U.S. Army Withdraws Flawed And Plagiarized Manual About “Cultural Understanding”
U.S. Army Withdraws Flawed And Plagiarized Manual About “Cultural Understanding”
The U.S. Army has spiked a new manual explaining non-American cultures to its soldiers. One military expert called the manual “a jumbled mess,” while an anthropologist found that it contained text lifted from a book on religion seen as hostile to Islam and homosexuals.
posted on May. 12, 2015, at 12:42 p.m.
Dan Vergano
BuzzFeed News Reporter
The U.S. Army withdrew its just-published “cultural understanding” manual for soldiers on Tuesday, after anthropologists and BuzzFeed News raised questions about plagiarism and botched explanations of culture in the document.
The “Army Training Program 3-24.3 Cultural and Situational Understanding” manual, produced by the U.S. Army’s Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, contained the military’s doctrine — techniques and procedures — for soldiers dealing with non-American cultures.
“After taking a closer look at the content in ATP 3-24.3, we have pulled the ATP from circulation and it is no longer an approved doctrine publication,” Bill Ackerly of the Mission Command Center of Excellence at Fort Leavenworth told BuzzFeed News by email on Tuesday. “The ATP will not be re-released until the content issue has been resolved.”
After the manual was published last month, BuzzFeed News began asking anthropologists and military experts to review the 55-page document. They found it contained botched explanations — describing culture as a bewildering laundry list of everything from handshakes to religion — and that it was also rife with plagiarism.
“The money would be better spent on Lonely Planet guides,” cultural anthropologist Roberto Gonzalez of San Jose State University told BuzzFeed News. “It’s a relief to hear that the Army retracted the manual, but it does raise questions about how many more pieces of flawed or dangerous doctrine continue to exist.”
More:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/danvergano/us-army-withdraws-flawed-and-plagiarized-manual-about-cultur#.qmDMO3OvG
