Some Academics Are More Gripless Than Politicos!

More than twenty years ago the Geek started writing on the nature of insurgency. As many of his previous posts show, the Geek is firmly convinced on the basis of historical experience that counterinsurgency is waged on what he has called "the human terrain." When the Geekmo started lecturing to the military on this need, he was met with stony indifference mixed with gales of derisive laughter.

The laughter grew to Category V hurricane level when he suggested that the military would benefit from the insights of anthropologists and other social scientists when the US next engaged in counterinsurgency.

The laughs are gone now.

The Pentagon has inaugurated the experimental inclusion of anthropologists and others in combat units deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. This development has even made the mainstream media. See, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/05/world/asia/05afghan.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin.

Thumbs up to whoever suggested and, more importantly, approved the experiment. The "human terrain" project, if correctly employed, will prove to be a force multiplier. It will also prove to be a casualty reducer.

It is the second consideration that leads the Geek to froth at the mouth over the stance taken by some academics quoted in the cited article. To put the matter short and simple, these gripless inhabitants of the Groves of Academe apparently don't care if the use of insights gained from anthropology, social psychology, and akin disciplines save lives.

That's right, these pseudo-moralists do not give a rodent's anus if lives, particularly those of Iraqis and Afghans are saved by techniques that limit the need for deadly force.

All the Geek can do is gnash his teeth.

Having been an academic for nearly twenty years, the Geek knows the relentlessly clueless nature of most members of the professorate. He is all-too-well acquainted with the standard issue professor's obliviousness to reality when the real world conflicts with ideological predilections. He is also well aware of the typical emotionally driven, ideologically polluted prof's great need to bloviate if asked a question--particularly by a member of the media.

As a result, he is willing to discount much of the empty-minded quacking quoted in the cited article. But, when individuals who know nothing of the history they distort to meet ideological requirements are cited, the Geek has to blow the whistle.

During the Vietnam War there were a number of attempts to use the social sciences to assist in the American effort to understand and fight effectively on the human terrain. The Geek has read many, even most, of social scientists' reports and studies.

Some were, to put it as kindly as possible, travesties. Many were innocuous. A few were good, even excellent. None were, as the NYT article implies, sinister or possessed of evil effect.

What is true, but ignored by both the academic critics and the NYT writers, is that the social science efforts were almost entirely discarded by the same Pentagon that funded them. All intelligence, including the fruits of specialized knowledge in a field of social science, is useless if it is ignored by those who make and implement decisions.

A prime characteristic of the Vietnam War, a characteristic that was in large measure responsible for our self-inflicted defeat in that war, was the willingness of decision makers and implementers to discard intelligence. If the intelligence wasn't exactly what commander guys from the White House down to the combat brigade level wanted to receive, the response was always the same.

Toss it out!

Accepting some of the better studies by social scientists would have required admitting that the American way of war in Vietnam was a failure. Accepting the results of the field work would have necessitated the construction of an entirely new doctrine, a new method of fighting.

That was unthinkable. Literally.

Right now, as a result of experience backing the truth of the criticisms of US counterinsurgency doctrine made over the preceding two decades, the Army and Marine Corps have a new doctrine for counterinsurgency. Right now, the two services are wide open to the idea that successful counterinsurgency requires approaches that are opposite to those needed in conventional war.

Right now, today and into the near-term, anthropologists and other social scientists can have a great impact. A positive impact. A life-saving impact. An impact that can help assure the difference between losing and not losing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The ideologues who oppose the inclusion of social scientists in the effort to bring stability to Iraq and Afghanistan evidently want the US to fail.

Worse, infinitely worse, these exemplars of academic purity and ethical vacuum want more human beings to die. Down deep inside the empty wells that constitute their brains, these critics and opponents must relish the pornography of blood, feces, and death.

The Geek cries, "Spare me from academics!"