Hearts and Minds: A Post-Structural Critique of Afghanistan War Narratives

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Scott Paul Tuggle

Professor Craig Smith

Independent Study

18 December 2013

Hearts and Minds: A Post-Structural Critique of Afghanistan WarNarratives

I. Introduction

It’s amazing the kind of bullshit that gets pushed around about the war. ‘Hearts

and minds?’ My First Sergeant used to tell us to put two in the heart, and one in the

mind. That is how you win a war.

-Interview with an Afghanistan War Veteran

All war stories are half-truths. There is a fantastical

element to combat which lends itself to exaggeration and over-

simplification. On both the macro and micro scale, war narratives

have a tendency to either amplify and excite, or drag the

audience along through tedious boredom. My relationship to this

material is personal as well as academic; as a combat veteran I

have heard multiple Afghanistan war narratives, and find myself

struggling to reconcile many of the textual artifacts I read and

hear with the evolving narrative I created to tell my own

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stories. The tension caused by these multiple stories, myths, and

discursive formations prompted me to examine the language of

Afghanistan war narratives. As the process unfolded, the

coherence of the larger political “master- narrative” began to

evaporate and what remained painted a much less cohesive, but

ultimately more complete picture. Let me provide one caveat as

well as an explanation: The master-narrative of Afghanistan is

far from complete. Even as political pundits, military

commanders, and historians are attempting to entrench the story,

the ground remains muddy under their feet.

A master-narrative is often constructed over the course of

decades or even centuries with the systematic dismissal of

“knowledges” that simply do not fit into the systemic

explanation.

Pertaining to the Afghanistan war, there is an emerging master-

narrative shaped, colored, and given context by the

counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine and its most famous moniker

“hearts and minds.” By embracing what Foucault calls unreason, I

have been able to uncover a complicated, muddy, and inconsistent

trajectory of Afghanistan war narratives that flies in the face

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of the organized, controlled message being created by the powers

that be. In order to provide context for the discussion, this

paper will proceed with a two part background section. First, I

will situate myself and my relationship to the material as a

discontinuity in the master-narrative; second, I will provide

some history on the development of the “hearts and minds”

doctrine as a coherent master-narrative.

II. Background

Situating Myself

In July of 2010, I was invited to a special filmmakers

screening of a war documentary named Restrepo. As a combat veteran,

having served in the 173rd Airborne during Operation Enduring

Freedom, Stages 7 and 8, I was an atypical audience member.

During the question and answer period after the screening, I

listened to the questions quietly and waited until the room

started to clear out before approaching the stage and talking to

the filmmakers directly. Tim Heatherington was a tall British

photojournalist, good looking and piercingly intelligent; I

wanted to thank him for making the documentary and explain my

history with the subject matter. It spawned a long conversation

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and an exchange of email addresses. He was interested in doing a

project on the effect of violence and I tentatively told him that

I would participate. In April of the next year, Tim was killed in

Misrata while covering the civil war in Lybia.

Restrepo begins in June of 2007, as the 173rd Airborne

deployed to the Kunar province of Afghanistan. Second platoon of

Battle Company was assigned to the Korengal outpost in the heart

of the Korengal valley. Breaking from traditional war reporting,

where correspondents chase the most exciting stories around the

country, Sebastian Junger and Tim Heatherington embedded with a

single platoon and tracked second platoon’s experiences

throughout an entire deployment. The documentary that they

created stands as a unique exception to much of the war reporting

done in Afghanistan prior to that point. The highest officer

interviewed in the documentary is a company commander, and often

no leadership was present when the interviews were being

conducted which allowed the soldiers to speak more freely than

they traditionally could. The soldiers are free to complain,

reflect, muse, and explain the war in everyday terms, instead of

language couched in political ideology.

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Shot over the course of fifteen months, Restrepo chronicles

the soldiers of Battle Company as they fight in what many have

referred to as the most dangerous place in the world.

Structurally, the documentary is straightforward; there is no

omniscient narrator and the vivid deployment footage is

punctuated by studio interviews conducted in Vicenza, Italy

shortly after the deployment. The simplicity of the method

creates an undistracted space for the story to occur. The

soldiers narrate their own story, and as a result the message is

believable and sympathetic. The story unfolds as it occurs and

meaning is ascribed to the events after the fact by the soldiers

themselves. The Korengal valley is allowed to play a prominent

role in the film and operates as an antagonist. Often, when

narrating their experiences, the soldiers refer to “the valley”

as a violent and active force, something that is out to get them.

Careful to avoid overt political messages, the artifact is able

to argue through the use of stories instead of tactical progress

reports.

Individual narratives are given a place and no attempt to

frame an individual’s story in a larger, master-narrative occurs.

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In a New York Times review of the documentary these difference are

highlighted with the statement:

What you come away with, above all, is a sense of the

fragile, indelible individuality of the soldiers, whose

names, faces and ways of talking are likely to stick in your

mind for a long time. Some share their backgrounds —

Specialist Misha Pemble-Belkin, for instance, reflects on

the contrast between his pacifist, “hippie” upbringing and

his violent profession — but others just speak matter-of-

factly about stuff that happened in Korangal (Scott).

Importantly, in the documentary, individual narratives are placed

alongside one another allowing the viewer to compare and contrast

unique narratives. The documentary was met with critical success,

shocked and awed audiences, and was nominated for an Oscar. Much

of the stir surrounding the film was centered on the uniqueness

of the story.

Reflecting on my own experience in Afghanistan, I began to

wonder what I would have said if I had been asked to do an

interview on my war experiences. I began to speculate that the

reason everyone was so shocked watching Restrepo was not because

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the narrative was unique, but because it ruptured the clean,

cohesive version of events propounded by media, politicians, and

writers.

Hearts and Minds: Creating a Master-Narrative

Sir Gerald Templer, a British Field Marshal, is credited

with first using the term “hearts and minds” in 1952 to describe

the guerilla tactics used during the Malayan Emergency (Nell).

The phrase has been used by western military tacticians since the

1950’s to describe non-conventional asymmetric warfare

strategies. John F. Kennedy echoed the sentiment, although

changing the term slightly, in his famous 1969 Man on the Moon

speech arguing that the “adversaries of freedom” are mounting a

war of “will and purpose,” and that this new battle was a battle

for the “minds and souls” and not simply “lives and territory”

(Kennedy). The concept was gaining momentum, and eventually

solidified during the Vietnam War as simply “hearts and minds.”

General David Patraeus cemented the term as official

counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine with the 2006 publication of

Field Manual 3-24 and successful application of asymmetric tactics

during the 2007 Iraqi surge (Nell). A longstanding unofficial

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term used by pundits and tacticians to describe a shadow war, the

battle that occurs outside the battle, it was now co-opted into

the official military lexicon. Army Field Manual 3-24 defines the

“true” meaning in the following paragraph:

Once the unit settles into the AO, its next task is to build

trusted networks. This is the true meaning of the phrase

“hearts and minds,” which comprises two separate components.

“Hearts” means persuading people that their best interests

are served by COIN success. “Minds” means convincing them

that the force can protect them and that resisting it is

pointless. Note that neither concerns whether people like

Soldiers and Marines. Calculated self-interest, not emotion,

is what counts. Over time, successful trusted networks grow

like roots into the populace. They displace enemy networks,

which forces enemies into the open, letting military forces

seize the initiative and destroy the insurgents (A-5).

Now, officially, hearts and minds was more than just a

politically loaded term meant to manipulate public perception

about the war (any war); now it was an official part of the

political/military lexicon, it had taken the form of doctrine.

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Much fanfare has been made about the war that occurs in the

hearts and minds of any citizenry that American foreign policy

deems “rogue.”

The phrase hearts and minds quintessentially embodies

McGee’s notion of ideograph and demonstrates how public

perception can be sculpted and manipulated in order to create a

homeostatic power distribution. A documentary such as Restrepo

would have never appeared so “shocking” to a public if that

public has not been fed a steady diet of artfully constructed

narrative meant to quell and pacify. Restrepo reflects my own

experience and illustrates perfectly how discursive utterances

can break away from the neat rigidity of the master-narrative.

This analysis will branch off considerably from the documentary,

but Restrepo will provide a useful backdrop in terms of discursive

formations. The surfeit of utterances weaves a very incongruous

story. It is useful to think of each artifact as a separate and

unique truth that exists simultaneously with other truths,

contradictions and all. This study does not wish to supplant the

master-narrative, only to demonstrate that any cohesive and

organized summation of the facts is incomplete and misleading.

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This article will examine Afghanistan War Narratives using

elements of Foucault’s archeology. First, I will provide

background information on the war doctrine of the United States

in Afghanistan, and explore how the evolution of the Hearts and

Minds doctrine as a politically loaded statement serves as a

master narrative of the war and discursively shapes war

perceptions. Second, I will examine personal narratives from low

ranking military personnel, inter-military correspondence, and

Family Readiness Group (FRG) newsletters and discuss how these

discarded narratives function as “ruptures” against the master

narrative. Third, I will discuss the process of absorption and

explain how the discursive ruptures have been co-opted by the

structure to re-entrench existing power formations. This study

will draw heavily from the work of Foucault and Foucauldian

scholars; additionally, McGee’s concept of ideograph will be

utilized when discussing the political implications of the Hearts

and Minds doctrine.

III. Method

Foucault’s Archeology as a Domain of Research

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A comprehensive explanation of the archeological method

would take volumes and is outside of the scope of this study.

Foucault himself elucidated different aspects of the method in

the three different case studies he left us: Madness and Civilization,

The Birth of the Clinic, and The Order of Things. The Archaeology of Knowledge

provides the most concise explanation of the method but as

Scheurich & McKenzie point out, any detailed “understanding of

Foucault requires close, careful, and repeated readings” (848).

The reason Foucaultian scholarship seems so broad and far-

reaching is that it requires the scholar to sift through volumes

in an attempt to find what is not there, to read between the

lines. The scope of Foucault’s methodology is vast and fluid in

nature, leaving any scholar to describe Foucault’s method only as

it is being used in a specific piece of scholarship. Archeology

is a search through the dark underbelly of “utterances” in an

attempt to show the true complicated nature of power formations.

Foucault defines his method by way of explanation in an

often quoted passage from The Archaeology of Knowledge:

By “archaeology,” I would like to designate not exactly a

discipline but a domain of research, which would be the

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following: in a society, different bodies of learning,

philosophical ideas, everyday opinions, but also

institutions, commercial practices and police activities,

mores—all refer to a certain implicit knowledge special to

this society. This knowledge is profoundly different from

the bodies of learning that one can find in scientific

books, philosophical theories, and religious justifications,

but it is what makes possible at a given moment the

appearance of a theory, an opinion, a practice (261).

For Foucault, the “domain of research” that he refers to is

something much bigger than a discipline or an approach to the

acquisition of knowledge. Archeology is first a realization that

knowledge embodies two separate and distinct domains: the formal

bodies of knowledge known as connaissance, and informal bodies of

knowledge referred to as savoir.

By connaissance, Foucault is referring to formal, institutional

bodies of knowledge such as economics, physics, sociology, and

psychology. In Madness and Civilization, Foucault examines the

psychiatric discipline and its evolution from the sixteenth

century “nervous disease” to the development of the nineteenth

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century understanding of psychiatry. Discussing his work meta-

reflectively in The Archeology of Knowledge, Foucault states: “But this

practice is not only manifested in a discipline possessing a

scientific status and scientific pretensions; it is also found in

the operation in legal texts, in literature, in philosophy, in

political decisions, and in the statements made and the opinions

expressed in daily life” (170). The connection between these two

domains of knowledge begins to emerge as an untidy union between

discursive utterances. It can be said that savoir feeds connaissance.

Savoir creates a “condition of possibility” which allows for the

construction of a connaissance (Foucault 184). Gutting explains

that savoir “refers to the discursive conditions that are

necessary for the development of a connaissance” (251). Savoir

encompasses knowledge that is often confusing and without clear

direction and often contradicts itself and connaissance. It is

useful to think of savoir as raw data which can be manipulated and

used in order to form a cohesive message and create order out of

chaos.

The trajectory of any formal discipline, or formalized

message, necessitates an artificially imposed rationale that

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dictates which knowledge is consistent and which knowledge falls

outside of the systemic rationale used to create a message.

Archeology as Foucault intends it is a study of the discursive

tension that exists between these two domains of knowledge. The

discursive tension is a result of multiple discursive formations,

collections of utterances to which an order can be ascribed.

According to Scheurich & McKenzie, a “meta-narrative” emerges in

formal knowledges out of the messy “irrationality” of utterances

that make up the broad array of opinions, statements, and life

perspectives that makes up savoir (847). Consequently, the most

important aspect of archeology becomes the study of savoir

(Scheurich & McKenzie).

The master narrative is created as a process of

rationality, and the systematic rejection of the broad array of

discursive utterances that make up savoir. This rationality,

Foucault argues, increases so that each master-narrative follows

a trajectory of reason where discontinuities (i.e., ruptures,

breaks, mutations) are whittled away and the resulting narrative

becomes “more refined, more rational, better, or more true”

(Scheurich & McKenzie 847). Corollary to this point, Foucault

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makes the case that the creation of a master narrative is not a

reasoned process to be praised, but rather the complexities and

discontinuities of savoir function as a “rupture” against the

master narrative and tell a more complete, less coherent story.

Foucault refers to the interplay between systems of power and

knowledge as the deployment of alliance. In the History of Sexuality,

Foucault argues that the system of rules, “development of kinship

ties of transmission of names and possessions” all speak to a

mechanism of domination and control designed to oppress (106).

Archeology requires an understanding that the master narrative is

a fiction created by dismissing discontinuities from the archive.

Finding ruptures against any master narrative requires the

researcher to look outside of the traditional scope of inquiry,

and to examine alternative “knowledges.” Digging into this

discarded archive reveals a plethora of discontinuities,

ruptures, and breaks against the rationale of the master

narrative. Foucault himself dug through an enormous variety of

sources in order to conduct his archaeologies. As his biographer

David Macey stated:

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Histoire de la Folie is not an easy text to read, and it defies

attempts to summarise its contents. Foucault refers to a

bewildering variety of sources, ranging from well-known

authors such as Erasmus and Molière to archival documents

and forgotten figures in the history of medicine and

psychiatry. His erudition derives from years pondering, to

cite Poe, 'over many a quaint and curious volume of

forgotten lore', and his learning is not always worn lightly

(62).

In order to adequately examine the savoir and connaissance of

Afghanistan war narratives it is important to look beyond media

and public reports by reading between the lines.

The Political Power of the Ideograph

Michael McGee’s concept of the “ideograph” provides a useful

perspective when looking at a concept as politically loaded as

Afghanistan war narratives, in particular the “hearts and minds”

mantra. McGee describes the role of ideographs in the

conditioning of human beings as “a vocabulary of concepts that

function as guides, warrants, reasons, or excuses for behavior

and belief” (6). For McGee, an ideograph is inherently a

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“rhetoric of control,” a system of persuasion presumed to be

effective on a whole community. As a result, social control is

profoundly rhetorical because at its core it is linked to

conditioned vocabulary that triggers belief and behavior. The

correlation between action and vocabulary is explained by McGee

as a process which he defines as “ideograph” or “ideographs.”

McGee argues that “ideology” is a political language composed of

slogan-like terms signifying collective commitment, and these

slogan-like terms are what he refers to as “ideographs,” further

defined as follows:

An ideograph is an ordinary language term found in political

discourse. It is a high-order abstraction representing

collective commitment to a particular but equivocal and ill-

defined normative goal. It warrants the use of power,

excuses behavior and belief which might otherwise be

perceived as eccentric or antisocial, and guides behavior

and belief into channels easily recognizable by a community

as acceptable and laudable (15).

Through an understanding of “ideographs,” it is possible to see

how specific terms and phrases such as “freedom” or “hearts and

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minds” are inextricably linked to the ideology that dominates

popular consciousness, particularly within political discourse.

For McGee, these historical narratives can be accurately

interpreted throughout the ages by the vertical and horizontal

structuring ideographs’ contain, such as “equality,” “freedom,”

and “patriotism.” A “vertical” structuring considers elements

such as time; how the meaning of ideographs have changed over a

period of time and how contemporary meanings are generally

controlled by past, historical meanings of any given ideograph.

However, vertical ideograph structuring does not capture public

motive when understanding rhetoric is the main focus, as McGee

explains:

Considered rhetorically, as forces, ideographs seem

structured horizontally for when people actually make use of

them presently, such terms as ‘rule of law’ clash with other

ideographs (‘principle of confidentiality’ or ‘national

security’ for example), and in the conflict come to mean

with reference to synchronic confrontations (12).

These synchronic structural changes in the relative standing of

an ideograph are horizontal due to the presumed consonance of an

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ideology, but McGee asserts that even though new usages develop

over time, ideographs remain essentially unchanged.

The ideas of “community” and “belonging” are also vital

within McGee’s usage of ideographs. Although some terms have

different signification across cultures, McGee emphasizes the

culture-bound nature of ideographs, stating how “each member of

the community is socialized, conditioned, to the vocabulary of

ideographs as a prerequisites for ‘belonging’ to the society”

(15).

Just as Foucault notes the systemic forces that press and

oppress counter-cultural voices –or, discontinuous utterances—

McGee notes that society will penalize “those who use ideographs

in heretical ways and on those who refuse to respond

appropriately to claims on their behavior warranted through the

agency of ideographs” (15-16). For McGee, not only is social

inclusion predicated by the proper adoption and usage of

ideographs, but also the very ideology of “community” is

established by the use of ideographs in “specifically rhetorical

discourse, for such usages constitute excuses for specific

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beliefs and behaviors made by those who executed the history of

which they were a part” (16).

IV. Analysis

In line with the Foucaultian playbook, I believe it is

important to examine more than just the official story. In order

to demonstrate the evolution of message, it is necessary to

examine various texts in regard to a singular phenomenon.

Foucault would view preliminary reports as part of the savoir,

getting continually churned and sifted in order to create a

connaissaince. The initial reports create a “condition of

possibility” by which a cohesive master-narrative can be

constructed and reiterated. The guiding force of military

doctrine in Afghanistan has been the “hearts and minds” language.

Media outlets, politicians, and military public relations experts

use “hearts and minds” as an ideograph in order to soften the

harsh reality of war. Throughout inter-military correspondence,

the brutal reality of war is often described surgically, with

sterile language meant to separate the operation from any human

voice.

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The three following artifacts are all inter-military

correspondence relating to the exact same sequence of events

surrounding Legion Company, a subordinate unit in the 173rd

Airborne Brigade Combat Team. Likewise, the following three

artifacts represent the examination a single enemy engagement

from the perspective of the military. Notice how the language and

tone of the following reports begin to soften as they are refined

and distilled from the initial documentation as a combat report,

to an after action addendum, and finally, as an official letter

to military family members at home.

The first artifact to consider is a SALTUR, a military

acronym that stands for Size, Activity, Location, Time, Unit,

Response. A SALTUR is common shorthand used to expediently get

all the pertinent information about a firefight up the chain of

command. One need only to examine a few SALTUR reports to see

evidence of the robotic tone and sterile language:

D3 020730Z TF SABER Reports Ambush IVO 4 km N or Fob Bari

Khowt.

S-Squad Size Element

A-Received SAF and RPG

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L-friendly LOC YE 313 140 enemy

T-02730ZJUN07

U-TF SABER

R-At 0730 TF [Task Force] SABER reported a platoon size

element was ambushed with SAF [Small Arms Fire] and RPGs

[Rocket Propelled Grenades] while conducting patrols 1.5 KM

[Kilometers] west of the Afghan/Pakistan border. The LEGION

[unit designation] consisted of 7 vehicles total, 1 X HMMWV

[Humvee] sustained catastrophic damage and was reported to

be on fire. 3 X HMMWV sustained mobility kills. TF SABER

responded with 2 X 155mm. The enemy continued to fire with

SAF and RPG’s until CAS and CCA arrived on station

(Wikileaks).

The above report is written in very technical language. It is

important to notice that the information is provided without any

interpretation and simply provides a description of the facts in

military jargon. The report was later updated based on a

debriefing of the soldiers involved. As in a game of telephone,

the further the information gets from the raw facts, the more

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humanized the voice and the more coherent the story. The

subsequent update reads as follows:

Enemy was using armor piercing 7.62. Some evidence of SVD

from a misfired round. Will continue to investigate 7.62 AP

was penetrating the roof armor of the vehicles. One of those

rounds killed the Interpreter. Local patrols found 7

expended RPG caps (believed to be Chinese manufacture from

the characters on the caps), plus a vest with 2 unfired

RPGs. The enemy used a near ambush, flank and rear, roughly

75-100 meters off the road and 100 feet up in a rock

formation the concealed them from observation by the patrol.

They seem to have used SVD against the gunners, RPG on the

vehicles, then RPG and MG fire when paratroopers dismounted

(Wikileaks).

Here, the process of sense-making has begun as information is

summarized and interpreted. The interpretation is intended to

give the event place and purpose; the context is beginning to

emerge and while many of the details remain, the text is now more

than disassociated fact. The events are being placed inside a

rhetorical context defined by geopolitical boundaries.

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In its third dissemination, the events described in both the

SALTUR and updated report are prepared for reception by the

families of the soldiers in 173rd. During a deployment,

commanders write a quarterly letter to the FRG (Family Readiness

Group) supporting their unit. These letters are meant to provide

detail and context for the family members of soldiers as well as

re-entrench military values. Here is an excerpt from First Rock

Monthly (which was anything but monthly) dated 01 July 2007, just

28 days after the firefight described in the above artifacts. The

article is abbreviated but captures the demeanor and tone of the

message:

It has been a tough month for Legion with the loss of SPC

Lowell a great soldier who will never be replaced nor

forgotten; also the loss of our WIAs [Wounded in Action]… As

for the rest of Legion here in Afghanistan we have mourned

our losses and have gotten back to the business at hand…

Legion also has made some great strides in reconstruction in

our AO. The Gawhardesh 11K road is nearly 90% complete and

will be finished in the next 2 weeks… Lastly Legion just

completed its monthly mega shura with all the village

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leaders in our AO [Area of Operation]… It was great shura

lead by the ANA Kandak Commander with very positive comments

by the shuras pledging their support to the IRoA [Islamic

Republic of Afghanistan], ANA [Afghani National Army] and

Coalition forces (Legion Update 5-6).

The evolution of the story is one that is personal as well

as academic. My friend, Specialist Jacob Lowell, was killed in

the above-described firefight during my first deployment in

Afghanistan. Wikileaks’ release of the Afghanistan “war diary”

somehow made it possible for me to view, read, and re-read

detached military analysis of operations in which I took part.

Searching keywords that were particularly relevant to me, I

started to notice that as the message got further from the

source, it was first humanized and then folded back into the

master-narrative. The FRG letter is the most human voice in the

entire array of messages, but ultimately the message narrows

until it is once again synonymous with the coalition mission. In

the letter, emphasis is placed on local projects and positions

Shura meetings (a meeting between a group of governing elders) as

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an example of the work being done on behalf of the battle for the

“hearts and minds” of the Afghani people.

However, that does not reflect any sort of reality of which

I took part. Shura meetings took place, but they were largely

irrelevant to the battle-scape and everyone viewed them as a

hindrance to the combat mission. Distrust between coalition

soldiers and the local population was high throughout the entire

deployment. Out of the three artifacts, the combat report, and

the eye-witness addendum appear sterile and emotionless, but at

least it is true to the facts as I remember them. In the letter,

a mere 28 days after the firefight, the message seems almost

unrecognizable in relation to both the previous events, and to

any contemporary action occurring at the time. The narrative in

Restrepo closely resembles the kind of story that I would tell

about the above events. In Restrepo, soldiers are given the chance

to explain events in their own words; the narratives that emerge

in the war stories of Restrepo are hectic, chaotic, and filled

with personal revelations. No attempt is made to link individual

utterances to a geopolitical agenda; rather, events are allowed

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to occupy an empty discursive canvas where narratives reflect

spots of tragically smeared paint.

The ideograph “hearts and minds” is such a powerful and

preeminent language of control, that even reality seems to slowly

shift into agreement. The overwhelming urge of systemic power

structures is to maintain power and dismiss discursive ruptures

when they break against the master-narrative. The fact that armor

piercing rounds, and Chinese manufactured Rocket Propelled

Grenades were used was subsidiary to the collation mission, the

master narrative. What was important was that the hearts and the

minds of the Afghani people were being fought for, and that the

battle of ideas was a fruitful one. Whether this fact bore any

semblance to the discursive utterances of a hundred soldiers, who

witnessed the firefight and the situational aftermath, remains

irrelevant. In June 2007, you could not have found a Legion

soldier willing to describe the events that occurred in our Area

of Operation (AO) as anything other than brutal, exhausting and

ferocious combat. Nevertheless, by July 2007, the message

disseminated among Family and Friends was one of subdued

adherence to the hearts and minds doctrine. The voices of the

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many were being forced to sing a single chorus, and the emerging

narrative was one of order and not of chaos.

The above instance is not an isolated event. I conducted an

interview with a former Special Operations soldier who played an

integral role in what is now famously referred to as the “Lone

Survivor Mission.” The book Lone Survivor tells the story of Navy

Seal fire team leader Marcus Luttrell and the unfortunate events

that occurred in June of 2005 in Northern Afghanistan. Hollywood

has just filmed a full length motion picture, starring Mark

Walberg, which dramatizes the real world events. The book tells

the story from the perspective of one individual soldier, Marcus

Luttrell, and his narrative is strongly at odds with the

interview I conducted.

The shit is that it is all navy seal propaganda from cover

to cover. But being on the ground, and seeing a handful of

5.56 where the dead bodies were found, and the ridgeline

full of 7.62 was a completely different story than what is

in the book, and just how the sound traveled, and all

different types of… I’m not going to be the one to say that

this guy’s story is bullshit (Cordell).

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I am not attempting to discredit any individual narrative.

The fact that contradictory discursive formations exists

demonstrates that each individual creates a version of events

that is absolutely real and personal in the eyes of the person

telling the story. Foucault tells us that the “conditions of

possibility” exist in the complicated rhetorical meanderings of

savoir. While conducting the interview, I asked how he felt after

he read the book. He responded:

[A]fter I read the book I just like… It just. I dunno.

Especially when you saw the chopper and pull bodies out,

there is a whole lot of people who were involved in this,

and if you read the book, it sounds like just they did it

(Cordell).

The fact that there is no way to discern which text reflects a

larger “truth” means that in this war narrative we are in the

same predicament as Schrodinger, regarding both as true and

untrue simultaneously. The only conclusion we can draw is that

the master-narrative is a fiction, created separately and

independently the account.

Tuggle 30

McGee’s concept of ideograph provides a method for

understanding why the “hearts and minds” master-narrative holds

so much discursive power. Ideographs represent a sense of shared

commitment to an “ill-defined goal.” “Hearts and minds” draws its

discursive power from its inherent ambiguity; the phrase “hearts

and minds” can mean something different to everyone who hears it.

For General Patraeus, “hearts and minds” represents a calculated

“self-interest” (A-5); a strategic confidence building strategy

used to highlight an enemy’s weaknesses so that they can be fully

destroyed. For the soldier I interviewed, “hearts and minds” was

a euphemism linked directly to the brutality of combat. For the

Company Commander writing a letter to the Family Readiness Group,

“hearts and minds” is a motivational tool used to mask the dark

reality of the war their loved ones are fighting. For me, “hearts

and minds” is the subject of a research project and bears little

resemblance to any actual doctrine I saw implemented in

Afghanistan.

As a “high order abstraction,” the ideograph of “hearts and

minds” has the discursive ambiguity needed to create a master-

narrative that is both sympathetic and all inclusive. For

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Foucault, the creation of a master-narrative is a function of

systemic forces used to maintain a homeostatic distribution of

power. Like life, power wishes to maintain itself and if possible

to grow and develop. A master-narrative is not created in a

backroom somewhere and programmed into the minds of the populous;

rather, an ambiguous ideographic narrative is reinforced and

reiterated and repeated until discontinuities are discarded. As a

geopolitical institution the military is unquestionably the most

directly assertive, and warfare the most brutal manifestation of

military power, but all exercises of power are warlike. Foucault

states:

Isn’t power simply a form of warlike domination? Shouldn’t

one therefore conceive all problems of power in terms of

relations of war? Isn’t power a sort of generalized war

which assumes at particular moments the forms of peace and

the state? Peace would then be a form of war, and the state

a means of waging it. A whole range of problems emerges

here. Who wages war against whom? Is it between two classes,

or more? Is it a war of all against all? (Foucault Reader

65)

Tuggle 32

In the case of “hearts and minds,” it is hard to define the

nature of the battle. One thing that is certain, the majority of

discursive utterances are almost always disregarded in

Afghanistan war narratives in favor of the overarching master-

narrative. Occasionally, ruptures do emerge and are given a

brief moment to shine before they are folded back into the

centralized systemic message. Foucault refers to this process as

absorption: a systemic adaptation in order to maintain a

homeostatic power distribution. As an ideograph, the ambiguity of

the “hearts and minds” doctrine allows for discontinuities to be

momentarily entertained and then absorbed into the larger master-

narrative.

Restrepo shocked viewers because, for many, this was the

first realization that the war in Afghanistan was not going well.

In particular, Restrepo highlights many of the difficulties

military personnel have building relationships with the Afghani

people. The idea that the impenetrable United States Military

wins every fight, accomplishes every mission, and is a hundred

percent devoted to the military directive was suddenly

challenged. Now, audiences were given a behind the scenes look at

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the war in Afghanistan and how it is really fought. Restrepo

created a discontinuity in the commonly accepted master-

narrative, until Restrepo itself gets absorbed into the master-

narrative.

Systems often address discontinuities by attempting to

absorb the message into the master-narrative; if the text cannot

be absorbed then it is discarded. No text is immune to the

process of systemic absorption; even Foucault’s own writings have

been co-opted by military intelligence analysts because the

writing, Major Gary Mills believes, “serves as a powerful

military-intelligence force multiplier” (xvii). Major Mills goes

on to say: “Foucault never served in the military; however, his

firsthand occupation experience and painstaking study of history,

human behavior, and—most importantly—power, made him a social and

intellectual tactician of the highest order” (21-22). Foucault’s

ideas have been applied to numerous disciplines, but as Hamilton

Bean points out in his critique of Major Mills work: Certainly,

Foucault’s ideas are open to wide interpretation. But Foucault’s

theoretical program was focused on social change. So, at its very

core, Major Mills’ application necessarily distorts aspects of

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Foucault’s theories in order to make them amenable to

preconceived intelligence doctrine.

Through this analysis it has become evident that the

official master-narrative is concerning the war in Afghanistan is

not representative of the many discursive utterances that create

the savoir of Afghanistan war narratives. The artifacts examined

point to a holistic dismissal of discursive ruptures in the

master-narrative. Taking into consideration Foucault’s notion of

discontinuities/ruptures, savoir and connaissance, and master-

narrative, these artifacts point to an endemic acceptance of the

master-narrative. McGee’s notion of ideographs adds to the

understanding of the hearts and minds master narrative by

demonstrating how, as an ideograph, the hearts and minds doctrine

is ambiguous enough to encompass and absorb any ruptured

narrative.

V. Implications

The structural analysis of Afghanistan war rhetoric has a

lot to teach us about the nature of discursive utterances. The

war in Afghanistan represents the United States longest ground

war. At the time of writing, the United States has been engaged

Tuggle 35

in a twelve year ground war on Afghani soil. In that time,

documentaries such as Restrepo have given voice to the chaotic

cacophony of utterances that characterize war rhetoric as it

emerges from the mouths of soldiers. Separate from the

geopolitical power structure, the war in Afghanistan is discussed

by the women and men who have fought it, and permitted to give

voice to the chaos they experience. For Foucault, the discursive

formations found in the savoir create a range of possibilities,

but only by embracing unreason can we understand the world as it

actually exists. Any attempt to organize and create a coherent

master-narrative results in the artificial construction of a

narrative set apart from experience.

Afghanistan war rhetoric provides insight into Foucaultian

methodology and how to examine savoir. The release of wikileaks

“war diary” makes it possible to analyze the evolution of a

military message in ways that would not have been possible five

years ago. To the untrained eye many of the messages seem overly

technical and lacking rhetorical depth, but I assure you this is

not the case. As a young soldier, I often sent reports up the

chain of command, and while the format is rigid, the detail and

Tuggle 36

character of the writing often reveal a great deal about the

author. The sheer volume of reports provides a backlog of data

that, when contextualized, researchers could study for years to

come.

Much of Foucault’s writing is concerned with the

distribution of power, and systemic forces that struggle to

maintain that power. The hearts and minds doctrine is a neat and

tidy moniker for a doctrine which is functionally undefined. The

ideographic nature of the phrase demonstrates how an ideograph is

especially powerful when it is functioning as a master-narrative.

Much of the power of this political abstraction is levied because

of its ambiguity. Afghanistan war narratives are rife with

contradictions, exaggerations, and over-simplifications and while

a master-narrative provides a sense of order and understanding,

it is a fiction which disguises the true complication nature of

reality.

Tuggle 37

Works Cited

Bean, Hamilton. “Foucault’s Rhetorical Theory and U.S.

Intelligence Affairs.” Poroi 6.2 (2010):

15-32. Web.

Cordell, Robert. Personal interview. 15 Oct. 2013.

Foucault, Michel. Aesthetics, method, and epistemology. Ed. J.D. Faubion;

Trans. R. Hurley and

others. New York: New Press, 1994. Print.

Foucault, Michel. The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow. New York:

Pantheon Books, 1984.

Print.

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Foucalt, Michel. “Truth and Power.” Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews

and Other

Writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon, 1980. 109-33. Print.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Ed. Alan

Sheridan. New York:

Vintage Books, 1977. Print.

Foucault, Michel. Archaeology Of Knowledge, Ed. A. M. Sherida Smith.

New York: Pantheon,

1972. Print.

Gutting, Gary. Michel Foucault’s archeology of scientific reason. UK: Cambridge

University

Press, 1989.

"Legion Update" 1st Battalion (Airborne), 503d Infantry. First Rock

Monthly 01 July 2007: 5-6.

Print.

Luttrell, Marcus, and Patrick Robinson. Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness

Account of Operation

Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 1. New York: Hatchett Book

Group, 2007.

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Macey, David. The Lives of Michel Foucault. London: Hutchinson, 1993.

Print.

Milles, Gary H. (Major USAF). The Role of Rhetorical Theory in Military

Intelligence Analysis:

A Soldier’s Guide to Rhetorical Theory. Maxwell Air Force Base: Air

University Press,

2003. Print.

Restrepo. Dir. Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger. Virgil

Films and Entertainment, 2010.

DVD.

Scheurich, James J. and Kathryn B. McKenzie. “Foucault’s

Methodologies: Archaeology and

Geneaology.” Handbook of Qualitative Research. Eds. Norman K.

Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000.

841-868. Print.

Wikileaks. “D3 020730Z TF SABER Reports Ambush IVO 4km N of Fob

Bari Khowt.”

Wikileaks War Diary, 2 June 2007. Web. 6 Dec 2013.

<http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/id/7258A578-F91A-4A60-B88B-

696DB4082C5E/>.

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