only deal with problems with a gun. Most of us – including the enlisted guys and gals – feel compassion for the Iraqi and Afghan people – especially for fighting a war in their country, but not against them – and have built lifelong friendships with some. It is not our job to make the policy decision to go to war, but it is our job once that decision has been made ‘to fight and win America’s wars’, and the more we know, understand, and can relate to the population the easier it is to extract the bad elements, while causing the least disruption and damage.
It is a very complicated and yes “complex” thing to do on the ground, and it took all of the creativity and ‘thinking outside of the box’ we could come up with to get it done. But building those relationships of mutual trust with the population allowed us to get it done – and now Iraq is not in the news. Afghanistan is even more “complex”, but this needs to be a group effort.
Oh, and the ‘former Marine Colonel’ on Avatar was an Asshole, and guys in the military that approach other cultures like that encounter a similar resistance and fate – and very often are the ones you hear about in the Press committing some atrocity. I thought that was one of the most important (all be it, most likely, unintended) lessons in Avatar (the intent I believe was to portray ‘us’ as uncaring, killers, hyped up on blood lust, and hell bent on destruction and carnage) – The failure to acknowledge the uniqueness and differences in a culture, and to build relationships based on trust, appreciation, and understanding, while you are conducting a counter insurgency fight will only put your people and the population at risk.
I (and all of my guys) are here today because we built those relationships and had the support, and even the protection of the locals. Without that it would have been a very different fight, and it is very likely that none of you would have ever heard from me, because I doubt very seriously that I would have lived through the summer of 2007.
The inherent lack of trust that is taught in our academic institutions, while great for academic endeavors, is a little too cynical and even arrogant when applied to everything government – to include the military. It has become an American cultural problem, we all talk about the Government being screwed up, and then we shrug our shoulders and elect the same people over and over… The military is however not elected, in my 22 years in the Army I have worked for five different Presidents / political administrations – three Republican, and two Democrat – we do not have the luxury of deciding what policies to support, and which ones not to, we simply must find the most efficient way to get our job done within the diplomatic and political constraints we are given.
To those that say the War is all about oil, and unjust I would also like you to consider this, when we are attacked as we were on 9/11 by an international terrorist organization that wants to destroy your country where do you fight back? Afghanistan was a fairly obvious choice because of the Taliban, and their open support of all things terrorist aimed at us. But Afghanistan is a difficult nut to crack for many reasons, and from a military stand point not ideal for fighting. Enter Iraq – Saddam Hussein and his sons presented a clear a present danger to not just their own people, but the Middle East and everyone else – they had already used chemical weapons on their own people, and given the ability would not have hesitated elsewhere. Iraq also provided us a great battle field to fight the international terrorist organizations.
In 2003 President Bush went to the aircraft carrier and announced the end of major hostilities in the Iraqi War – he was completely correct, in the Iraqi War of 2003, we started another war in Iraq in 2004, which has never been discussed. In 2004 and 2005 there was a huge influx of foreign fighters, Al’ Qaeda and other groups, and money into Iraq from the other Muslim nations in the Middle East. The Iraq War in 2003 was about taking Iraq, the War from 2004-8 was about ejecting Al’ Qaeda and other foreign fighters out of Iraq, and establishing stability to allow us to exit. Iraq gave us a place to fight where the insurgents could get to easily, and meant that we were able to deal with them halfway around the world, not on the Canadian border, or in New York or London. And, that is what we did.
Furthermore, we go to war to protect American interests, (and that is really the only reason). And to those that argue this is a war about oil, I say yeah, so what. You do not think that oil and natural gas are important to everything in this country? That is why we spend so much political, diplomatic, and military energy in the Middle East, while we allow Africa to just go down the toilet. It is a blinding flash of the obvious, and if you just imagine paying $10-20 a gallon for gas, and what that would do to our already crappy economy, I imagine you will see my point. I don’t like it either, but devote some of your efforts to making us no longer reliant on fossil fuels, not on denying the current reality that we must have them.
Many of the best people I know are in the military – truly compassionate people that really want to make a difference in the world – and it seems the wonderful things those people have done never get portrayed. 160,000 Soldiers working constantly for seven years in Iraq, and it always come back to the actions of a handful at Abu Gareb, or some other very small (percentage wise) event carried out by the few, etc.
All we ever talk about are the bad things that come from war, because those are the easy things to quantify. But there are a lot of great things too, advances in all kinds of technology, advances in medical techniques that have forever changed medicine, opportunities for the people in Iraq (and Afghanistan) to move forward and become part of the global community, and the indeterminate good that will come from cultures intermingling and getting to know one another. I am an optimist, always have been, but you have to fight the fight, you have to try, or nothing will ever change. It is one step at a time, a gradual thing – look at the change in our culture since the 1950s. Many are frustrated it has not come far enough, fast enough, but each year it continues to change, and many of these big changes are generational.
Just think about this statement when you are putting on your hat of judgment: “Moral superiority is the luxury of the comfortable – Most of the world does not have the luxury enjoyed by those of us in developed countries”. I would also argue that this statement has historically applied to the middle and upper classes in the United States and Europe in relation to their views of members of the lower classes.
From a non-anthropological standpoint, I found the film very moving, well-put-together, and informative, even to those who would watch it with no previous knowledge of Human Terrain.
As far as anthropology goes, I appreciated the balance of the film with the voice of the army consistently being heard and represented throughout the film in an even manner in conjunction with the scholars.
As per the Q & A after the screening, I wanted to let you know that I found the credit music very well placed, particularly after hearing about its significance and listening to the lyrics more closely post screening. Also concerning music, I was particularly appreciative of the use of music throughout the film. In no way did it ever seem to unfairly color what someone was saying or to insert any sort of favoritism of the filmmaker’s concerning one comment over another. Instead it only ever seemed to add dimension to the film and support the quality of it, thank you for that. Too often I feel like editors will use music derisively in order to get across their point rather than that of the informants.
Thank you so much for visiting San Antonio and taking the time to speak with us about your work. It was very educational in explaining what Human Terrain is and also raises some of the most important ethical issues surrounding it.
Excellent documentary! Great, even-handed approach to a very controversial topic. I was thrilled to see that the military perspective was represented in the film, as I see the merit to cultural awareness training in the military. As it is, the military needs to change its approach to its occupation in the Middle East, as it seems to be too much of a blunt object to negotiate the intricacies of undermining the insurgents in the Middle East. On the other hand, I would agree that the military needs to refrain from teaching culture in “cookie-cutter” form, oversimplifying a richly layered and complex culture.
Such ‘anthropological outreach efforts’ have been a staple of the various colonial programs ever since the 19th century, at least. See Conrad, Heart of Darkness:
…It appeared, however, that I was also one of the Workers, with a capital — you know. Something like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort of apostle. There had been a lot of such rot let loose in print and talk just about that time, and the excellent woman, living right in the rush of all that humbug, got carried off her feet. She talked about ‘weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways,’ till, upon my word, she made me quite uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that the Company was run for profit. “‘You forget, dear Charlie, that the laborer is worthy of his hire,’ she said, brightly…”
We can go back further and consider the adjunct role that priests and missionary types played in the European colonization of the Caribbean and Mexico – yes, they wanted to reduce the bloodshed and the slaughter of the native tribes, but in their minds that meant they had to be converted to Christianity – and in the end, they mostly ended up putting a charitable face on slaughter and genocide (although it seems infectious disease is what really did the most damage).
In the modern world, the main goal of CENTCOM is to protect the “energy security” of the Middle East region until 2030. Other issues – Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran’s military, Iraqi instability, even the Afghan-Pakistan conflict – come second to that primary goal. That’s right from the military strategy documents.
Unfortunately, they’re not talking about making sure everyone in the Middle East has a secure energy base – which would mean, say, shipping in a lot of solar panels and water pumps for all those Afghani farmers. They are talking about making sure that oil & gas get out of the region and onto world markets in a timely and secure manner. Our military is estimated to spend $150 billion a year (Treasury-GAO) on protecting oil shipping and oilfields, right?
Now, what plausible reason could an anthropologist have for participating in that task? What about the record elsewhere – in places like Chad and Cameroon, where the World Bank and Exxon built a $4 billion pipeline that was supposed to provide economic benefits to all the locals – or so the Exxon and World Bank anthropologists assured the natives – but in the end, it lead to pollution, increased logging, civil wars and even ethnic cleansing over oilfields in nearby Darfur.
Is there a better way to give support? Yes – don’t send anthropologists who could easily be confused with undercover CIA agents acting behind an academic front! Look at the Jan 2009 Paula Loyd attack – it’s clear that the Taliban will deliberately target such people – they even went after the Indian doctors who were helping poor families!
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/01/ap_armycontractor_010909w/
So, what DO you do?
November 12, 2009, NYT
“JURM, Afghanistan — Small grants given directly to villagers have brought about modest but important changes in this corner of Afghanistan, offering a model in a country where official corruption and a Taliban insurgency have frustrated many large-scale development efforts.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/world/asia/13jurm.html
You just have to trust the locals to use the money wisely – imagine that!
Perhaps one might think my view of the movie to be biased as I am the film makers sister. But on the contrary as he is my brother I expect more from him, and therefore can tend to be very critical. I admit, as I am the mother of 2 very active children everytime I have viewed this film I have done so with moments of interruption. There is however a strong impression that it left with me. I have always been against war of any kind, have an admiration for those who sacrifice to protect our country when necessary, but am horrified by wars that seem anything but very obviously vital to our democratic way of life. For this reason I have strongly opposed the war in Iraq. Yet this film left me with a feeling of respect for what those involved are trying to do, my eyes opened to a new possible type of war that at the same time it is being fought is attempting in some way to make the lives of those effected better in some way. A humanitarian approach to war seems an absurd way of viewing such a horrific event, but war is a human reality and I rest better knowing those at the front line are imperfectly, but valintly making an attempt. I also congratulate “academics” for analysis and questioning, and laud the blending of academic and miliatry theory in an effort to meet the complex challanges of the Iraq war. Chris
По моему мнению Вы не правы. Могу это доказать….
Der Derian discusses Human Terrain before screenings in San Antonio…..