I noticed a book in a store the other day that claimed to be a reprint of the WWII US Army guide to Iraqi culture. I should have bought it, as the topic keeps coming into focus lately. Wired wrote about this as well and even attempted to show dismay with some of the suggestions. Maybe I’ll go back.

In the meantime, I have been reading anecdotes about how the modern Army wants to be culturally savvy, but just does not seem able to understand how to influence local populations in a positive way.

Identity is a funny thing. A Glimpse of Iraq points out a classic example of how two cultures in sudden proximity might end up with dangerously opposite perspectives:

It is probably perfectly normal for an adult American to be seen chewing gum in public. In traditional Iraqi society, the act of chewing a gum is reserved to women, but never in public. Country folk utterly despise city boys when they see them chewing gum. They regard it as feminine. Even little children are discouraged from doing it. The sight of grown, armed men chewing gum must have been one of the causes of many people losing their respect for those armed men! It simply conveys an unintentionally ‘undesirable’ image!

This also reminds me of a young US soldier manning the Iraqi side of the Iraqi-Jordanian border. He glanced at our passports with a lollypop in his mouth. I couldn’t help but notice the reaction on the taxi driver’s face: Utter contempt!

While an American might see a calm, collected, even playful and welcoming person, and Iraqi might see a scared, weak and disrespectful one. Then again, many Americans see chewing gum as disrespectful as well, the difference thus only being the environment. In other words, an American soldier manning a border might not be trained to respect the normal people who might try to cross, whereas they are most certainly trained to respect a superior officer and respect their military buildings.

Although it is tempting to chalk up the gum as a matter of cultural differences in a general sense, I think it may in fact be a reflection of very poor management by the American military. Soldiers have been given specific instructions on how to kill but perhaps not yet how to treat foreign civilians with respect. The interesting question becomes whether the latter has as much security relevance as the former; especially as it might be too late, or too costly, to turn back public opinion.