Panel Criticizes Military’s Use of Embedded Anthropologists

[Adsos Letter]

Source: The New York Times
By PATRICIA COHEN

A two-year-old Pentagon program that assigns social scientists to work with military units in Iraq and Afghanistan has come under sharp criticism from a panel of anthropologists who argue that the undertaking is dangerous, unethical and unscholarly.

The committee, which released the report on Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, the discipline’s largest professional group, has been studying the program since its inception in 2007.

The panel concluded that the Pentagon program, called the Human Terrain System, has two conflicting goals: counterinsurgency and research. Collecting data in the context of war, where coercion and offensive tactics are always potentially present, “can no longer be considered a legitimate professional exercise of anthropology,” the report says.

The idea that the military should have a deeper understanding of the cultures and societies in which it operates is one that both academics and Defense Department officials support. How to accomplish that goal is the question.

LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/arts/04anthro.html?_r=2

[FiveGoodMen]

1. I was fully expecting a link to the Onion

[Adsos Letter]

2. Nothing surprises anymore.

[Historic NY]

3. Wait they are there to help foster understanding...sounds like a bunch of whiners.