http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1166545/posts
Marines Are From Mars, Iraqis Are From Venus
Major Ben Connable
First Marine Division G-2
30 May 2004
Introduction: Marines find themselves regularly frustrated by the
behavior and reactions of the Iraqi people. There are very fundamental
cultural differences between Americans and Arabs, but for a variety of
reasons these differences are exaggerated between the Marine tribe and
the Iraqi tribe. Our fundamental differences lead to fundamental
misunderstandings. As we enter a period of ambiguity leading up to the
transition, it may be helpful to look at how we deal with our Iraqi
counterparts from a fresh perspective. American Marines and Iraqis are
hardwired at far ends of a cultural void not by genetics, but by
social conditioning.
These descriptions are necessarily simplified, skewed and hyperbolic
toward the ideal to make a point. No two people are the same, not
everyone lives up (or down) to the ideal.
AMERICAN MARINES:
People in general are hardwired to see obstacles or problems, find
solutions for those problems, and execute those solutions. The
American culture reinforces this natural instinct in what most other
cultures consider an extreme manner. Americans focus on winning,
achieving, succeeding, and producing. Our children learn and play
aggressive, competitive sports from a very early age.
For example, football, arguably the most popular and widely played
American sport is a linear, aggressive, goal-oriented endeavor that
usually ends with concrete results. This is a simple construct that
satisfies our basic needs. We see a problem (the other team, the goal
line), we see a solution, (drive forward, score more points), and we
can easily envision an end state – unambiguous victory. Ties are a
disappointment, not a means to an end. In professional football we
have done away with ties entirely because they don’t satisfy our
Manichean need for a concrete solution.
As children, most of us are taught that lying and cheating are wrong,
and that "honesty is always the best policy." You might say that
"honor" to an American means never quitting, never betraying your
word, living up to a high standard of performance and behavior.
"Honor" on the athletic field means playing by the rules and giving
your best performance no matter what the conditions. People who give
excuses for poor performance are deemed weak and are shunned.
When we are presented with challenges, we are expected to overcome
them with personal initiative. People who overcome personal disaster
are held up as examples to the rest of us. The worse the disaster
faced, the greater the comeback, the better the story. The skier who
breaks both legs in a fall and drags himself five miles for help is a
hero, but it’s even better if he crawls all the way back to save his
dog from an avalanche. Most Americans are generous to a fault, but we
tend to lack respect for those who don’t help themselves. Most of us
can (still) relate to statements like, "Pull yourself up by your
bootstraps," "Self-made man," "I don’t take handouts."
We see ourselves as separate and distinct individuals. Choosing our
own relationships, memberships, associations, and path in life, we see
it as standard practice to move 3000 miles across the country, away
from family and friends, to "start over." If we don’t like our
families, we simply dissociate ourselves from them and seek other
relationships. We marry and divorce with impunity, and often without
input from friends or family. We decide what is best for ourselves. If
we fail, we’re generally expected to view it as our own fault. We have
responsibility to take care of our parents in their old age, but we
often pay someone else to take this burden off our hands.
Most Americans are lucky enough to have a fairly high standard of
living compared to the rest of the world. More than ninety percent of
families can afford three full meals a day for their children and
nearly everyone has an opportunity to go to school. Our safety is
buffered by regulatory agencies that protect us from dirty water,
dirty air, and even noise pollution. Although we have many bad
neighborhoods, there is little threat from brutal torture,
state-sponsored mass murder, oppressive martial law, or enemy invasion
across our borders. Our health care isn’t perfect, but our life
expectancy is high and most of us feel good about our futures.
In fact, our ability to envision our future is one of our greatest
strengths. Because most of our basic survival needs are met, we have
the luxury of a long-term view. Retirement planning is a normal part
of life. Most Americans envision their children going on to college,
and have no reason to expect they won’t be able to fulfill this
expectation even if they have to take out student loans. We save money
and plan our careers.
Our system of government gives us the perception that we also have a
greater role in our collective future. Although many Americans say
they feel disenfranchised, our ability to vote elected officials in
and out of office gives us an avenue of participation. Our anger and
frustration can be vented with the pull of a lever or a letter to our
congressman. The fact that the congressman writes back and will
probably look into each individual case would shock most people from
the developing world.
The respect for the rule of law is the foundation of our way of life.
We modify our daily behavior based on the belief that it’s our
responsibility to follow laws, we will be punished if we don’t follow
laws, and that most other people will follow laws. Law gives order,
protects us from each other and from the government, and oftentimes
from ourselves. Our faith in this system of laws is reflected in the
amount of time we dedicate to following the creation of law in
congress and the adjudication of law in the courts. Publicly,
corruption is unacceptable, and when discovered it is usually rooted
out.
We take great pride in being a free people. Our unquestioning belief
in our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness make us
uniquely American. Unencumbered by the shackles of tyranny, our hearts
host the seeds of generosity and altruism. Most of us have an
unfailing belief that we make the most of our freedom, living good
lives, helping others and trying to live up to our personal standards.
Our altruism and earnestness often make us somewhat naïve. We expect
that everyone else can see that our hearts are pure, and we expect
them to play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules that we try to live by
ourselves. When we find out that people in the rest of the world
necessarily live by a more survival-oriented set of rules, we’re often
overly disappointed. We have trouble adjusting to other people’s way
of life because we think our way of life is the ideal. We have trouble
seeing things from other people’s eyes because we think they should
always see things from our perspective.
Our sense of moral superiority comes from a real desire to help others
and do the right thing, but it also gets in our way when we have to
deal with those that live by more nebulous rules. Our earnest
overtures are seen as false and naïve instead of moral and brave.
Europeans cannot believe that we would sacrifice so much in Iraq just
to prevent a WMD attack and to help the Iraqi people, because they
would never do it themselves. If they have a hidden angle, we must
have one too. Sometimes our lack of street smarts catches up to us.
When we don’t live up to our own expectations on the national stage,
we are our own worst enemies. The shame-fest over Abu Ghraib is a case
study in American guilt.
Our national character is built on high moral concepts that not many
of us live up to, but most of us aspire to. Our nature is to be
strong, moral, and productive. We set the bar high.
American Marines take these characteristics and drive them to a new
level. With notable exceptions, we tend to be exceptionally
aggressive, mission focused, and strong believers in the American
ideal. We do not accept weakness, indecision, laziness, or
incompetence because we know that these things lead to death in
combat. We drive ourselves past normal points of endurance, often
damaging our own bodies just to reach a finish line or save a buddy.
We expect no less from anyone else, a point that often leads to
friction with our old high school friends, our families, and
especially other Marines. We have been called extremists, and in many
ways we are. Marines can best be described as "extreme Americans."
...American Marines have unusually high expectations..
IRAQIS OF AL-ANBAR:
Although we don’t like to call ourselves "Arabs," the Iraqi culture is
an Arabic culture. We are a communal people, and our lives revolve
around our family; close, extended, and tribal. The paths of our lives
are less lineal than the Americans, less "A to B," more nebulous. Our
sport of choice is also football, but not the American variety.
We play the sport played extensively everywhere in the world except
America. Soccer isn’t a direct, aggressive kind of sport like the game
you play. In fact, we spend a lot of time kicking the ball backwards
instead of towards the goal. Much time is spent on the field lining up
shots, less time shooting. The goal is to win, but a tie is okay as
long as it was a good tie. We often view a tie as a victory if it is
against a better team.
Our perception of victory and success is often malleable to the
circumstances. Our honor demands victory, we have trouble accepting
anything less. We’re not lying to ourselves; we just adjust the
standards to fit the situation. The Gulf War was a victory for Saddam
because we prevented you from driving into Baghdad. Despite the fact
that we were losing on the field, Fallujah is a victory because you
could not finish the attack – our will to hold out defeated your will
to crush our forces. If you push us into a position where we have
obviously lost, we become distraught and angry, and our honor demands
that we seek a victory to balance things out. This is no different
from you – Americans hate losing as well. It is different from you
because to us it is all that matters.
This sense of honor permeates everything we do. This isn’t the Western
definition of honor; it’s more like Hispanic honor. Perception of
manhood is vital, and in fact it can be a matter of life and death. A
man without honor gets no wife, often no work, and in Iraq he may be
shunned or killed by his family depending on how grave the offense.
Defending honor is part of our cultural heritage and it is a focal
point for our behavior. We protect the virtue of our women and the
pride of our family. We are disgusted that American men allow their
women to act and dress like "sharmuta," or whores. If our wives
dressed in public like Brittany Spears we would kill them or burn them
with cooking oil.
An Iraqi man unable to support his family has no honor and must take
action to counterbalance this loss. It doesn’t necessarily matter how
we support our families as long as we provide. In many cases, we are
pushed out the door by our wives to conduct attacks against the
Coalition to regain our honor and to make money. An Iraqi woman knows
that a husband without honor is worthless to her and her children.
Saddam was a terrible father, but many of us loved him as an abused
child loves the parents who beat him. We still act like abused
children, playing one side against the other, looking for an
advantage, support, and acceptance. We will play you against your
boss, against the CPA, and against the government to get what we want.
Don’t expect loyalty from us, we are survivors. When we give loyalty
to a cause it is to God’s cause. When we give loyalty to people it is
to our family.
When we are presented with challenges, we accept the fate prescribed
by God. Acceptance of fate is an Islamic trait, and it guides almost
everything we do. If we are poor, then it is Gods will that we are
poor. If there is a task to be completed, then by the will of God it
will be completed – In Sha Allah. In many cases, except for those of
us educated in Baghdad or the west, we see no reason to put extra
effort into succeeding beyond the norm. Getting by is good enough
because that is our lot in life. We have basic expectations and these
are tied into our honor – we need food, shelter, water, electricity,
and medical help just like everyone else.
Don’t expect any miraculous stories of hardship overcome, "personal
best" in the Marathon, or an "I can make it on my own" attitude. These
concepts are luxuries for people who live in pampered societies like
America. Even when we are poor we have our families and that is enough
to keep us happy. When you ask us to do something, we rarely think to
ourselves, "Gee, how can I do a great job?" We are answering the call
of our stomachs and our screaming wives. After that, a little coffee,
some shisha, and leave us alone.
Our families make us who we are. The family is everything, and only
those on the margins of society live without family support. Because
we live in a developing country, and our needs are more survival
oriented than yours, we have to rely on common survival techniques.
People group together to survive, to protect each other, to look out
for each others interests. The closer the grouping, the closer the
interest of the group. Our immediate families are most important to
us, then our larger families, then sub-tribe, then tribe, then tribal
confederation.
Our loyalty expands and contracts based on our survival needs, but we
almost always work within this construct. If you kill or imprison one
of us, you have taken some of our pooled resources and reduced our
chance of survival. Because we survive as a group, an attack on one is
an attack on all. This is why we demand blood money for death, injury,
and damage. You must replace the resource you have taken from our pool
to balance things out. As long as you recognize that need, we can work
together. Here’s a real-life example of how seriously we take our
tribal resources:
The tribal feud started when three members of one tribe borrowed some
money from a sheikh of another tribe. They had borrowed the money
because they could not find jobs to support their families. After
allowing sufficient time for repayment of the loan, the sheikh
attempted to collect the money he was owed by taking possession of a
vehicle that the three borrowers had purchased in an attempt to start
a small business carting groceries from the market to surrounding
towns. An argument ensued between the two groups, and the sheikh
threatened to harm members of the three men’s families if they didn’t
repay the money. Upon hearing this, the three men shot and killed the
sheikh. The sheikh’s tribe immediately vowed revenge. Soon, all three
of the borrowers had also been killed by a member of the sheikh’s
tribe. The feud will continue until blood money is paid, balancing out
the losses on each side. Very much like your Hatfield and McCoy’s, no?
Pooling resources and interest within a family means that there is
little room for individualism. We rarely choose our own path in life.
If a father owns a business, the son will almost certainly work for
his father. If marriage to another tribe solves an inter-tribal
conflict, we marry who we are told. Our parents pick our spouses, and
we often have little or no input in who we marry. Only the rich and
the elite choose their own life. This lack of individuality further
reduces our sense of individual responsibility. Again, don’t expect us
to act like independent Americans.
Our tribalism is tightly bound to our sense of honor. Just as honor is
vital to each one of us, it is also vital to the tribe. A dishonored
tribe loses "wasta" and therefore influence. Less influence means less
money, less power, less ability to support the members of the tribe.
Therefore, a tribe’s honor is jealously guarded as a group resource.
Mistreating a sheikh of our tribe makes him less powerful, making all
of us less powerful. Less power means fewer contracts, less money,
less food, angrier families. We must regain this honor any way we can.
Because Iraqi tradition is violent, we often choose violence to regain
our honor. If you dishonor our tribe, we have to negotiate with you...
or attack you until our honor is restored.
We don’t ask for much. Our standard of living is low compared to the
Western world. If you put us in the United States, most of us would
fall well below your poverty level. Since the collapse of the economy
last year, many of us cannot afford to feed our families without
finding odd jobs, begging money from family members, or supporting the
ACF. Look around – most of us live in humble homes, farming small
plots with a few animals and a broken down car. If we have a big home,
we may have had a good job before the war and now we have nothing and
are twice as angry as our poor neighbors.
There are certainly rich people amongst us, but they don’t represent
the majority. When you tell us you can improve our lives and make us
rich, you have an image of your own homes in mind. Most of us cannot
even imagine what your lives must be like in America, and we do not
necessarily value what you value. We don’t dream of Outback
Steakhouse. We are proud of our lives even if they don’t meet your
expectations.
Unlike you, we do not enjoy the protection of concerned government
leaders. Nobody cares if there is lead in our water or pollution in
the air. Sometimes our leaders feign concern about our healthcare
system, but that’s only because our harried tribal leaders take up our
cry. Your system is so refined that every little whimper draws the ire
of a champion congressman. Our system is so broken our raging screams
barely make a sound. We must use the power of our tribes and our
religious groups to effect any change, so again, if you weaken our
affiliations you weaken our only hope of being heard.
Where you have been protected from invasion, martial law, and torture
for nearly two centuries, we have experienced nothing but invasion,
martial law, and torture for our entire lives. We have been in a state
of almost constant warfare with either the US or with Iran. When we
weren’t fighting you, we were fighting ourselves in the north and the
south. Our sons and brothers were killed fighting to keep Saddam in
power, and our lives seemed painfully short. At any time, a government
official, police officer, or secret policeman could decide that we had
done something wrong and have us killed. They might have to pay off
some blood money, but so what?
Just as many of you have become callous about death in combat, we have
grown up to be callous about death in everyday life. We are not the
Baghdad elite. All of us have seen animals slaughtered and have helped
pull their guts from their bodies, so blood is nothing new to us.
Beatings are a part of life, pain is a part of life, and death is an
ever-present part of life. If pain and death are our lot in life, we
accept that as part of God’s plan. This is how we are able to accept
money for a relative you have killed – we accept God’s will, and you
have balanced out our resources. What can we complain about?
Because our lives are so brutal, we have almost no capacity to view
the long term. Our inability to envision our own futures is our
greatest weakness. We are faced with a simple hierarchy of needs. One
must breathe before he can think about shelter and security, shelter
and security before water, water before food, and so on. It is only by
building a normal, healthy society that you can extend that focus into
the long range, to think about things like education, leisure time,
investment, and retirement. You have heard our complaints. We want
shelter, security, water, and food. Your talk about democracy and
culture and prosperity mean little to people who are simply surviving.
With this short term view, if you give us money we spend it. If you
give money to one of our public officials, he’ll steal as much as he
can because he doesn’t even know if he’ll have a job next week. He has
to get more, now, to fulfill basic needs. He can’t see into the long
term, to see the effect his corruption will have on the future of his
community. He may even be a good person, but he has to look out for
his family first.
What you see as corruption we see as part of the normal process of
doing business. Because most jobs underpay, we always take a cut. This
is built into the price of the job. Iraq follows the trend of many
other Arab countries – there aren’t enough jobs for the expanding
population so the government hires everyone. The government can’t
afford high salaries for so many people, so the pay is low. Because
the pay is low, it’s expected that you accept bribes and cheat to get
by. Everyone knows the rules, even the government.
Typically, we’ll take a slice of 10% to 15% off the top of a contract
or a work order. Nobody will really get too upset if we keep things in
this "normal" range. If we go too far, and take 30% or higher, then we
know we are stepping over the line. However, unless you catch on we’ll
take what we can get. If you’re too stupid to figure out what we’re
doing, it’s your fault, not ours. There is no real shame in
corruption; after all, we’re looking out for our families as expected.
Corruption is natural in a country without the rule of law. We do not
respect law the way you do because for us law comes from the end of a
gun. In the absence of the gun, we try to respect our families and
friends and live by God’s will. If the government passes laws, or you
give us a transitional law, we don’t respect it because we don’t
respect the government. Government to us means corruption, violence,
dictatorship, and rule by fear. In the absence of fear, there is no
rule.
We know that Saddam lied to us often. We feel that he did this to
protect us, but also to protect himself. We have never trusted our
social institutions as much as we trust our families and our friends.
It all comes back to the family and tribe. If the government tells us
that the Americans are going to enter our town in peace, but our
cousin tells us they are coming to murder everyone and rape our women,
we will almost always believe our cousin. You have made many promises
to us, but kept so few. Why should we believe you? In the absence of
trusted institutions, our lives are ruled by rumor, and rumor is
spread by word of mouth.
In such a nebulous society, where life is a tenuous prospect, we
rarely take responsibility for our own actions. "Owning up" for our
poor performance or behavior would be a stupid thing to do if it
reduces our chance of survival and success. If we can put off our
mistakes on others, we’ll do it in a heartbeat not because we’re lazy
or incompetent but to avoid damaging our honor and possibly losing our
jobs. Remember, without honor and a job, we are nothing. So we break a
few rules and lie about our mistakes. We don’t care about rules
anyway; we do things to achieve an effect not because they’re right or
wrong.
We’re masters of achieving effect. Everything we do is designed to
coax, cajole, trick, or steer you into doing what we want you to do.
This is a standard survival skill, one that you obviously haven’t
mastered. Your naiveté never ceases to amaze us. You either take us at
face value, or you get mad when we "lie." It’s not lying if you get
what you want, and we almost always get what we want from you. We are
in a constant state of negotiation, and there are no permanent
solutions to any problem. You pretend to be so honest, but we see you
as the biggest liars of all. You promised us security, jobs, and
peace. All we have is crime, unemployment, and war. Who’s the liar?
You may have noticed we have a very emotional nature. There’s no
imperative to control our emotions, and in fact we’re encouraged to
express ourselves. We wear everything on our sleeves, and we change
our minds at will. We can be furious at you one minute when you offend
us, and truly love you the next minute. Every death is a massacre,
every accident a murder, every threat is an impending disaster.
Iraqis are complicated people. We can be kind, generous, and forgiving
in the worst circumstances. If you are a visitor in our homes, we will
feed you our last morsel of food. If you become a true friend, we will
die for you. But we see no future for ourselves or for our families.
We are stuck in a rut, and we need someone who has the capacity to see
a better future to guide us onto the right path. We may take your
hand, or we may bite your hand because we do not trust you. It is on
your head to be patient and forgiving, not ours. Do not expect us to
be American Marines. If you expect too much from us, you will be
disappointed. There is nothing worse than unmet expectations, my
friend.
...Iraqis will never live up to the Marines’ expectations because they
are Iraqis, not American Marines. We haven’t lived up to their
expectations either..
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"Ah yes, we must mollify angry fanatics who seek our destruction
because otherwise .. they might get mad and seek our destruction."
- Ann Coulter 9/26/2002
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