Weaponizing Anthropology by David H. Price

Author:David H. Price
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AK Press
Published: 2013-07-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six: Commandeering Scholarship - The New Counterinsurgency Manual, Anthropology, and Academic Pillaging

If I could sum up the book in just a few words, it would be: “Be polite, be professional, be prepared to kill.

— John Nagl, pitching the new Counterinsurgency Field Manual on The Daily Show

Soon after the U.S. Army and Marine Corps published their new Counterinsurgency Field Manual (No. 3-24), in December 2006, the American public was subjected to a well orchestrated publicity campaign designed to convince them that a smart new plan was underway to salvage the lost war in Iraq. In policy circles, the Manual became an artifact of hope, signifying the move away from the crude logic of “shock and awe” toward calculations that rifle-toting soldiers can win the hearts and minds of occupied Iraq through a new scholarly appreciation of cultural nuance.

At the time of this media blitz, things were going poorly in Iraq, and the American public was assured that the Manual contained plans for a new intellectually fueled “smart bomb” for an Iraqi victory. This contrivance was bolstered in July 2007, when the University of Chicago Press republished the Manual in a stylish, olive drab, faux-field ready edition, designed to slip into flack jackets or Urban Outfitter accessory bags (US Army & USMC 2007). The Chicago edition included the original forward by General David Petraeus and Lt. General James Amos, with a new forward by counterinsurgency expert Lt. Col. John Nagl and introduction by Harvard’s Sarah Sewell. Chicago’s republication of the Field Manual spawned a media frenzy, and Nagl became the Manual’s poster boy, appearing on NPR, ABC News, NBC, and the pages of the NYT, Newsweek, and other publications, pitching the Manual as the philosophical expression of Petraeus’ intellectual strategy for victory in Iraq (see Ephron 2006; Kaplan 2007; Kerley 2006; NPR 2007; Sutherland 2008).

The Pentagon’s media pitch claimed the Manual was a rare work of applied scholarship, and old Pentagon hands were shuffled forth to sell this new dream of cultural engineering to America. Robert Bateman wrote in the Chicago Tribune that it is “probably the most important piece of doctrine written in the past 20 years,” crediting this success to the high academic standards and integrity that the Army War College historian, Conrad Crane, brought to the project. Bateman touted Crane’s devotion to using an “honest and open peer review” process, and his reliance on a team of top scholars to draft the Manual. This team included “current or former members of one of the combat branches of the Army or Marine Corps.” As well as being combat veterans, “the more interesting aspect of this group was that almost all of them had at least a master’s degree, and quite a few could add ‘doctor’ to their military rank and title as well. At the top of that list is the officer who saw the need for a new doctrine, then-Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, Ph.D” (Bateman 2007).

The Manual’s PR campaign was extraordinary. In an August 23, 2007, Daily Show

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