Nomadic Thoughts

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Monday, February 05, 2007

Whaa?

I was browsing the Washington Post this morning and saw this story. I almost couldn't believe my eyes:

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, is assembling a small band of warrior-intellectuals -- including a quirky Australian anthropologist, a Princeton economist who is the son of a former U.S. attorney general and a military expert on the Vietnam War sharply critical of its top commanders -- in an eleventh-hour effort to reverse the downward trend in the Iraq war.

The anthropologist in question is Lt. Col. David Kilcullen of Australia, who has studied Islamic extremism in Indonesia. Kilcullen will be chief adviser on counterinsurgency. Also,

Kilcullen has served in Cyprus, Papua New Guinea and East Timor and most recently was chief strategist for the State Department's counterterrorism office, lent by the Australian government. His 2006 essay "Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency" was read by Petraeus, who sent it rocketing around the Army via e-mail. Among Kilcullen's dictums: "Rank is nothing: talent is everything" -- a subversive thought in an organization as hierarchical as the U.S. military.

So, not only do we now have an actual anthropologist in a position of (potentially) great military power, we have a man in charge who actually reads...anthropological literature. I have yet to decide if Kilcullen is a good decision or not (I know absolutely nothing about him or his policies) but we're definitely moving in the right direction if fresh ideas are being explored. Are we finally on the right track in Iraq?

Update: Ed Batista wrote an article about a month ago about Kilcullen that talks about his article on counterinsurgency. Also, Savage Minds had a post about social scientists and the military (with some good discussion in the comments) and links to a New Yorker article about the issue.

Posted by Will at February 5, 2007 08:35 AM in In the News

Comments

Posted by: JohnN at February 6, 2007 03:29 AM