Via ScienceDaily:

Marines to study culture, language

WASHINGTON, April 11 (UPI) -- "Where are the Paul Reveres? The George Washingtons?" a Marine Corps captain asked rhetorically last year in Ramadi, Iraq.

It was a question borne of frustration at the local populace. Why, when they were the ones increasingly dying at the hands of insurgents, did they not fight back? It was downright un-American.

In fact, it is. The reasons most Iraqis have not taken up arms against those targeting them are myriad. And the reason the American captain had a hard time grasping the reason why was in no small part a function of American culture. He is a product of a culture that celebrates the lone hero, the victory in the face of insurmountable odds; a culture that rewards rugged individualism.

The Iraqis are from another cut of cloth entirely. That became clear during the invasion of Iraq, and far more clear in the subsequent occupation. One colonel likened dealing with the local populations to operating in a house of mirrors; he had to suspend everything he thought he "knew" and navigate his way using completely new and evolving rules.

"I think from what we've seen and read we just goofed, we made mistakes in how we treated people, how prepared for what we were going to be in the post-conflict," said Col. Jeff Bearor, the chief of staff of Marine Corps Training and Education Command. "We weren't as acute and astute as we are in preparing for combat."

"It's almost been a Band-Aid approach. The operational forces on the East and West Coasts had to figure this out on their own," he said.

Cultural training "is one of these things had we put more thinking into we'd have probably been more successful," he said. "I think we're all getting it now."

Fighting a war is one thing; hanging around for years afterward in an alien land to help rebuild the place destroyed by the war requires a different set of skills altogether.

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In May, U.S. Marine Corps will christen an effort to bring those waning skills - foreign language and cultural literacy -- to all Marines. The project will be coordinated at the new Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning at Quantico, Va.

[...]

"What community policing and counter-insurgent operations require are not new tanks and improved radios but improved cross-cultural communication. That is both anthropological and linguistic," the official said.

The curriculum for deploying Marines includes "culture, language, people and why it's important to understand how they view the world and how they turn that toward their advantage," Bearor said.

[...]

posted by Fazia Rizvi @ Wednesday, August 24, 2005   0 comments