Holy Minerva! Scientists at War over Human Dignity
March 19, 2009
by George Thomas
The American voter has again convulsed, and the national pendulum appears to be swinging away from a kind of childlike overconfidence.
I shared that common sigh of relief as the world watched Barack Obama begin his term of office. With this promise of competence at the top I’m not sure how I should act. Among many other concerns, we might also get started trying to stop the hemorrhaging of government science advice.
The techie know-how and the appreciation of science that Truman inherited after World War II evolved into a somewhat legitimate process of science advice. Even foreign policy was remade to cope with post-War realities. Government appreciation of science, as well as a know-how, can-do, benign value for Western positivism expanded under Eisenhower and Kennedy, ran into a snag in Vietnam, then coasted through the ‘60s and ‘70s until we hit Reagan.
Ever since then there’s been a downward spiral in science advisorship. This has been fueled by a return to fundamentalist religions and a virulent distrust of expertise that has grown to such an extent that science has become a defendant before government panels and courts. While raising questions is supposed to be a healthy, outside-the-box thing, by the close of the Clinton administration the Religious Right had framed the issues in dogmatic terms and public distrust of science had become excessive.
We’re saddled with fundamentalist religion and science taking each other to court, a defense establishment reconsidering how best to turn scientists into high-tech whiz-kids at their service, and (surprise-surprise!) some noticeable irritation in far-off lands where the US defense agendas are not priorities. A Defense Department program called “Human Terrain Systems” has taken root, and is in the process of evolving into something or someone named “Minerva.” Not only has the terminology inspired critics to envision people walking all over each other, that vision has sort of come true. Already the program has become a focus of grotesque violence.
Can the pendulum of political change finally swing back under a new administration and new governing philosophies?
Ever since war and espionage were new ideas, naturalists and scribes (from whom modern ethnographers descended) have been enlisted by government to provide “useful knowledge” to aid war efforts and general espionage. Scientists haven’t always followed like sheep: One American anthropologist published a famous letter in The Nation in 1919, condemning the use of “Scientists as Spies.” (He was of German descent, so naturally he was watched closely for any ties to the Kaiser).
Nothing has changed, and the larger paychecks are still reserved for educated sheep. Some point out that Herodotus started it all during the Roman Empire, way back when anyone venturing to study strange, foreign societies was interested mostly in ridiculing foreigners and stoking the Emperor’s ego. The true “social science” bunch weren’t truly active until their more sophisticated observations were put to use during North America’s Indian wars. World War II jump-started several famous careers and prolonged other established famous careers, among them Margaret Mead, who kept herself popular through the 1950s with regular articles for housewives in Redbook Magazine.
Like the cautious cancer researcher seeking to keep his experimental results under wraps until they can be tested and approved for human application, cross-cultural area experts wage constant battles against foreign policy wonks, like hungry paparazzi, eager to sensationalize every tentative idea or doubtful generalization, sell them, and put them to use in service to the bureaucracy. Touchy subjects and doubtful conclusions must be sold, you see, before they are debunked.
The basic process hasn’t changed in over two thousand years because, frankly, viewing alien cultures and societies is more difficult than our feel-good popular understanding would have us believe. Anyone who occasionally watches “Nat-Geo” or the Discovery Channel would agree that cultures differ and that values clash. Most people have no time for serious reflection, so most people relegate cultural know-how to the glossy-paged volumes on the coffee table. But when people see actual examples of clashing values, they become offended and horrified.
One November 2008 double tragedy in Afghanistan was interesting and complex, so your local paper probably didn’t cover it. “Human Terrain” scientist Paula Loyd, a modern “scientist-as-spy,” was doused with gasoline and set ablaze. The Human Terrain employee assigned to guard the Afghan perpetrator, when he learned the seriousness of Loyd’s injuries, shot the man in the head execution style. This employee awaits trial in the United States for murder. There are internet blogs and campaigns in his support.
All of this reminds us how reality distorts our Bush Era illusions of good and evil, right and wrong, my way or the highway and yer fer us or ag’in us. When we consider the tragedy in all its multi-dimensional ugliness everyone, from the simple-minded executives who set Bush administration policies in motion, to more cautious experts, to you and me, is offended and horrified. Loyd passed away in January as a result of those November injuries.
What’s important here is not that the double disaster overshadows the many other losses of life resulting from ideologically entangled foreign encounters, nor Taliban efforts to force women into unaccustomed roles even more subservient than any women’s roles of ancient history, nor anticipated assassination attempts of key figures in propped-up, cardboard-façade “democracies” – (oh my, one is not supposed to say that kind of thing).
What’s important is that the incident was not surprising. Scientists working as spies on the front lines can’t expect to be treated any differently from other outsiders, particularly when they make it clear they are sponsored by the military, even holding military ranks, as did Paula Loyd.
Of equal importance is the moral conundrum which this incident embodies: American conservatives, after learning of the string of events which we have termed an “incident,” whine, “so now it’s illegal to kill murderers in Afghanistan?”
It’s an inevitable no-win situation. Reality dashes the more naïve liberal or progressive hopes. We’ll have to wait still longer before we find out whether the world’s assorted ideologically disgruntled people might become less prone to blow themselves and others up in public places if only US policies became more realistic, and less impatient for the rest of the world to become like Americans.
Do US policies truly work against local concerns? Whether these beliefs are fueled by reality or imagination, it is often the popular American perception. It will be very difficult to clean up our act and regain some “cred” on the Arab, African, Southeast Asian “street.” Many Middle Eastern situations have escalated beyond the point where outside intervention can help anyone, and indeed US intervention has become a negative focus.
Many Americans believe that the military, Henry Kissinger and suits with briefcases handle all US interests abroad, while Birkenstock-wearing professors with clipboards and backpacks provide only fluff and that silly, popular Nat-Geo and Discovery Channel nonsense. What’s more, many believe that most academics are independently wealthy. We allow them to collect their information for consumption by a public that doesn’t work for a living, and we then isolate them on ivy-covered campuses while the adults get back to work. Secretary of Defense Casey has followed these adult leads, and plans to expand “Human Terrain Systems into something called the “Minerva Consortium.”
Under Minerva, scientists will have a stronger flow of research dollars. But the new, expanded opportunity for spy-scientists assures that anyone trying to get straight answers from local tribal “informants” will have an even tougher time than before. There has always been a natural reluctance for people to mingle in good faith with outsiders working for large bureaucracies pushing an outsider agenda. Now this setup is to become the rule. Academics fear that Minerva will further distort the goals and assumptions under which research is done. Most of the world’s people have not received the memo that US hegemonic goals are in everyone’s best interest, and that uniformed outsiders with clipboards are friends.
There is a worst-case scenario for us to contemplate here. With Western economic and social hegemony there will be losers and winners, and only one of those groups will write the history. We will all then watch as non-Western societies develop into a mass of disillusioned, disenfranchised, chronically impoverished laborers in an increasingly uninteresting, homogenized, unsustainable world.
Again we wonder, as Barack Obama proceeds methodically through his first 100 days: Can the pendulum of political change swing back?
Comments
9 Comments »
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Bob's Bail Out Plan by bobl-tlm
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How Do You Like Deregulation Now? graphic politics by Dicky Neely
Well, anyone who thinks Herodotus lived to see the Roman empire certainly has confidence in the science of longevity
OOPS, sorry. His prolific writings were all Greek to me. And here all this time I’ve been under the impression that Herodotus had fueled a boycott against the mention of Romulus and Remus! Those “some” to whom I attribute Herodotus starting it all after about 40 BC, clearly had decimal point problems.
GT
According to Wired, the Afghan that was killed was Loyds assistant, not the person that doused her with gas and set her aflame.
What is wrong with calling them social scientists, rather than Human terrain analyists? Is the point you are making that over-simplification and failure to understand cultural issues going to be the end of us? Spin is the nature of greedy hegmonic interests. Its a feature, not a bug.
Maybe this is all as it should be. Unsustainable excess brings down all empires. Seeing Obama in office, I don’t beleive he can stop it, if he actually wanted to in the first place. Power is intoxicating.
The policies or procedures haven’t changed, only the face and the rhetoric.
700 dead civilians in punjab, with 12 dead Taliban since Obama took office.
Isreali IDF assassins are picking off Gaza Farmers working their fields, Israel is still bulldozing orchards in Gaza, and homes in Jerusalem while making room for Jewish only housing developments. Settlement expansion continues, while Gazans pick through rubble and struggle to get through a single day.
Kay Mansfield. A thoughtful rant. Welcome to the chaos of competing, thoughtful rants.
Spin creates counterspin, and what else is new? I take it you don’t really believe social commentary and political opinion — either the “mongering” or the “realist” types — should quit hollering foul and go along to get along. Whining is a long and hallowed tradition that may actually suffer for a while as our means of giving and taking competing whines goes through changes and the death of old media and paper you can HO-O-O-OLD….
While “empires,” as you put it, have all tended toward entropy (fallen), there have always been the informed and edumuckated whiners who have enjoyed tweaking folks and pointing out what’s been going wrong. Some whiney tweakers have been blowing smoke and simply ranting in support of what drags us down in the first place, but hey, that’s why the post-Magna-Carta Founding Daddies (upstanding Deists all) hammered the US constitution and other problematical documents into being: All hail the marketplace of good mixed with the not-so-good and even some lousy ideas. That’s where interesting, sometimes even constructive changes come from, not to mention the War in Iraq and WOT, when America paused for a time and allowed Neoconservative utopean idealism and 14th Century enlightenment another go.
It is, of course, not subject to debate that, as you say, “maybe this is all as it should be,” and that we’ll never get rid of “unsustainable excess” from nation state governments and nonstate “actors” with human prejudices and imperfections. The debate over whether social scientists compromise themselves by embedding with military forces, is an old and nasty one, with good points on all sides. Whether a bevy of anthropologists advise the “coalition” military on local perceptions and what locals in a war zone seem to think they want and need, or we go along without “experts,” the end result always seems to be bad. Introduce the “experts” and their own lame attempts at ethical codes are invalidated, so with the normal disaster we also lose much trust in that “expertise”. We end up losing the Powell “Doctrine” as well as a mollifying voice.
They even chose to ignore intelligence pros. I suspect that’s what softened military intel folks to accept more wild-eyed contingents of “social scientists” finally, as spurred on by General Dave.
Power is intoxicating, even for Obama. Change is always slow, and usually not what one was expecting. Unlike physics, societies don’t operate according to pat formulae. Obama knew this, and that may be one reason why he has appeared to keep his cool through the inevitable chaos.
But at least we can try to help amplify some voices of reason, even if we discover years from now that we were wrong too.
GT
And “K Mansfield,” I hope you forgive me if your “K” stands for “Karl” and not “Kay.” I swear it was a typo.
G
G, I do appreciate social commentary. I am merely disgusted that with all the information and underdstanding about cultures is sidelined in the interest of business. Idiots and ideologs are allowed to make decisions that cost millions and millions of lives. Time after time. Even in this case, who doesn’t know that an uncovered woman is not socially or culturally acceptable in Taliban controlled Afghanistan? So she goes out To study that culture while ignoring what is already known. Sheesh! Humanity is not advancing . My take on it is that we are too stupid to control even technology that pollutes, WMD’s should be out of the question.
The issue is over whether “social scientists” should engage in embedded advocacy and expertise work under sponsorship of huge bureaucracies with overriding goals not shared by the local people, tribes, villagers, etc. Without the trust of local people, and without adhering to the locals’ perceived wants and needs, some social scientists can’t continue to collect much valid information, nor can they pretend it won’t be used against the locals’ interests, even when it won’t. The social science fields involved become compromised through this engagement. Regardless of the money spent on local cultural expertise, military and corporation sponsorship of social scientific work diminishes the science. Of course the simple act of understanding and empathy with other cultures not reliant upon our own, sends many sponsors and leaders of our society into reaction against those efforts at understanding and empathy. Case in point: recall the outcry from whining commentators and right wing politicians when Obama stated that one of his criteria for selecting a Supreme Court nominee would be his or her “empathy” toward less favored folks.
It’s really not much more than that, but that says a mouthful or two. It explains why not much if any “progress” has ever been made in international, transnational, subnation and non-national global comaraderie, kumbaya, lions bedding lambs, and the whole peace and love thing. When our influential folks observe what respect for “other customs” entails, they reveal themselves to be against the whole kebosh. And as far as I can tell, nobody on the Right has even considered listing precisely how Western industrial wellbeing would suffer as a result of supportable global cooperation and “empathy.”
Nobody ever said social science was easy. In fact, Einstein is supposed to have stated somewhere that it’s more difficult than physics. Y’see, Einstein chose the easy way out: ground-breaking physics.
G
Well, anyone who thinks Herodotus lived to see the Roman empire certainly has confidence in the science of longevity
I answered to this blunder approx. two months ago. As I recall, I was very, very gracious in defeat. It was the very first comment. As with the first to point this out, I appreciate it. I think my mistake stems from an old college-days lecture in which I missed some details while taking my usual copious notes, and assumed that a name ending in the Latin “US” — or “VS” — must be Roman. Or, to give myself some hard-to-justify credit, it’s possible that the lecturer, whoever he was, got it WRO-O-O-ONG!
NOT!
I hate to dwell on this, but durn-it, people keep FINDING it. So yes, really, all you guys etc. who must comment on the Roman Herodotus clone, you win! I had it coming!
G