Monty McFate

Monty McFate and the Human Terrain:

She's been invited to speak at the Southwestern Anthropological Association meeting (h/t InstaPundit. She's the one who came up with the concept of the Human Terrain System. This led to the rise of the Human Terrain Team (HTTs, which operate at the Brigade level) and Human Terrain Analysis Team (HTAT, a Division-level asset).

Honestly, it's one of the most positive developments to come out of what we call the war on terror. The HTT helps the Army understand the culture it is operating with, in order to limit misunderstandings, reduce friction, and therefore act as a cooling factor on insurgency growth. That means fewer insurgencies, shorter insurgencies, and therefore fewer dead and wounded noncombatants where we come to be involved.

The core objection seems to be that HTTs "enable" targeting, which is somehow a violation of ethics for an anthropologist. It's been my experience, however, that the Army was already pretty good at targeting. What the HTT does is make targeting less necessary.

I have been working with ours quite closely, expect to be working with them even more closely going forward, and I am glad they are here. Of course (as you will recall) I also hold a Master's degree in History, and value the very skills they offer: an ability to harmonize the military culture with academic rigor, and to help men trained in military honor to understand the workings of tribal honor.

I do think the academy should want to help, for patriotic reasons but also for humane ones. As I've written on occasion, the best education for a Westerner seeking to deal with this set of problems is to read the heroic epics, such as the Iliad and the Heimskringla. If you understand our own roots in very similar cultures, you can start to see how warriors can make a peace when no one else can -- as well as what kinds of things break such peace.

For more, here is Dr. McFate at SWJ.