Afghanistan's New "Kinetic" Team

by Sarah Meyer
Index Research

“GALAXY KINETIC ART”

HO HO. The U.S. military have found a delicious new descriptive word!

US Army's strategy in Afghanistan: better anthropology
07.09.07. csm. "Counterinsurgency efforts focus on better grasping and meeting local needs. Evidence of how far the US Army's counterinsurgency strategy has evolved can be found in the work of a uniformed anthropologist toting a gun in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan."

"Part of a Human Terrain Team (HTT) – the first ever deployed – she speaks to hundreds of Afghan men and women to learn how they think and what they need. .. "We're not here just to kill the enemy – we are so far past the kinetic fight," says Lt. Col. Dave Woods, commander of the 4th Squadron 73rd Cavalry. "It is the nonkinetic piece [that matters], to identify their problems, to seed the future here."

Is this quite clear? To clarify: OED definition of kinetic: “Producing or causing motion.” Right. Make sense yet? Not even Rumsfeld could have jibbered better jingo.

Has 'kinetic' been added yet to the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military Terms?

NB: 10 September 2007: P (B)etraeus canonised the word, 'kinetic', twice in his Iraq speech today before Congress. He didn't define this word.

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I have an american email friend who still knows how to relate to life. He wrote, "Thought it was time to take a break from ranting about the Bushies." See Musafir's Musings (8 September).

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Sarah Meyer is a researcher living in the UK. She is on the BRussels Tribunal Advisory Committee

The url to Afghanistan's New 'Kinetic' Team is: http://indexresearch.blogspot.com/2007/09/afghanistans-new-kinetic-team.html
shorter url: http://tinyurl.com/yt9gh6

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Tags: Afghanistan, Human Terrain Team