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the question changes in its complexity depending on the angle you adopt toward it. from the military viewpoint, the advantages are obvious of having folk who can say something coherent about what is happening in the context of operations. without that information, it is close to impossible for operations to be coherent. but one would have thought that the military would gather this kind of information by way of intelligence operations.
in other words, the real problem appears to be the ineffectual character of intel gathering and processing operations within the american "security" apparatus. without intelligence, it doesnt really matter how many shiny hyper-expensive toys you have...you dont know where best to aim them.
so it seems to me that this amounts to either (a) a concession of incompetence concerning intelligence gathering in a combat area--which is very bad indeed for the us and (b) a logical extension of the rumsfeld just-in-time military, an outsourcing of intel functions that does not manage to speak its actual name.
from the viewpoint of an academic looking at this arrangement...
there are obviously violations of professional ethics involved because of the nature and flows of information generated.
there is a compromise of the character of anthropological work itself, a regression to the bad old colonial days when "knowing about" the Other meant translating a rationality into western-terms, a relation in which the Other was Strange and western rationality neutral. so its not really about understanding different social-imaginary spaces--its about subordinating them. instrumentalizing them. enabling a new and improved colonial presence, a somewhat more humane seeming one---anthropology in this context is a transition management technology, one that enables a shift from kill the heathen to use the natives....
a war situation simplifies things a bit by substituting the more accurate application of lethal force for the questions of managing the colonized.
there are more arguments along these lines thatone could spin out---but i gotta pull myself together for a 3-d event, so will stop here.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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