War and the Culture of CultureHuman Terrain: War Becomes Academic. Film. Produced, written, and directed by James Der Derian, David Urdris, and Michael Urdris. Distributed by Bullfrog Films, Oley, PA. 2010.

Abstract

In the documentary Human Terrain: War Becomes Academic, the filmmakers trace two collateral arcs. One is about the Human Terrain System (HTS) project that is led by the U.S. Army. This project embeds social scientists with combat troops in Afghanistan and Iraq to obtain sociocultural data on local populations that can be used in military decision making. The second arc is about a young anthropologist, Michael Bhatia, who joins the HTS project and whose story ends tragically. In the prelude to this film we hear the framing questions: What are the objectives here? What is the why? The HTS project is controversial and has been publicly debated since its inception (see, e.g., Forte 2011; Gonzalez 2008; McFate and Fondacaro 2008). This film dives headlong into this debate without taking sides. The film begins with “Part I: Culture of War” in the desert of California at the Twentynine Palms Marine Air Ground Combat Center. Here the marines have created a simulated Iraqi village called Mojave Viper. The purpose of this training is to create simulations and scenarios using actors as Iraqi “locals” to help the marines deal with situations in a more realistic way. As the commander of the Fourth Marine Division put it, “We’re in a different war. We are in a war that is as much a cultural struggle as it is a military struggle. That demands subtlety and where, in the case of this sort of training, not only does the senior leadership need to put on the mantle of diplomacy, but so does the young corporal.” In “Part II: War Becomes Academic,” we see the tension that social scientists, particularly anthropologists, are struggling with in this program. The conversation turns to the changes in the nature of war and how the U.S. military is trying to deal with the new reality of counterinsurgency. One of the architects of the HTS project, Montgomery McFate, states that this project to reform the military grew out of a