A couple of weeks ago, Ed Hooper wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution tried to resurrect the debate about the decline of military history in American schools of all levels by using Medal of Honor winner Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta and other celebrations of military history to show that while our culture honors the media, our intellectuals don't. The core of his argument is the claim that not only has military history been chased out of elementary and secondary education in addition to colleges and universities because post-modernists reject the idea of heroes and villains required to teach such patriotic subjects as military history. Of course, since he is writing an op-ed, Hooper doesn't bother to provide any evidence of the decline he fears, or that it is post-modern attitudes on the behalf of the educational establishment that are responsible for such a decline.
As he has in the past, Prof. Mark Grimsley of Ohio State responded by vigorously defending the continued existence of military history in all levels of the American educational system. Unlike Hooper, Grimsley uses both anecdotes and evidence to show increasing numbers of graduate programs in military history and interest at the K-12 level. Grimsley also shows that Wisconsin added a new endowed chair in military history.
As much as Grimsley's comments make me feel better about my discipline, I still have to acknowledge that it is more difficult for a military historian to find a tenure track job than historians in many other disciplines. In this, I am in the same boat as political, diplomatic, and economic historians, who find themselves at a disadvantage compared to historians working in gender, cultural, or religious history. This is much the same disadvantage that recent graduates with PhDs in Modern United States History find themselves at when compared to historians of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.
Despite this, my experience is not that military history has disappeared from the academy at any level. While Hooper can claim that military history disappeared from K-12 education generations ago, my experience is different. As a student in both DoD and regular public schools from 1976-1989, I ran into the ideas of military history in both settings. My sixth grade teacher in Rantoul, Illinois taught the most complete view of the Civil War that I saw until I reached college. My eighth grade history teacher acted out the British charge at Breed's Hill in our classroom (using his cane to simulate a musket with bayonet). We learned about the Minutemen at all levels of school, and about heroes such as Nathan Hale, executed for spying by the British.
I'm a member of Gen-X. That makes my elementary and secondary school education decades ago, and we got a surfeit of military history in the classroom.
As an undergrad, I got military history in almost every history class I took. USF offered courses (among others)in Ancient History by Bill Murray and G. Kelly Tipps, the Civil War by John Belohlavek, the Vietnam War and United States Military History by Cecil B. Currey, and addressed military topics in most other classes, including the History of Baseball. All of that at a university that the Princeton and Barron's college guides of the day called "a throwback to the 1960s." USF may have changed in the 20 years since I left, but I think Hooper is making too much of this issue.
Historicus - Military History, books, and teaching
Saturday, December 8, 2012
The Pop Culture Divide
Posted by Chris at 9/7/2008 4:50 PM ...
During our discussion of Playing Cards in Cairo, Tim, Grandmasta and I pondered whether Cairenes (or other Egyptians) really interacted with American pop culture in the way Hugh Miles indicated. Grandmasta argues that only upper class Egyptians would have the kind of contact with American media to identify Oprah or other celebrities. I can't disagree, as he and Tim are the ones with actual experience of Egypt, and it also makes sense. How many poor people will have access to satellite television, or be interested in American shows?
Still, people in other nations are familiar with American pop culture in ways we are not with theirs. This applies to both industrial and developing nations. We still don't have an explanation for why, other than parochialism of ourselves and our media. Tim's example was of Umm Kulthoum, an Egyptian star of the 1950's and 1960's. One source claims she was the most popular musician of the last century in the Middle East, but I had not heard of her until Tim mentioned it. I might have heard her name before, but if I did, I certainly don't remember it. Still, you would think that at least educated Americans would know her name.
I imagine that these days the only way for a celebrity from the Middle East to penetrate the awareness of modern Americans is to appear in an Hollywood film, or to die tragically in a scandal involving an important politician, as did Lebanese star Suzanne Tamim, who was recently murdered in Dubai. Despite the location of the article on CNN.com, I imagine most people in the United States skimmed right over it. In fact, I probably only clicked the link due to my conversation Tim about just this issue.
Why care? Mostly this is a symptom of Americans' isolation from the rest of the world, similar to, but less problematic than, not learning a foreign language. Being more familiar with the pop culture of other nations can only help us understand them better, which to me would reduce the fear of the unknown most people get when they encounter folks from distant places, or when those places pop up on the news. And, no, anime, manga, and Iron Chef, don't count.
During our discussion of Playing Cards in Cairo, Tim, Grandmasta and I pondered whether Cairenes (or other Egyptians) really interacted with American pop culture in the way Hugh Miles indicated. Grandmasta argues that only upper class Egyptians would have the kind of contact with American media to identify Oprah or other celebrities. I can't disagree, as he and Tim are the ones with actual experience of Egypt, and it also makes sense. How many poor people will have access to satellite television, or be interested in American shows?
Still, people in other nations are familiar with American pop culture in ways we are not with theirs. This applies to both industrial and developing nations. We still don't have an explanation for why, other than parochialism of ourselves and our media. Tim's example was of Umm Kulthoum, an Egyptian star of the 1950's and 1960's. One source claims she was the most popular musician of the last century in the Middle East, but I had not heard of her until Tim mentioned it. I might have heard her name before, but if I did, I certainly don't remember it. Still, you would think that at least educated Americans would know her name.
I imagine that these days the only way for a celebrity from the Middle East to penetrate the awareness of modern Americans is to appear in an Hollywood film, or to die tragically in a scandal involving an important politician, as did Lebanese star Suzanne Tamim, who was recently murdered in Dubai. Despite the location of the article on CNN.com, I imagine most people in the United States skimmed right over it. In fact, I probably only clicked the link due to my conversation Tim about just this issue.
Why care? Mostly this is a symptom of Americans' isolation from the rest of the world, similar to, but less problematic than, not learning a foreign language. Being more familiar with the pop culture of other nations can only help us understand them better, which to me would reduce the fear of the unknown most people get when they encounter folks from distant places, or when those places pop up on the news. And, no, anime, manga, and Iron Chef, don't count.
Excuse Me?
Posted by Chris at 4/21/2008 7:21 PM
Counter-insurgency operations require more intelligent, more mature, more stable troops to implement. Every misstep by the so-called "strategic corporals" lengthens the conflict and reduces the likelihood of success. So why does a force that is slowly gaining expertise in COIN operations recruit "convicted sex offenders, people convicted of making terrorist threats and child abusers"?
Keep in mind that the U.S. military in Iraq is just now rescuing its reputation from the effects of Abu Ghraib, the Haditha massacre, and excesses by private military contractors? This is a force that continues to have issues with sexual assault against its own personnel. So some idiot decides that its a good idea to bring in the folks that already have problems with violent crime into the force engaged in such sensitive operations. According to The Guardian, last year 511 recruits with felony convictions were recruited, following the 2006 total of 249.
The recruits included:
Counter-insurgency operations require more intelligent, more mature, more stable troops to implement. Every misstep by the so-called "strategic corporals" lengthens the conflict and reduces the likelihood of success. So why does a force that is slowly gaining expertise in COIN operations recruit "convicted sex offenders, people convicted of making terrorist threats and child abusers"?
Keep in mind that the U.S. military in Iraq is just now rescuing its reputation from the effects of Abu Ghraib, the Haditha massacre, and excesses by private military contractors? This is a force that continues to have issues with sexual assault against its own personnel. So some idiot decides that its a good idea to bring in the folks that already have problems with violent crime into the force engaged in such sensitive operations. According to The Guardian, last year 511 recruits with felony convictions were recruited, following the 2006 total of 249.
The recruits included:
The felons accepted into the army and marines included 87 soldiers convicted of assault or maiming, 130 convicted of non-marijuana drug offences, seven convicted of making terrorist threats, and two convicted of indecent behaviour with a child. Waivers were also granted to 500 burglars and thieves, 19 arsonists and 9 sex offendersThese individuals come from a greater pool of almost 35,000 enlisted recruits that received moral waivers in 2006. Interestingly, the Air Force and Navy are allowed to recruit people with multiple felony convictions, while the limit for the Army and Marine Corps is a single felony. I remember back in the 1980's it was harder to get into the Air Force or Navy than the Army, I guess that's no longer the case.
Fighting Insurgency
Posted by Chris at 9/7/2007 2:48 PM ...
Local Iraqi Sunni insurgents are beginning to fight back against al-Qaeda in Iraq, realizing that they bring more problems than they are worth. This is exactly the type of thing that you want to see when fighting an insurgency, but exploiting it will be difficult or impossible - U.S. interference could easily reunite the two groups against their common enemy. Douglas Farah writes that it might be possible for the United States to use Iraqi animosity toward al-Qaeda to broker a cease fire, with the goal of stabilizing Iraq and getting out. If the British weren't so keen on reducing their forces in Iraq, I would say that they had a better chance of acting as peacemaker due to their greater historical experience (and success) with insurgencies. They certainly not damaged their reputations as much in Iraq as our forces have, so it might be easier for them to act as a go-between.
Information Wafare
This part of fighting insurgency is something that the United States does not do well. Not ony does it require boosting the American public image around the world, but it means finding a way to counter Islamist terrorist propaganda operations in traditional and new media. As this post at MountainRunner illustrates, this is an area in which the United States is sadly failing. The criticality of the need to develop effective Information Warfare capabilities is further highlighted by Daveed Garstein-Ross' Counterterrorism Blog post about the new and more sophisticated face of Islamist terrorist leadership, which not only has military and theological credentials, but is conscious of the negative impact on its support when atrocities are committed and the need to foster economic and civil development in Islamic states run under Shari'a law.
Information Warfare is also about controlling the communications environment, not allowing the enemy to do so. One good example of how this works is in U.S. politics. The GOP has learned how to control the dialog by defining the terms used in the political landscape, to the Democrats dismay. This gives them a decided advantage at election time - Republicans have defined liberal as "bad", putting Dems at the disadvantage from the start. In the fight against Islamist insurgencies, we face the same problem. As long as Al-Qaeda and company define the terms - making terrorists into jihadis - the United States and its allies are losing the propaganda war.
To counteract this problem, counter-terror expert David Kilcullen is calling for a "New Lexicon" for describing the actions of al-Qaeda and other Islamists. Some examples, courtesy of Small Wars Journal:
"Soft" Resources
A recent DoD report seems to say that fighting against the insurgents in a traditional military campaign should not be our preferred strategy - getting out quickly and leaving a more stable environment should be. This falls inline with the guidance in John Nagl's Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife and Sir Robert Thompson's five rules for fighting insurgencies - killing people is sometimes counterproductive, particularly when the wrong people get killed. This was also a major theme of Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie, which devotes a significant portion of the text to the negative impact of free fire zones, indiscriminate shelling, and bombing campaigns. Every dead civilian helps the enemy when fighting an insurgency.
That's why today's Danger Room discussion on the use of Anthropologists and other Social Scientists in battling the insurgency in Iraq is so important. Rather than being more violent or more muscular in the prosecution of the war, a smarter, culturally aware approach might be the key to victory (or even a non-loss). Why? Because we don't uselessly antagonize the people we are trying to protect. We learn what types of assistance we can provide to them. We learn how to convince people that we are on their side, and that our goal is peace and prosperity. It also might help us exploit fissues among insurgent groups like the one mentioned above.
Local Iraqi Sunni insurgents are beginning to fight back against al-Qaeda in Iraq, realizing that they bring more problems than they are worth. This is exactly the type of thing that you want to see when fighting an insurgency, but exploiting it will be difficult or impossible - U.S. interference could easily reunite the two groups against their common enemy. Douglas Farah writes that it might be possible for the United States to use Iraqi animosity toward al-Qaeda to broker a cease fire, with the goal of stabilizing Iraq and getting out. If the British weren't so keen on reducing their forces in Iraq, I would say that they had a better chance of acting as peacemaker due to their greater historical experience (and success) with insurgencies. They certainly not damaged their reputations as much in Iraq as our forces have, so it might be easier for them to act as a go-between.
Information Wafare
This part of fighting insurgency is something that the United States does not do well. Not ony does it require boosting the American public image around the world, but it means finding a way to counter Islamist terrorist propaganda operations in traditional and new media. As this post at MountainRunner illustrates, this is an area in which the United States is sadly failing. The criticality of the need to develop effective Information Warfare capabilities is further highlighted by Daveed Garstein-Ross' Counterterrorism Blog post about the new and more sophisticated face of Islamist terrorist leadership, which not only has military and theological credentials, but is conscious of the negative impact on its support when atrocities are committed and the need to foster economic and civil development in Islamic states run under Shari'a law.
Information Warfare is also about controlling the communications environment, not allowing the enemy to do so. One good example of how this works is in U.S. politics. The GOP has learned how to control the dialog by defining the terms used in the political landscape, to the Democrats dismay. This gives them a decided advantage at election time - Republicans have defined liberal as "bad", putting Dems at the disadvantage from the start. In the fight against Islamist insurgencies, we face the same problem. As long as Al-Qaeda and company define the terms - making terrorists into jihadis - the United States and its allies are losing the propaganda war.
To counteract this problem, counter-terror expert David Kilcullen is calling for a "New Lexicon" for describing the actions of al-Qaeda and other Islamists. Some examples, courtesy of Small Wars Journal:
irhab (eer-HAB — Arabic for terrorism, thus enabling us to call the al Qaeda-style killers irhabis, irhabists and irhabiyoun rather than the so-called "jihadis" and "jihadists" and "mujahideen" and "shahids" (martyrs) they badly want to be called. (Author's lament: Here we are, almost six years into a life-and-death War on Terrorism, and most of us do not even know this basic Arabic for terrorism.)
Hirabah (hee-RAH-bah) — Unholy War and forbidden "war against society" or what we would today call crimes against humanity. Among the many al Qaeda-style crimes and sins which constitute this most "unholy war" are such willful, and unrepented transgressions as those enumerated in the next section of this proposed glossary of terms.
mufsiduun (moof-see-DOON) — Islam's word for evildoers, sinners and corrupters whose criminality and sinfulness, unless ended and sincerely repented, will incur Allah’s ultimate condemnation on Judgment Day; Islam's optimum antonym for "mujahiddin."
munafiquun (moon-ah-fee-KOON) — hypocrites to Islam who pretend to be faithful to the Qur'an but who willfully violate many of its basic rules, mandates and prohibitions.
Jahannam (jyah-HAH-nahm) – Islam’s antonym for Paradise and meaning the Eternal Hellfire to which Allah on Judgment Day condemns unrepentant, unforgiven evildoers and hypocrites of the unholy war variety.
khawarij (kha-WAH-reej) — outside-the-religion and outside-the-community individuals and activities; derived from the ancient al Qaeda-like militant Khawar or Kharajite sect, eventually suppressed and expelled as apostates and enemies of authentic, Qur'anic Islam.
Of course, what is also needed is a way to renounce Sayyab Qutb's interpretation of jihad as a valid offensive tool against opponents, and the identification of Christians and Jews and infidels or unbelievers. A further issue to deal with is the belief among Islamist terrorists that the mass war doctrines, as deployed during World War II, that do not distinguish civilian from military targets allow guilt-free targeting of women and children.Hirabah (hee-RAH-bah) — Unholy War and forbidden "war against society" or what we would today call crimes against humanity. Among the many al Qaeda-style crimes and sins which constitute this most "unholy war" are such willful, and unrepented transgressions as those enumerated in the next section of this proposed glossary of terms.
mufsiduun (moof-see-DOON) — Islam's word for evildoers, sinners and corrupters whose criminality and sinfulness, unless ended and sincerely repented, will incur Allah’s ultimate condemnation on Judgment Day; Islam's optimum antonym for "mujahiddin."
munafiquun (moon-ah-fee-KOON) — hypocrites to Islam who pretend to be faithful to the Qur'an but who willfully violate many of its basic rules, mandates and prohibitions.
Jahannam (jyah-HAH-nahm) – Islam’s antonym for Paradise and meaning the Eternal Hellfire to which Allah on Judgment Day condemns unrepentant, unforgiven evildoers and hypocrites of the unholy war variety.
khawarij (kha-WAH-reej) — outside-the-religion and outside-the-community individuals and activities; derived from the ancient al Qaeda-like militant Khawar or Kharajite sect, eventually suppressed and expelled as apostates and enemies of authentic, Qur'anic Islam.
"Soft" Resources
A recent DoD report seems to say that fighting against the insurgents in a traditional military campaign should not be our preferred strategy - getting out quickly and leaving a more stable environment should be. This falls inline with the guidance in John Nagl's Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife and Sir Robert Thompson's five rules for fighting insurgencies - killing people is sometimes counterproductive, particularly when the wrong people get killed. This was also a major theme of Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie, which devotes a significant portion of the text to the negative impact of free fire zones, indiscriminate shelling, and bombing campaigns. Every dead civilian helps the enemy when fighting an insurgency.
That's why today's Danger Room discussion on the use of Anthropologists and other Social Scientists in battling the insurgency in Iraq is so important. Rather than being more violent or more muscular in the prosecution of the war, a smarter, culturally aware approach might be the key to victory (or even a non-loss). Why? Because we don't uselessly antagonize the people we are trying to protect. We learn what types of assistance we can provide to them. We learn how to convince people that we are on their side, and that our goal is peace and prosperity. It also might help us exploit fissues among insurgent groups like the one mentioned above.
Banned Books Week
Posted by Chris at 9/13/2006 9:55 AM...
Banned Books Week
This week is our annual celebration of censorship in America, an event primarily promoted by the American Library Association, which posts annual lists of the most frequently challenged or banned books in the United States. You wouldn't think this an issue on our great land, with Freedom of Speech embedded into our core governing documents, and a founding myth of self-governance, personal responsibility, and the need of an educated populace to make our Republic work.
Censorship has a long and disturbing history in the United States, albeit not to the extremes witnessed in other places. Government censorship in the United States is also not a new phenomenon: it didn't arrive with Joseph McCarthy, William Tecumseh Sherman, Woodrow Wilson, the Vietnam War, Desert Storm, or any other recent event. Censorship arrived with the Founding Fathers: check out events during the Quasi War with France, or the lead-up to the War of 1812 for examples.
Censorship and manipulation of the press by the military and other governmental bodies during war is a particular research interest of mine, so I tend to focus on those types of events, but censorship exists at many other levels in our society. Usually, this takes the form of community activists challenging books in the name of "protecting" the values and morals of children or their community from the content of certain books. These days, items that are politically controversial are frequent targets: like EPA archives, government studies of global warming, or old estimates of U.S. inventories of ICBMS.
As part of Banned Book Week, Google is providing access to a significant portion of the most banned books. Scrolling through the list, it is quite interesting how many of them I was assigned to read in High School: Brave New World, Catch-22, Heart of Darkness, Slaughterhouse Five, The Diary of Anne Frank, Huckleberry Finn, A Separate Peace, The Jungle, A Clockwork Orange, 1984, The Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, and The Lord of the Flies. I'm wondering why some places see these works as items to assign their students, while others are desperately trying to keep their young people away from them. The same goes for most of the Judy Bloom books that frequently appear on the list, Madeline L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time, or the Harry Potter series.
Banned Books Week
This week is our annual celebration of censorship in America, an event primarily promoted by the American Library Association, which posts annual lists of the most frequently challenged or banned books in the United States. You wouldn't think this an issue on our great land, with Freedom of Speech embedded into our core governing documents, and a founding myth of self-governance, personal responsibility, and the need of an educated populace to make our Republic work.
Censorship has a long and disturbing history in the United States, albeit not to the extremes witnessed in other places. Government censorship in the United States is also not a new phenomenon: it didn't arrive with Joseph McCarthy, William Tecumseh Sherman, Woodrow Wilson, the Vietnam War, Desert Storm, or any other recent event. Censorship arrived with the Founding Fathers: check out events during the Quasi War with France, or the lead-up to the War of 1812 for examples.
Censorship and manipulation of the press by the military and other governmental bodies during war is a particular research interest of mine, so I tend to focus on those types of events, but censorship exists at many other levels in our society. Usually, this takes the form of community activists challenging books in the name of "protecting" the values and morals of children or their community from the content of certain books. These days, items that are politically controversial are frequent targets: like EPA archives, government studies of global warming, or old estimates of U.S. inventories of ICBMS.
As part of Banned Book Week, Google is providing access to a significant portion of the most banned books. Scrolling through the list, it is quite interesting how many of them I was assigned to read in High School: Brave New World, Catch-22, Heart of Darkness, Slaughterhouse Five, The Diary of Anne Frank, Huckleberry Finn, A Separate Peace, The Jungle, A Clockwork Orange, 1984, The Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, and The Lord of the Flies. I'm wondering why some places see these works as items to assign their students, while others are desperately trying to keep their young people away from them. The same goes for most of the Judy Bloom books that frequently appear on the list, Madeline L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time, or the Harry Potter series.
Stuff My Students Say
It's common for grad students and faculty to snicker (okay, guffaw) over the sometimes bizarre historical interpretations that our students come up with in papers, tests, and class. I'm sure I came up with a bunch of those as an undergrad. That's not what we're here for today. I have a different sort of student communication issues for your consideration:
From a female student in a 10-week survey course:
"My partner was all butt hurt that I started a month after her and finished a week early. ;)"
Wow. I swear like a sailor when I'm mad, but never in front of faculty or parents. I can see that sort of thing slipping out in conversation, but typing it in and clicking submit?
A female student in the same class:
"In the recent years, homosexuality has begun its shameless effort to be noticed, tolerated, but most notably, accepted. The media has given rise to several television programs with elements of homosexuality. Shows like Will and Grace, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Grey's Anatomy include actors leading roles either playing a homosexual or live the actual lifestyle."
She was posting on ancient Greek male sexuality and decided to tack that on the end of her post in a class in which several of her classmates had self-identified as being in long-term same sex relationships. I bet you can imagine the reaction from the student mentioned previously, but she was far milder than I would have been in the same circumstances.
What on earth made either student think that it was ok to respond in this way? Is it just the anonymity they feel when dealing only with a screen and keyboard?
From a female student in a 10-week survey course:
"My partner was all butt hurt that I started a month after her and finished a week early. ;)"
Wow. I swear like a sailor when I'm mad, but never in front of faculty or parents. I can see that sort of thing slipping out in conversation, but typing it in and clicking submit?
A female student in the same class:
"In the recent years, homosexuality has begun its shameless effort to be noticed, tolerated, but most notably, accepted. The media has given rise to several television programs with elements of homosexuality. Shows like Will and Grace, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Grey's Anatomy include actors leading roles either playing a homosexual or live the actual lifestyle."
She was posting on ancient Greek male sexuality and decided to tack that on the end of her post in a class in which several of her classmates had self-identified as being in long-term same sex relationships. I bet you can imagine the reaction from the student mentioned previously, but she was far milder than I would have been in the same circumstances.
What on earth made either student think that it was ok to respond in this way? Is it just the anonymity they feel when dealing only with a screen and keyboard?
Saturday, December 1, 2012
They gave him a medal for what?
Today's case illustrates two of the more frustrating things about doing research with declassified military documents: the fog of war and redaction. The Vietnam War Crimes Working Group files were declassified in 1994, and then removed from the public shelves at Archives II in College Park, Maryland. The reason for puling the files at that time was that they contained "personal information" normally exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests. Because NARA had no plan to sanitize the files and make them available again, the result was that in order to get the files made public, someone has to file a different FOIA request for each folder in the collection. Since there are around 276 folders, that's a whole lot of requests to make. About a third of the total 9,000 pages in the VWCWG files have been redacted, and are currently accessible to the public.
Redaction is a tricky thing. To do it well, you have to remove legitimately sensitive information like a living individual's Social Security number. That seems to account for a large portion of the redactions in the VWCWG files. I'm not sure why the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division included a SSN (or as they referred to them, a SSAN) in these records because they were all created during the Vietnam War era when soldiers' serial numbers were not the same as their SSN. According to the archivists, the SSN for all living soldiers in the files have to be removed before giving the public access. I assume that this became an issue after Deborah Nelson and Nick Turse tracked down some of the witnesses and alleged perpetrators of the war crimes document in the files for her book The War Behind Me. The files also provided much of the grist, and most of the inspiration, for Turse's dissertation, since published as Kill Anything that Moves.
The problem is that this is not all of the redaction done in these files. In cases in which the outcome is not known, the names of the alleged perpetrators have been removed. This is true in the James Henry allegation, which Nelson documents in the first portion of her book. She names the officers responsible for the events in the James Henry Allegation, but those names have been since redacted from the file. An archivist at Archives II told me that they also removed the names of female rape victims to protect their identities in the same way that news organizations are required to when reporting crimes. Unfortunately, these are not the only redactions in the files.
At some point after the files were pulled off the shelves, unidentified folks from the U.S. Army (unidentified as in the archivist didn't know who they were) copied some of the documents, redacted them with a black marker, and put those copies in the files. Those redactions seem really random. The actual pattern of redactions is hard to discern - in some cases both the unit and location of the alleged events are redacted in addition to the names of the alleged perpetrators and female victims. Perpetrator names are also sometimes redacted when the files show that the claims were unsubstantiated, or when they were acquitted. Then there are examples like this one:
What exactly am I supposed to do with something like this document? This is completely useless for researchers. I can't imagine that FOIA was intended to produce results like this.
Today I have a pretty confusing file. Ordinarily it would be one of those things that you could just chalk up to observers in different areas seeing different things, the power of the rumor mill, and a chaotic firefight at night. It gets confusing, because even though the war crime allegation was redacted, many of the names, even of those people not accused of anything, are redacted throughout much of the document. As if that's not confusing enough, the names aren't always redacted, so you're never quite sure who did what, who was accused of what, or even what supposedly happened. I think I've figured this one out, though, and unlike my previous posts, I'm going to use names and ranks rather than just ranks as an aid to keep things straight.
On 14 January 1972 former SP4 Gerald Leventry sent a letter to Congressman John P. Saylow about an incident that occurred in Vietnam while he was serving in E Company, 1/501st Infantry, 101st Airborne division. Leventry told his Congressman that a friend in A Company, 1/501st told him that after a firefight in which members of his company had killed two members of a squad of Viet Cong, capturing a third, that an officer arrived on the scene and shot each corpse with his sidearm. Leventry was incensed that the officer had then allegedly fabricated a story about arriving in the midst of the firefight, and then nominated himself and members of A Company for a bronze star with V device.
Investigators interviewed all of the witnesses that they could, providing more details. The investigation showed that the officer in question, apparently a LTC Hampton, ordered his pilot to land his C&C helicopter at the end of a night ambush. The pilot, whose name is also redacted, testified that the situation on the ground seemed stable, but that he could not personally observe what happened after Hampton left the helicopter. Either the pilot, or another officer, signed the nomination for Hampton's bronze star award saying that he had accompanied his Battalion commander to A Company's ambush site at 2200 hrs on 10 December 1971. The helicopter landed 40 meters from the ambush site to pick up the wounded EPW. This officer accompanied Hampton to the the wounded prisoner, who lay near the two others, who lie motionless, but were not obviously dead. After they reached the prisoner, Hampton turned and shot one of the "dead" Vietnamese in the chest with his sidearm from a range of about 1 meter, and then shot the other in the head. He did not know why Hampton had shot them, but afterward treated the prisoner's wounds and escorted him, with Hampton, to the helicopter.
At this point in the investigation Hampton refused to make a sworn statement on the advice of counsel, but the CID investigator's opinion was that it was not possible for him to have known whether the two Vietnamese men he shot were dead, or not. Interestingly, there is an error in the redaction here, as the document identifies LTC Hampton as received a bronze star for the incident.
To make things even more interesting, another soldier, whose name is redacted from the status update mentioning it, sent a letter to Senator Edward Kennedy detailing the same incident, providing another witness for CID to interview, and getting another member of Congress to harass the CID about the investigation. Despite this redaction, a later summary memo that indicates that the case lacks sufficient evidence to pursue identified the soldier who contacted Sen. Kennedy as 1LT Theodore Coughlin, Jr. (the Platoon Leader of 1st Platoon, A Company, 1/501st). In his letter to Sen. Kennedy, the 1LT contended that not only did Hampton not deserve the bronze star awarded, but had committed a war crime (mutilation of the dead falls into this category, as would shooting wounded prisoners).
Coughlin provided a fairly complete summary of the incident. On 10 December 1971, he led his platoon on a recon mission 4km north of FSB Arsenal. Part of A Company, 1/501st (his platoon, the company Command Post, and mortar platoon) had been in the area for three days when it began to take fire at 2030 hrs on 10 December. Observing that his ambush patrol was engaged 500 meters away. Coughlin directed the squad to pull back and the Company Commander directed a Nighthawk helicopter (a UH-1D equipped with night sensors and an M-134 minigun) to fire into the area, leaving several enemy dead and one wounded. After telling him to search the area, his CO contacted Coughlin to tell him that Hampton was going to evacuate the wounded EPW. Although he didn't see Hampton shoot the dead Vietnamese, he was told that it happened by an unnamed member of his platoon, several members of which had been told that it had happened by their RTO.
The summary relating Coughlin's testimony (and revealing his identity) also has a tantalizing bit - the last name of the officer that tended the wounded EPW and signed Hampton's bronze star nomination appears to be Christie. This document also indicates that the Brigade Commander and Executive Office knew about the incident (and later allegations about it), and ordered Hampton's Adjutant to prepare a nomination for him to receive the bronze star. We get some additional strange redactions here - the name and squad number of a machine gunner who was the first to here the claymore mines triggering the ambush on 10 December 1971 is redacted for no apparent reason, but in the next paragraph, Hampton's name appears again.
Hampton's bronze star nomination shows the inconsistency in redaction. It mentions his nameme and rank in the first paragraph, but appears to be redacted afterward...
Another strange redaction to wrap things up. Since the Division Commander was on leave, the Acting Division Commander presented the bronze star awards to Hampton and the members of 1st Platoon that earned them. The name of the Acting Division Commander (presumably the XO) was redacted (why?), but his testimony regarding Hampton wasn't. In a private conversation after presenting the awards, he gave Hampton a sort of reprimand for unnecessarily exposing his large, expensive helicopter, himself as CO, and the crew of the helicopter to hostile fire in landing it to pick up the wounded prisoner. The ADC also indicated that the award was made only after an investigation by he Division Commander into the incident, not out of any undue influence by Hampton or others, as Leventry had claimed.
Redaction is a tricky thing. To do it well, you have to remove legitimately sensitive information like a living individual's Social Security number. That seems to account for a large portion of the redactions in the VWCWG files. I'm not sure why the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division included a SSN (or as they referred to them, a SSAN) in these records because they were all created during the Vietnam War era when soldiers' serial numbers were not the same as their SSN. According to the archivists, the SSN for all living soldiers in the files have to be removed before giving the public access. I assume that this became an issue after Deborah Nelson and Nick Turse tracked down some of the witnesses and alleged perpetrators of the war crimes document in the files for her book The War Behind Me. The files also provided much of the grist, and most of the inspiration, for Turse's dissertation, since published as Kill Anything that Moves.
The problem is that this is not all of the redaction done in these files. In cases in which the outcome is not known, the names of the alleged perpetrators have been removed. This is true in the James Henry allegation, which Nelson documents in the first portion of her book. She names the officers responsible for the events in the James Henry Allegation, but those names have been since redacted from the file. An archivist at Archives II told me that they also removed the names of female rape victims to protect their identities in the same way that news organizations are required to when reporting crimes. Unfortunately, these are not the only redactions in the files.
At some point after the files were pulled off the shelves, unidentified folks from the U.S. Army (unidentified as in the archivist didn't know who they were) copied some of the documents, redacted them with a black marker, and put those copies in the files. Those redactions seem really random. The actual pattern of redactions is hard to discern - in some cases both the unit and location of the alleged events are redacted in addition to the names of the alleged perpetrators and female victims. Perpetrator names are also sometimes redacted when the files show that the claims were unsubstantiated, or when they were acquitted. Then there are examples like this one:
What exactly am I supposed to do with something like this document? This is completely useless for researchers. I can't imagine that FOIA was intended to produce results like this.
Today I have a pretty confusing file. Ordinarily it would be one of those things that you could just chalk up to observers in different areas seeing different things, the power of the rumor mill, and a chaotic firefight at night. It gets confusing, because even though the war crime allegation was redacted, many of the names, even of those people not accused of anything, are redacted throughout much of the document. As if that's not confusing enough, the names aren't always redacted, so you're never quite sure who did what, who was accused of what, or even what supposedly happened. I think I've figured this one out, though, and unlike my previous posts, I'm going to use names and ranks rather than just ranks as an aid to keep things straight.
On 14 January 1972 former SP4 Gerald Leventry sent a letter to Congressman John P. Saylow about an incident that occurred in Vietnam while he was serving in E Company, 1/501st Infantry, 101st Airborne division. Leventry told his Congressman that a friend in A Company, 1/501st told him that after a firefight in which members of his company had killed two members of a squad of Viet Cong, capturing a third, that an officer arrived on the scene and shot each corpse with his sidearm. Leventry was incensed that the officer had then allegedly fabricated a story about arriving in the midst of the firefight, and then nominated himself and members of A Company for a bronze star with V device.
Investigators interviewed all of the witnesses that they could, providing more details. The investigation showed that the officer in question, apparently a LTC Hampton, ordered his pilot to land his C&C helicopter at the end of a night ambush. The pilot, whose name is also redacted, testified that the situation on the ground seemed stable, but that he could not personally observe what happened after Hampton left the helicopter. Either the pilot, or another officer, signed the nomination for Hampton's bronze star award saying that he had accompanied his Battalion commander to A Company's ambush site at 2200 hrs on 10 December 1971. The helicopter landed 40 meters from the ambush site to pick up the wounded EPW. This officer accompanied Hampton to the the wounded prisoner, who lay near the two others, who lie motionless, but were not obviously dead. After they reached the prisoner, Hampton turned and shot one of the "dead" Vietnamese in the chest with his sidearm from a range of about 1 meter, and then shot the other in the head. He did not know why Hampton had shot them, but afterward treated the prisoner's wounds and escorted him, with Hampton, to the helicopter.
At this point in the investigation Hampton refused to make a sworn statement on the advice of counsel, but the CID investigator's opinion was that it was not possible for him to have known whether the two Vietnamese men he shot were dead, or not. Interestingly, there is an error in the redaction here, as the document identifies LTC Hampton as received a bronze star for the incident.
To make things even more interesting, another soldier, whose name is redacted from the status update mentioning it, sent a letter to Senator Edward Kennedy detailing the same incident, providing another witness for CID to interview, and getting another member of Congress to harass the CID about the investigation. Despite this redaction, a later summary memo that indicates that the case lacks sufficient evidence to pursue identified the soldier who contacted Sen. Kennedy as 1LT Theodore Coughlin, Jr. (the Platoon Leader of 1st Platoon, A Company, 1/501st). In his letter to Sen. Kennedy, the 1LT contended that not only did Hampton not deserve the bronze star awarded, but had committed a war crime (mutilation of the dead falls into this category, as would shooting wounded prisoners).
Coughlin provided a fairly complete summary of the incident. On 10 December 1971, he led his platoon on a recon mission 4km north of FSB Arsenal. Part of A Company, 1/501st (his platoon, the company Command Post, and mortar platoon) had been in the area for three days when it began to take fire at 2030 hrs on 10 December. Observing that his ambush patrol was engaged 500 meters away. Coughlin directed the squad to pull back and the Company Commander directed a Nighthawk helicopter (a UH-1D equipped with night sensors and an M-134 minigun) to fire into the area, leaving several enemy dead and one wounded. After telling him to search the area, his CO contacted Coughlin to tell him that Hampton was going to evacuate the wounded EPW. Although he didn't see Hampton shoot the dead Vietnamese, he was told that it happened by an unnamed member of his platoon, several members of which had been told that it had happened by their RTO.
The summary relating Coughlin's testimony (and revealing his identity) also has a tantalizing bit - the last name of the officer that tended the wounded EPW and signed Hampton's bronze star nomination appears to be Christie. This document also indicates that the Brigade Commander and Executive Office knew about the incident (and later allegations about it), and ordered Hampton's Adjutant to prepare a nomination for him to receive the bronze star. We get some additional strange redactions here - the name and squad number of a machine gunner who was the first to here the claymore mines triggering the ambush on 10 December 1971 is redacted for no apparent reason, but in the next paragraph, Hampton's name appears again.
Hampton's bronze star nomination shows the inconsistency in redaction. It mentions his nameme and rank in the first paragraph, but appears to be redacted afterward...
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