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To go to war or not to go to war

The Cal State Long Beach Anthropology Department held a debate last Wednesday in the Karl Anatol Center that had Long Beach community members, CSULB students, staff and faculty participate in what is one of the larger current debates with the war in Iraq.

The debate, called “Anthropology Goes to War,” had panelists discussing the Human Terrain System (HTS) where anthropologists, who study cultures and social traditions of humans, are hired under the military as contractors to lead Human Terrain Teams (HTT).

The employment of anthropologists in Iraq and Afghanistan is “for the purpose of collecting cultural and social data for use by the U.S. military,” according to the American Anthropology Association (AAA).

“Our military is now fighting a more culturally sensitive war,” said Roberto Gonzalez, an associate professor at San Jose State, founding member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists and panelist of the debate.

Some panelists agreed to the extent that HTS will improve the conditions of the war.

“It’s very much to the military’s credit that culture actually matters … [HTS] allows anthropology to contribute to a solution,” said Jack Stuster, a debate panelist and researcher of 26 years at Anacapa Sciences Inc., an ergonomics and human factor research firm.

Six five-member teams have already been sent to Iraq with one anthropologist in each team. They are embedded wearing military uniforms and often carry weapons, according to the USA Today.

The onset of the program, according to The New York Times, “began in late 2003, when American officers in Iraq complained that they had little to no information about the local population.”

“It seems that HTS represents a 180-degree turn,” said Ann Pitts, a cultural anthropology graduate student and debate panelist.

“My feeling at this point is that we should be bringing home troops and contractors … rather than sending applied anthropologists to mess things up even more,” said Ron Loewe, the introducer of the debate and anthropology department associate professor.

The ethical implications of using researchers under the military worry the AAA and other anthropologists.

The AAA released a statement October 31, 2007, displaying opposition to the HTS: “In the context of a war that is widely recognized as a denial of human rights and based on faulty intelligence and undemocratic principles, the Executive Board sees the HTS project as a problematic application of anthropological expertise, most specifically on ethical grounds. We have grave concerns about the involvement of anthropological knowledge and skill in the HTS project.”

Gonzalez agreed, stating that controlling the use of information once it is released to the U.S. military poses a threat to civilian lives. He said that the information could be used for non-peaceful matters, such as an attempt to gain economic control.

The research done before a conclusion was made by the executive board of the AAA was not systematic; however, the AAA felt that the ethical concerns of the HTS were strong enough.

“This poses a risk that information … could be used to make decisions about identifying and selecting specific populations as targets of U.S. military operations … Any such use of fieldwork-derived information would violate the stipulations in the AAA Code of Ethics that those studied not be harmed,” the statement said.

Pitts said that the opposition concluded at the AAA meeting in October was because most of the anthropologists were older and had been in the field a long time, and because no research showed concrete evidence of it working one way or the other.

“Maybe the AAA doesn’t have faith in the ethics and guidelines they have taught us … do they not trust the next generation?” Pitt said. “Worse things may happen if we do not participate … we must become activists.”

The AAA also had concerns that the HTS “may create serious difficulties for, including grave risks to the personal safety of, many non-HTS anthropologists and the people they study.”

The U.S. Army stated that intelligence reports from anthropologists would not necessarily allow them to forecast future actions of enemies, but would rather “help us better understand what motivates them, what is important to the host nation in which we serve, and how we can either elicit the support of the population or at least diminish their support and aid to the enemy,” said Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, according to the U.S. Army website.

“Anthropology has been given this opportunity to contribute,” Stuster said. “Officers feel unprepared.”

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