AAA Executive Board Member discusses HTS Statement Vote

The AAA finally turned their blog into an actual functioning blog with new posts discussing new topics instead of one big post with hundreds of comments. This post re-introduced the blog back in late January. It is now called AAA Public Affairs. Here is the post that describes the new direction:

Thanks to everyone for their comments on the Human Terrain System (HTS) Statement. Discussions on this topic were so lively that we want to continue to use this blog to encourage public conversations on a broad range of AAA public affairs activities.

The newly named, "AAA Public Affairs" blog will function as an interactive space where AAA staff can share information and receive questions and feedback on AAA policy and advocacy efforts, statements and resolutions, public policy briefs, and commission activities.

By actively participating, you can share your knowledge and help guide future AAA policy and advocacy actions. We appreciate your courteous comments and look forward to many more lively conversations.

Unfortunately, by starting a blog but not really starting a blog, they killed all of the momentum that the HTS discussion would have given to an actual blog. There are 202 comments in that first post. There are a total of 5 comments in the 9 other posts, including a total 0 comments in the last 6 posts. They could have had an actual functioning blog with a community of participants, but they wasted all that momentum.

Some HTS comments continue to trickle in. First, there was this one in the welcome back post from pat:

I want to contribute my thoughts here. I have been working in Afghanistan and Pakistan for over 10 years, using medical anthropological insights to develop ways to deal with PTSD. It is very important for anthropologists to avoid being associated with military actions. It puts everyone in danger when this happens. I cannot stress how dangerous this makes work for the rest of us--those who work with the local populations and have no connection to the military.

I notice that the "everyone" that pat is referring to being in danger is really just researchers. Pat does not consider that the local populations have been in and continue to be in danger because the army often doesn't know what to make of cultural differences and can't communicate effectively with the people they are interacting with on a daily basis.

I also found this comment posted to the AAA blog post about the HTS statement. It is a reprint from a comment in the Anthropology News in February. I figured that it would not be seen by most considering the fact that it is post #201, so I am re-posting it here.

This is a recap for a larger audience ofcomments at the 2007 AAA Annual Business Meeting. I’m proud to be a liberal Liberal. I oppose the war in Iraq/Afghanistan. The war is tragic. I believe history will prove it maladaptive and stupid. Nonetheless, I was the only AAA Executive Board (EB) member who voted against the EB statement disapproving and finding as unacceptable the uses of anthropologyin the Human Terrain System (HTS) deployed in the war; two members did not vote.

The circumstances, I agreed, warranted a strong precautionary statementfrom the EB on ethical risks of HTS for anthropologists. I even helped draft such a statement.

In the end, however, I did not support the outright disapproval of HTS added to the statement at the last minute. Here’s why:

1) Empirically, I do not know enoughabout HTS to disapprove of it. All I know is from popular media or anthropologists’ private comments.

2) Ethically, the EB’s formal proclamation disapproving of HTS on ethical grounds (the ostensible professional/scientific reason for EB consideration inthe first place) does not accord with the AAA Ethics Code stipulations declaring “The American Anthropological Association (AAA) does not adjudicate claims for unethical behavior” and “no code or set of guidelines can anticipate unique circumstances or directactions in specific situations. The individual anthropologist must be willing to make carefully considered ethicalchoices…” [emphasis added], nor doesit accord with various caveats of the Code’s “Epilogue.”

3) Morally, given the publicized rationale of HTS as a substitute for “kinetic response,” that is, armed force (to usethe military euphemism), to whatever extent HTS might in fact reduce bloodshedand terror among our own people, among those who do battle against us, and among innocent bystanders, disapproval of HTS would be immoral. I didn ot want to have had any part in repudiating a program that saves lives. To fellow EB members, I extend sincerest gratitude for the warm graciousness with which you received my view on HTS. To all those at the business meeting offering that sprinkling of applause forme and to those who personally congratulated me, I extend heartfelt thanks. It troubles me, though, that some commendedme for being “so brave.” In the forum of reasoned discussion that AAA presumably offers, one should no thave to be “brave” to express oneself honestly. Then again, maybe there was a small “speaking-truth-to-power” tone in my lone voice on the EB against theapparent prevailing view at the 2007 AAA Annual Meeting.

J Anthony Paredes Former AAA Executive Board Member