Small Wars Journal: SWJ Blog: Ivory Tower? Or Glass?: Print This

Regular readers here are aware that Dr. David Price is an ardent critic of the “pilfered scholarship” behind FM 3-24, COIN. There are many nuances to that discourse, and I don’t doubt that I am about to bludgeon them into one dimension. But a core issue Dr. Price consistently raises is that of attribution. Or more accurately, non-attribution. Non-attribution seems to be the big proton-like nucleus issue around which the electron issues of plagiarism, shoddiness, informed consent, ethics, dim-wittedness, speed-to-press, and pesky utility to the warfighter seem to spiral in infinite relativistic velocity.

The COIN authors’ counter to the Counterpunch article, et al, has fairly consistently been that it is a manual, not an academic work. Not so fast….

Small Wars Journal has found a working draft of part of the manual. And darn if it doesn’t look like some legitimate academic rigor went into the whole thing from the beginning.

SWJED professed here of his experience with editors when working on the Urban GIRH. Many others know the drill. It appears that more of the same may have occurred here with FM 3-24 -- an editorial decision to go light on the footnotes, not an absence of intellectual rigor, and certainly not an intent to pilfer. At least not in this stage of the development effort. I’ll also observe, at risk of not only drinking the Kool-Aid but of spilling some on my shirt, that I am surprised, in a heartening way, that there has been a bare minimum of finger-pointing from the authors at the editors. They knew the scholarship was solid. They knew the almighty footnotes were in there. And they knew that to tens of thousands of operators, it didn’t matter. So they didn’t pass the buck. They've stood behind the strength of their work and accepted the editorial decisions, despite whatever individual opinions they may have.

All along this has been a clash of cultures – that of the ivory tower, with that of the operator or manual / doctrine writer. Dr. Price has a point, within his domain. Ironically for an anthropologist, he fails to see and appreciate the limits of the application of his domain. Even more unexpectedly, his own published scholarship now seems to fall short of his own standards. It is one thing to criticize FM 3-24's failure to live up to a set of ivory tower academic standards that may or may not apply, U of Chicago reprint notwithstanding. It is quite another to throw stones from a glass house.

Witness, first case in point, Dr. Price’s quote from his first Counterpoint article. He quotes section 3-20, Society as:

sociologists define society as a population living in the same geographic area that shares a culture and a common identity and whose members are subject to the same political authority

In fact, section 3-20 in the published version is:

A society can be defined as a population whose members are subject to the same political authority, occupy a common territory, have a common culture,and share a sense of identity. A society is not easily created or destroyed, but it is possible to do so through genocide or war.

Second, in the same article, he states "I have such high respect for Jon Nagl's academic work and sense of propriety…” Perhaps not so much that he will spell John’s name correctly, or recognize service-specific norms for rank abbreviation (e.g. LTC vs. Lt. Col. or LtCol). Nit-picky, sure! But given the name-spelling spat as one element of his strident critiques published here in SWJ Magazine volume 8 on another piece, we no longer know where the bar lies. Certainly below our radar screen for substance. But if he's going to make this his crusade, at least he could start criticizing the published version instead of some exposure draft, and living by his little sword.

So onward we go. FM 3-24 isn’t perfect. And we don’t have HTTs down to a science yet. But the broken eggs are the price to pay for the bit of cake we have and desperately need. Let’s get on with the icing, a better cake, and applying anthropology and other disciplines in practice in our cultural steps and mis-steps. Not with trying to put humpty dumpty’s footnotes back together again.

For the record, Dr. Price was very cordial in offering us publication of his latest response. Given its nature as a direct rebuttal to LTC Nagl, we offered publication via our blog comments and/or discussion board thread on the topic, with appropriate editorial highlighting and links to set it out from the fray. Dr. Price opted instead to pursue other venues.

- Bill

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See also:

Dr. David Price’s original Counterpunch article.

Army Response to Counterpunch - Small Wars Journal

Desperate People with Limited Skills - LTC Nagl, Small Wars Journal

A response to the response(s) -- David Price's reply in Counterpunch. Published 3 Nov.

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3-24 Chapter... Now With Footnotes! - Abu Muqawama

Disregard Academic Critiques of the New COIN Manual - Thomas P.M. Barnett

COIN Manual Plagiarized? - Outside the Beltway

Anthropology Ass'n Blasts Army's "Human Terrain" - Danger Room (Wired)