Discovering and stating the obvious.

I've been preoccupied of late with the uselessness and negative results of polarised discussions.

This morning, I heard a radio feature here in the UK dealing with the US "Human Terrane" program in Iraq and Afghanistan. This recruits social scientists, anthropologists particularly, to advise the military in how best to deal with a civil population with very different cultural perspectives from the coalition forces.

This has generated a good deal of heat, not least within the academic community.

One very simple fact emerged for me. This program is attacked and defended equally genuinely.

I happen to think that it's impossible for governments to exclude their self-interest from any enterprise. If they have the power to impose their will, or seek to impose it, this conduct will be labelled "imperialist", probably with some justification.

Whether we agree with this or not, it does us no good to ignore the fact that many people involved in this are doing so because they "Want to make a bad situation better".

Unless we're prepared to take on a whole range of motivations when embarking on a discussion of issues like foreign involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan, we will be seeking only to advance a narrow prejudiced view of how the world turns.

If people wish to indulge in this as a passtime, either to sharpen up their debating skills, or to get some personal psycho-therapy, then that's fine, as long as they don't think they're going to contribute anything to their own or anyone else's understanding.

I won't be responding to comments until Tuesday week, since I'm going to be away enjoying myself, but please comment if you feel the need, and I'll respond later.


Reg