The Past is the Present

Did some neat stuff today. I had to pick two guys from the team to receive "additional cultural training." I was a bit skeptical, and I wanted to see what it was about so I picked myself and my Operations guy, CPT Steve Arceneaux to attend. The rest of the fellas went off to Monster Truck Training (AKA: Driver's training in Humvees-- I'll get mine later).

The culture training is two days long, and it is run by an element of the Naval Postgraduate School out in Monterrey, CA. They brought in a bunch of academic type folks with a bunch of letters after their names and they have Doctor titles. We got both historical and anthropologic backgrounds from some scary smart academic guys on Iraq, Mesopotamia, Early Islam, the Ottoman Empire, and the Fertile Crescent. Very informative; I never studied that part of the world in this detail, and when you take Iraq's history into context, it all makes perfect sense why they are the way they are (which is un-western: imagine that). It of course corroborated much of what I have been reading in a book called The Modern History of Iraq, which covers Iraqi history from the 1920 Revolution to the present. It reads like a cross between a Bugs Bunny cartoon and a soap opera in terms of wackiness and drama. They've been busy.

Today I learned lots of modern things we take for granted are as a result of the Muslim Civilization conquering other civilizations, stealing their ideas, and spreading them as they went. Stuff like Aristotle's scientific works, Algebra and Geometry (I could have done without those), paper making, arabic numbers, the concept of zero, and lots of stuff on Anatomy.

That region of the world is also fiercely tribal; the family is everything to them, and the concept of a Nation State of Iraq is a foreign concept-- hence the apprehension to just jump right in, establish local and national governments, and sing Kumbaya all together, thus negating thousands of years of conflict and religious disputes over who the TRUE descendents of Islam are (one of many internal disputes). Add to the fact that the land of modern Iraq has been fought over for thousands of years. Seems everyone has a reason to hate someone.

Sure, they oppress women, promote non-secular education, will kill at the drop of a hat Hatfield vs. McCoy style, and believe in poligamy, but hey... Every culture has its flaws, right?

But strangely, when you take all of the historical stuff in context, it all makes perfect sense.... No wonder they are they way they are. No wonder they are resistant to seemingly imperialistic western ideas, no wonder they think we are only there for oil, no wonder they don't want to share power with anyone.

All of this stuff would have been nice to know in 2003-2004. I would hope we would have thought to learn about it back then. Them dudes with all the letters behind their names make it all seem so obvious. Their past is truly their present.

I wonder if it will change. Sort of arrogant of us to think we could just roll up in there and BLAMMO create a western style democracy.

Heck, it took us until 1783 to get a Constitution, and dang near everyone who signed it was banished or punished or wound up dead. Wonder if George Washington and John Adams worried too.

All that aside, it seems we are making progress, but there has been progress there before. Wonder how long it will last, and I skeptically wonder how long we will be interested in that part of the world, and what will happen next.

Good night and take care.

Ron