The Culture Warriors

Lisa Verdon, the human terrain team's social scientist, observes a meeting of sheiks.

Fouad Lghzaoui, the team's cultural analyst, speaks with a local leader during a walk along a once bustling Baghdad street.

Easy targets. Over dinner at FOB Falcon, Tompkins and Jeff decompress. Their days are stressful—in their first month in Iraq, a humvee they were in was hit by a roadside bomb. Jeff has bits of shrapnel still in his arm, and as a result of the explosion, both occasionally have trouble hearing each other over the din of the dining hall. They know, they say, that anthropologists in war zones are easy targets for satire—even within the brigade. They joke about soldiers coming to them to ask about the cultural implications of, say, killing an entire town—a bit of admittedly dark humor, they are quick to add.

Despite the occasional jokes, the input has been invaluable for the brigade, Gibbs says. He points to one recent incident, when the team came across a series of snake posters in an Iraqi neighborhood that read "Say no to sectarianism" in Arabic, explains Jeff, and had "some funky hand-drawn snakes on them." The team researched snakes—positive symbols in the context of local culture. "When I first saw the snake posters, I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, this means they hate us,' " Gibbs says. "Then I saw that I could capitalize on it."

Tompkins notes that the incident, too, illustrates the challenges of churning out clear-cut "lessons learned"—a favorite military pursuit—for the brigade. After the snake poster episode, for example, the initial impulse from one soldier was to suggest putting snakes on all posters. "You can draw the wrong lessons," says Tompkins, "or the lessons too strongly."

The teams are aware, too, of the controversy surrounding the work they do and what the military calls "information operations," also known by the highly charged but still commonly used term "psychological operations." These are efforts that the military believes are at the crux of any counterinsurgency campaign: winning over the local population. "It's marketing, not mind control," says HTS Program Director Steven Fondacaro. "A commander might say, 'Wow, it's great to know that this tribe has been fighting for water rights in this oasis area for 600 years.' But the question still on his mind is 'So what?' How do you reach people with a message and a solution that's right for them?"

Making a difference. For their part, Tompkins and Jeff would like to see the military do less advertising through big contractors on job websites and more outreach to the academic community, perhaps offering to speak in debates on campus. Doing so might give a chance, Tompkins adds, for the military to challenge scholars, too: "One argument I haven't heard the military make is 'To what extent are you valuing your discipline over real lives that you could be making a difference in?' That might not change any minds, but you could make the case."

Some anthropologists, while remaining critical of the program, are beginning to argue that perhaps the Pentagon has a point, to an extent. "I think we need to break out of the 1960s mold that many of us are in," says Shweder. He notes that such a move is "a long way" from supporting the notion of anthropologists on the Pentagon payroll, but he adds that perhaps it is time for social scientists to more constructively participate in conversations with the military. "My perception," he says, "is that the military is more free-thinking than other parts of the government." Fondacaro says that he was recently approached by the head of the American Anthropological Association, who suggested a sit-down.

Back at FOB Falcon, Tompkins says that the team's greatest challenge on the streets of Iraq mirrors its biggest hurdle on the home front: overcoming suspicion of the American military. "Just saying, 'Trust us, we're the good guys,' isn't going to get us very far."