The Moral Responsibility
of the U.S. Military Officer in the Context of the Larger War We
Are In
Robert
Hickson
This
essay proposes to consider the long-range effects of a gradually
implemented educational reform within the American military
culture – a form of re-education that was slowly introduced by
the psychological and social scientists after World War II. In a
more mitigated form than the German military’s Umerziehung
(i.e., re-education) after World War II, the American military
culture seems to have undergone its own transformation and
“instrumentalization” in order to become a more useful,
non-authoritarian professional cadre in the service of a modern,
often messianic, and increasingly imperial democracy.
It would
seem that the traditional, more or less Christian, American
military culture had to be re-paganized and neo-Machiavellianized
and made more philo-Judaic – or at least less patently (or
latently) anti-Semitic.
The
Freudian-Marxist “Frankfurt School” doctrines could further
build upon the educational reforms which had already been
implemented by John Dewey’s own theories of pragmatism and
instrumentalism. These combined innovations in military, as well
as civilian, education would seem to have weakened the
intellectual and moral character of the American military
officer, and concurrently inclined him to become more
technocratic as well as more passive and neutral as an
instrument in the service of his civilian masters in a “modern
democracy” or a new “messianic imperium” with a
“globalist, neo-liberal ideology.” Indeed, some of these
innovations were introduced when I was first being formed as a
future military officer.
It was in
the autumn of 1960, after Plebe Summer and the test of “Beast
Barracks,” that I first heard about the revisions that the West
Point academic curriculum had recently undergone, and which
would be experimentally applied to our incoming class of some
eight hundred men. Colonel Lincoln’s Social Science Department,
as it was presented to us, was to be much more influential and
more deeply formative than before upon the education of
officers. There were to be several more classes now in military
psychology, sociology, and leadership, and fewer in strategic
military history and concrete military biography. The
long-standing and ongoing process of replacing the Humanities
with the academic and applied social sciences would, we were
told, continue and increase.
At the
time – especially at 17 years of age – I had little idea of the
implications of these curricular revisions, nor of their
underlying soft “logic of scientific discovery,” much less an
awareness of the growing “soft tyranny” of the Social Sciences
and their subtly relativizing “sociology of knowledge” (as in
the work of German sociologist, Karl Mannheim). But I do
remember reading two mandatory books: Samuel Huntington’s The
Soldier and the State and Morris Janowitz’s The
Professional Soldier. Both of these books, we were told,
were to help form the proper kind of officer that was needed in
“modern democratic society.”
Janowitz
had an intellectual background rooted in neo-Marxist “critical
theory” as it was first propagated by Max Horkheimer and Theodor
Adorno at the Institute for Social Research of the University of
Frankfurt in Germany. (This school of thought became more
commonly known as “the Frankfurt School.”) This internationally
networked school of Marxist-Freudian thought – indeed a
well-armed ideology – was likewise active in conducting various
“studies in prejudice” and quite intensely concerned about the
dangers of the “authoritarian personality,” especially because
this character type supposedly tended to “fascism” and
“anti-Semitism.” The Frankfurt School “critical theory” claimed
to detect and to unmask “anti-democratic tendencies,” perhaps
most notably in traditional military institutions and their more
autocratic cultures – especially because of the recent history
of Germany – but also in traditional, well-rooted, religious
institutions of the West, i.e., Christian institutions in
general and the culture of the Catholic Church most
specifically.
The
Frankfurt School theorists and activists claimed to want to
produce the “democratic personality” – although they had
originally (and more revealingly) called it the “revolutionary
personality.” This purportedly “democratic personality” was to
be a fitting replacement for the inordinately prejudiced and
latently dangerous “authoritarian personality,” which allegedly
conduced to the disorder and illness of anti-Semitism.
The
combination of Karl Marx’s earlier writings and critical
theories and Sigmund Freud’s psychiatric theories would be a
special mark of this “neo-Marxist critical theory,” not only in
the writings of Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse, but also in
the “anti-authoritarian” psychology of Erich Fromm.
Morris
Janowitz was at the time (1960) a sociologist at the University
of Chicago, and he seemed to want to form a “new kind of
military professionalism” and a new kind of military officer.
That is to say, a military officer who would be a “suitable”
instrument to serve those who are truly “governing a modern
democracy.”
These
last few words in quotation marks were taken from a recent essay
by the candid Irving Kristol (the neoconservative patriarch and
patronus and former Trotskyite) who has for some years
been writing about, and promoting, “the emerging American
imperium,” first in the Wall Street Journal in the
mid-1990s.
In the 25
August, 2003, issue of the Weekly Standard, Kristol wrote
a forthright article entitled, “The Neoconservative Persuasion.”
In this essay he uses words that could also be retroactively
applied to the larger, long-range re-education and cultural
project of the Frankfurt School, of Morris Janowitz, and of his
kind of “neo-military sociologist.” Kristol speaks in somewhat
elevated but bluntly candid language as follows:
The
historical task and political purpose of
neoconservatism [and also of the “new” military sociology
and psychology?] would seem to be this: to convert the
Republican party, and American conservatism [and also the
American military culture?] in general, against their
respective wills, into a new kind of conservative
politics [and hence a neo-imperial American military and its
Global Expeditionary Force?] suitable to governing a modern
democracy.[1]
In the
article Kristol further argues that, “like the Soviet Union of
yesteryear,” the “United States of today” has “an identity that
is ideological” (though he does not specify the content of this
purported ideological identity). Therefore, in addition to “more
material concerns” and “complicated geopolitical calculations of
national interest,” the United States, says Kristol,
“inevitably” has “ideological interests” and “that is why we
[sic] feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its
survival [sic] is threatened.” (Israel Shamir, for slightly
different reasons, also thinks that Israel is now threatened, at
least as a “Jewish supremacist state” or as an “exclusionary,
apartheid state.”)
However,
is it conceivable that after our anti-authoritarian re-education
in America’s purportedly tolerant, new “democratic military
culture,” any active-duty military officers would now be
permitted – much less long tolerated – to make any critique or
have any moral reservation about this pre-eminent “ideological
mission” for America, either for the protection of Israel or for
the further expansion of, in Kristol’s own words, “the emerging
American imperium”? It would seem not. The culture of
tolerance would seem to be a fiction, especially when truth is
taboo. Furthermore, a sign of real power is who effectively
controls (or is intimidating about) what is permitted to be
discussed and critiqued in open public discourse, and what must
not be spoken.
Indeed,
to what extent could any general officer or flag officer today
even make a strategic argument – much less a principled, moral
argument – that such “ideological interests” and permanent
missions for America actually undermine true U.S. national
interests and the common good? If any younger military officers
were openly, or even privately, to make such critical arguments,
or were known even to have such principled views, would they not
likely be “weeded out” before they could even become general or
flag officers? Nonetheless, the American military officer, in
his Commissioning Oath, still accepts a high moral obligation
when he solemnly swears to defend the (clear and plain, i.e.
un-“deconstructed”) Constitution of the United States “against
all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Therefore, from the vantage point of “the emerging American
imperium” in 2004, and in light of our seemingly intimidated
military culture, one may now better consider the strategic,
longer-range cultural project of “anti-authoritarian
re-education,” which was gradually implemented by way of a
reformed “military sociology and psychology.” This cultural
project was, in fact, slowly implemented, even back in 1960
during the so-called “cold war,” and was intended, it would
seem, to be part of the quiet and unobtrusive “re-education”
(Umerziehung) of the “updated” and “progressive” military
officer, so as to make him more “suitable” and docile for
helping his civilian superiors in governing a modern democracy –
which is also now seen to be an emerging American imperium
more and more “governed” by inaccessible and seemingly
intractable oligarchies or new elites. In Antonio Gramsci’s
terms, a new “cultural hegemony” has been attained, replacing an
older, traditional military and political culture with a new
ethos and orientation. While the United States was fighting the
“cold war” against the more conspicuous revolutionary socialism
of the Soviet Union and Red China, the culture was being
quietly, indirectly, and “dialectically” captured! After seeing
these fruits from the vantage point of 2004, we may soberly ask:
To what extent were we cadets being prepared, even back in 1960,
to be compliant officers in a “modern imperial democracy,” or
even a new kind of Praetorian Guard for our new elites and their
Proconsuls?
Indeed,
it was Samuel Huntington’s The Soldier and the State
which was the second mandatory book for us to read as cadets in
1960 as part of our new curriculum, in addition to the writings
of Morris Janowitz. Huntington’s book also promoted the ethos of
an unquestioningly obedient, properly subordinated, and docile
military officer as a compliant instrument in the service of a
modern State and “democratic society.” Huntington’s concept of
“civil-military relations” clearly implied that there was not to
be a keen intellectual or strategic culture in the U.S.
military, and certainly nothing resembling the German General
Staff concept of well-educated, strategic-minded, far-sighted,
and thinking officers who were to be not only indispensable
senior staff officers but also field commanders with high
qualities of moral and intellectual leadership. (Even the
post-World War II German military culture was permitted to
retain the German General Staff concept in its educational
system for future officers, but the American military culture
was, ironically, not permitted to imitate – or even to know much
about – this brilliant achievement. I never learned about it
during my studies at West Point except when I was abroad among
the German military as an exchange-cadet in the summer of 1962.)
Two other
men made indispensable contributions to my deeper understanding
of strategic psychological warfare and modern cultural warfare,
as well as the historical instances of Kulturkampf and
the re-education of an enemy: Colonel (later Lieutenant General)
Sam V. Wilson and Theodore Ropp.
During
the early 1970s, when I studied military history under the
Austrian-American professor Theodore Ropp at Duke University, I
realized that this great teacher, scholar, and author of War
in the Modern World, understood not only “battlefield”
military history but also the relation of war and society and
the subtle influence of war upon larger civilizations and
cultures. And he understood these matters in a very profound
way. Professor Ropp, who taught many West Point officers in
graduate school, cultivated and disciplined the eager minds of
his students to take the longer view of various profoundly
differentiated military cultures. He especially illuminated
these different traditions by way of counter-pointed contrasts
and a finely nuanced comparative cultural history of
long-standing military institutions, to include their specific
martial effects upon civilization as a whole.
Under the
instruction of Professor Ropp, I realized for the first time
that something serious, important, and substantial was missing
from my formative military education at West Point. Although I
had been on the exchange trip with the German military and their
cadets, I was then still too young and callow to have a deeper
appreciation of the formation of the new German military culture
after World War II, in contrast to its earlier history – and not
just its Prussian military history. But Professor Ropp helped me
and so many other students to understand and savor these deeper
matters, for which I am so grateful.
Another
important influence in my deeper education was Colonel Sam V.
Wilson, who in 1969 and 1970 was my mentor. He was also during
that time (and during the Vietnam War years in general) the
director of studies at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare
Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Sam Wilson was a
deep-thinking military officer, especially in the field of
irregular warfare and strategic special operations. He, too,
made me realize, though in an incipient way, the deeper
strategic, moral, and cultural factors in the waging of modern
war. West Point, I then realized, had prepared us very little to
take this longer, truly strategic, view of military culture,
history, and war, even though the Academy had been in fact
founded to form and cultivate the discerning mind and moral
character of a future strategos (the Greek for “general
officer”), like the historian Thucydides.
Irving
Kristol and Professor Sidney Hook were both involved in “the
cultural cold war” as part of the CIA-supported Congress for
Cultural Freedom, in which they tried to influence and capture
the culture of the so-called “non-Communist left,” and to
increase its active resistance to the increasingly
“anti-Semitic” Stalinist form of Soviet Communism. In like
manner, there seems also to have been a quieter “cultural
project,” by way of the social sciences, to “update” and
“transform” the traditionally authoritarian and rigid American
military culture into a more “dynamic” and more “democratic form
of society.” For, as the argument went, a more authoritarian and
explicitly Christian military culture also had the danger of
being at least latently anti-Semitic.
Professor
Joseph Bendersky’s recent book supports this suggestion and
intuition. Published in 2000, his book – which contains ironic
or sarcastic quotation marks even in his title – is called:
The “Jewish Threat”: Anti-Semitic Politics in the U.S.
Army.[2]
Bendersky
shows how the “Officers’ Worldview, 1900–1939,” as well as their
dangerously “elitist” views, had to be corrected and
transformed, especially in light of “Officers and the Holocaust,
1940–1945” and in light of the “Birth of Israel, 1945–1949” (the
quoted periods being also the titles of three of his chapters).
When one
finishes reading Bendersky’s lengthy and learned (but not
entirely intelligent) ideological book, one realizes that a very
intelligent psycho-cultural project had been designed and
conducted, especially after World War II, to remove and to
chasten the “dangerous” propensities of the “elitist” American
military culture – especially its sometimes “racist” (and
“eugenicist”) and un-democratic propensities toward
“anti-Semitism.” (Bendersky never sharply defines, though, what
he means by anti-Semitism, although he implies that it
constitutes a kind of summum malum – i.e., the greatest
of evils.)
In the
context of strategic, cultural warfare, Antonio Gramsci, along
with Géorg Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, and the whole
Frankfurt School apparatus, understood the “cultural channels”
of religious and strategic subversion, especially of traditional
Western civilization and its once deeply rooted Christian
religious culture. In like manner, there seems to have been some
well-prepared “cultural warfare” within the United States subtly
conducted against the post-World War II military culture and its
Christian moral traditions (which included formation in the life
of the four cardinal virtues, as distinct from the dialectic of
mere “values” and its mostly emotive and subjective “critical
thinking.”)
Moreover,
I am led to make these observations merely as a “fruit
inspector.” For I have seen the fruits of these cultural and
curricular revisions, and I have also seen what was once present
and is no longer. I also see the extent to which the truth is
taboo concerning these matters. Like other matters of historical
inquiry, the matter of the transformation of the American
military culture also seems to be “off limits.” Investigators
are not welcome.
Nonetheless, I have observed the fruits and shall continue to
examine the cumulative combination of the deeper causes and
agents of this transformation of our military education and
culture into something which is more vulnerable to manipulation;
and whose moral and intellectual resistance to injustice and
other disorders is increasingly “dimmed down.”
I have
also witnessed – by personal, direct involvement – how little
intellectual and moral resistance there now is within the
military, against our creeping and technocratic neo-Praetorianism
in support of our regional military Proconsuls and their
civilian masters (both inside and outside of the government).
Our military culture is altogether inattentive to an arguably
unconstitutional abuse of power; and also to our myopically
“un-strategic” and thoroughly irrational involvement in unjust
aggressive wars (like Iraq), while we are concurrently and
centrifugally over-extended elsewhere throughout the world, and
“strutting to our confusion.”
The
common good of the United States would be greatly furthered, I
believe, if there were even just one “ferociously honest” man
like Israel Shamir within the U.S. military. This former Israeli
commando and immigrant from the former Soviet Union gives many
unflinching “reports from reality,” which are not easily found
in other sources. The reader of this essay will certainly know
what I mean if he will only read Shamir’s recently published
collection of essays entitled Flowers of Galilee.[3]
In his
candid book, Israel Shamir gives more and deeper cultural and
strategic intelligence about Israel than one will find in all of
CIA’s unclassified translations, available from its gifted, but
sometimes overly selective (or self-censoring), Foreign
Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). Like the now-deceased
Israeli writer and “secular humanist” Israel Shahak – but, I
think, even more profoundly so – Israel Shamir is truthful and
candid in his manifold analyses and presentation of hard facts,
many of which are essentially unknown in the West unless one
reads Hebrew.
What
Israel Shamir writes gives not only much “ground truth” about
Israel and its strategic operations and deceptions, but also
larger reports about the “political action of Jewish forces” in
the wider world, and keenly vivid “cautionary tales” plus even
deeper “parables” – all of which will aid our indispensable
knowledge of reality and give good grounds for the United
States’ strategic “course-correction” in the Middle East and at
home.
Israel
Shamir’s work would be a great example to our own military and
intelligence officers. For it has been my constant experience
over the years – even as a professor at military colleges and
academies, strategic institutes, and universities – that our
military and intelligence officers are not formed to grasp, nor
even to desire, a deeper cultural and strategic intelligence
about foreign countries. That kind of intelligence (hence
understanding) is too often depreciated and considered as “soft
intelligence” rather than “hard” or “quantifiable” intelligence.
As a result, and as we become increasingly secularized as a
nation, we cannot easily take the measure of foreign religious
cultures or gauge the importance of religious world-views such
as Zionism and Islam.
Furthermore, because much of cultural-strategic intelligence can
be reliably derived from unclassified open sources or OSINT
(Open Source Intelligence), it is often thought to be too vague
and untrustworthy compared to, say, MASINT (Measurement and
Signatures Intelligence) or SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) or
covert-clandestine HUMINT (Human Intelligence).
Properly
conceived and patiently conducted “cultural and strategic
intelligence” would, however, illuminate the moral, religious,
and deep-cultural factors of foreign strategy and grand
strategy. It further reveals another country’s own strategic
culture (as well as its political culture). For example, in the
case of mainland China, one is thereby made more sensitive to
Chinese perceptions of its own vulnerable geography and its
important “strategic thresholds,” and, therefore, its own
historical reluctance to have a large blue-water navy.
Moreover,
because the U.S. State Department has never, as an institution,
had any larger “regional strategies” or “regional orientations”
of its foreign policy – as distinct from its focus on policies
and strategies designed for individual countries, and to be
conducted by our individual resident Embassies (or “country
teams”) – the U.S. military is placed in an awkward situation,
which may even involve it in Constitutional difficulties and
illegalities. The senior military officers of major regional
combatant commands – such as Central Command (CENTCOM) or
Pacific Command (PACOM) – must now act as if by default as
Regional Proconsuls, as was the case in imperial Rome, thereby
producing many moral difficulties for our purportedly democratic
military culture, and its proper subordination to civilian
leadership in foreign policy. These senior officers, in their
effective role as Proconsuls, appear to be forming, as well as
implementing, foreign policy – not an easy mission for a
traditional military officer in our culture.
For
example, let us consider the case of Dennis Blair. Just before
Admiral Blair retired from active duty as Commander-in-Chief of
the U.S. Pacific Command (a position now known simply as
Commander, U.S. Pacific Command, or CDRUSPACOM), I asked him a
question after his strategic luncheon talk at Fort Lesley McNair
in Washington D.C., at our National Defense University (NDU). In
its essence, my question went something like this:
To what
extent, Admiral Blair, must you effectively act as a Regional
Proconsul in the Pacific because our State Department has no
coordinated policy and strategy for the region as a whole? And
to what extent are your larger political and grand-strategic
missions compromising your role as a military officer under the
requirements of our Constitution, and in light of our
traditional civil-military relations and customs of proper
subordination?
In
response to this question, the audience, as well as the gracious
Admiral, gasped. The audience then nervously laughed aloud
(especially one of Admiral Blair’s own classmates from the U.S.
Naval Academy – an energetic Marine Major General who was also
sitting in the audience)! Admiral Blair then took a deep breath
and said: “How can I give you a good answer to your serious
question – a truthful answer that you deserve – without getting
myself into trouble?” (His initial response and candor with me
produced even more pervasive laughter in the room!)
What is
important in this context, however, is that our Regional
Combatant Commanders (former “CINC”s and now simply
“Commanders”) and our larger global Functional Unified
Commanders (such as our U.S. Special Operations Command –
USSOCOM) actually have not just military-strategic but higher
grand-strategic missions.
But my
deeper argument is that our gradated military educational system
– from our formation as cadets up to our higher education at the
National Defense University – does not prepare officers for such
long-range and culturally sensitive missions, much less clarify
the deeper legal and political and Constitutional issues. These
issues are illustrated by the case of the recently established
“homeland command” (formally known as U.S. Northern Command, or
USNORTHCOM) with its domestic as well as Canadian missions,
and an altogether ambiguous area of responsibility
within the U.S. – and consequent, but very sensitive,
intelligence requirements!
If our
military education and deeper-rooted military culture properly
prepared our officers to think in these larger, grand-strategic
terms, they would now also be much more acutely sensitive to,
and discerning of, the moral factors of modern war (and
“terrorism”), including the cultural and religious factors of
strategy, which are always involved when we are intimately
working with other (and often quite alien) civilizations.
In this
context we should be reminded of the far-sightedness of
Lieutenant General Sam V. Wilson. In 1969 and ’70, when he was
still a colonel and a formative leader as well, he saw (and
said) what was needed in the strategic and cultural formation of
U.S. military officers. He was, however (I regret to say),
insufficiently appreciated or understood at the time.
Having
had many diverse experiences abroad, Colonel Wilson long ago
realized that the U.S. military needed a cadre of officers who
could take the larger (and nuanced) measure of foreign
military cultures as well as the strategic factors and
cultural events of moment in the world. He wanted U.S. military
officers to be able to understand foreign strategic and military
cultures on their own terms and in the longer light of their own
histories and geographies. He knew, as in the case of Turkey and
the Turkish General Staff, that some foreign militaries had
their own uniquely differentiated and distributed roles within
their own societies, and which were in sharp contrast to the
roles of a military officer within our own society and
traditions. He knew that – for the common good of the United
States – we needed to understand these often radically
different and even incommensurable military traditions.
He also
saw that we needed officers who were truly competent in
strategic foreign languages (e.g., Chinese, Russian, Japanese,
Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, etc.) and who were desirous and capable
of savoring foreign cultures and their histories as a whole –
and not just their military institutions and their conduct in
war: that is to say, to understand their literature and
philosophy and world-view, and their resonant cultural symbols
and aspirations. Yet Colonel Wilson realized that such officers
should also be more than well-educated and deep-thinking
“foreign area officers,” which were then being formed in our
Foreign Area Special Training (FAST) Program. He foresaw that we
also needed officers who could intelligently connect different
regions of the world and take a longer view of the whole – to
understand, for example, “Soviet revolutionary warfare” as a
form of “total war,” whereby even peace was strategically
considered and employed as “an instrument of revolution” (as
Major General J.F.C. Fuller also very well understood), and to
understand the long-range strategic and religious operations of
historic and modern Islamic civilization, in contrast to the
strategic cultures of Great Britain, China, and Israel, and
their uniquely long-range aspirations.
Colonel
Wilson’s personally designed and implemented strategic-cultural
program was called the Military Assistance Overseas Program (MAOP).
The initial formation of officers in this program was a
six-month course for colonels and lieutenant colonels – and
their Navy equivalents – at the Special Warfare Center. (Colonel
Wilson had assigned me to be an instructor in this new program,
and head of the East-Asian Seminar. He also permitted me,
because of my experience with several foreign militaries, to
attend the course and receive the diploma by way of special
exception, because I was then only a captain in our Army Special
Forces.)
Originally, Colonel Wilson wanted to have the whole program,
with its strategic courses, in Washington, D.C., and to be part
of the National Interdepartmental Seminar for long-range
strategic and cultural education, which then included the State
Department and the Intelligence Community. However, in 1969 –
during the Vietnam War – Sam Wilson’s important ideas were
suspect and frowned upon. They were, indeed, too politically
sensitive, even before the development of “the emerging American
imperium.”
Despite
support from thoughtful political leaders, Colonel Wilson’s plan
to have the school in Washington was finally rejected because
too many people saw that he was – or could easily be perceived
to be – forming “men on white horseback,” i.e., ambitious
military officers who would potentially encroach upon, if not
actually usurp, the super-ordinate role of their
“civilian political masters.”
Had Sam
V. Wilson been more influential, we would not now, as a nation,
have such a passive and unthinking military, or such an
invertebrate military culture, or such a shortsighted strategic
culture. And our military would be much more intelligently
resistant to our neoconservative and pro-imperial civilian
masters.
By way of
contrast, the American military culture was to be, I regret to
say, much more formatively influenced by John Dewey’s “pragmatic
education,” in combination with the Frankfurt School’s “critical
theory” and subtle anti-authoritarian “re-education.” Our
traditional military culture was to be more and more uprooted
and cut off from its Christian roots, and thereby more and more
secularized, re-paganized, and neo-Machiavellianized. This
gradually transformed military culture is now conspicuously
acquiescent to its neo-Machiavellian, civilian masters and
mentors (like Michael Ledeen), in unthinking support of the
growing American imperium and of the grand-strategy of
the “greater Israel” (Eretz Israel) not only in the
Middle East but throughout the world. Our military officers, in
my experience, no longer know, nor reflect upon, nor
respectfully consider the criteria and standards of just war, as
revealed in the long, articulate tradition of Western Christian
civilization. It is now their usual orientation and preference
to think and speak in terms of a vague and unspecified
“preventive war” or a war of “anticipatory self-defense,” both
of which concepts are, too often, Orwellian “Newspeak” for the
reality of a war of aggression – the only specific
offense for which the German officers were brought to trial at
Nuremberg in 1945.
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