Check this out, this is our instruction manual to US soldiers serving in Iraq during WWII. It's too bad we didn't dust it off and hand it out this time around.
Plus Ça Change
George Packer
I just received an advance copy of a little book that the University of Chicago Press will soon publish: “Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq During World War II.” Iraq was a little less complicated for American soldiers in 1943: unlike the new four-hundred-seventy-two-page Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual, also to be published by Chicago, the Second World War booklet could fit in a G.I.’s front pocket. The advice is pretty basic and full of painful resonance today: “Keep away from mosques”; “Don’t put in your two cents worth when Iraqis argue about religion”; “Don’t make a pass at any Moslem woman or there will be trouble.” The essential message is to show respect, since “American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis (as the people are called) like American soldiers or not.” Why wasn’t this the “ commander's intent” when Americans returned to Iraq sixty years later? In his foreword, Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl laments, “I wish that I had read it before beginning my own yearlong tour.”
The main difference between now and then can be found in a couple of sentences that would make any officer who has spent months trying to “ stand up” a local council in some Iraqi city wilt with envy:
You aren't going to Iraq to change the Iraqis. Just the opposite. We are fighting this war to preserve the principle of “ live and let live.”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker
Plus Ça Change
George Packer
I just received an advance copy of a little book that the University of Chicago Press will soon publish: “Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq During World War II.” Iraq was a little less complicated for American soldiers in 1943: unlike the new four-hundred-seventy-two-page Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual, also to be published by Chicago, the Second World War booklet could fit in a G.I.’s front pocket. The advice is pretty basic and full of painful resonance today: “Keep away from mosques”; “Don’t put in your two cents worth when Iraqis argue about religion”; “Don’t make a pass at any Moslem woman or there will be trouble.” The essential message is to show respect, since “American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis (as the people are called) like American soldiers or not.” Why wasn’t this the “ commander's intent” when Americans returned to Iraq sixty years later? In his foreword, Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl laments, “I wish that I had read it before beginning my own yearlong tour.”
The main difference between now and then can be found in a couple of sentences that would make any officer who has spent months trying to “ stand up” a local council in some Iraqi city wilt with envy:
You aren't going to Iraq to change the Iraqis. Just the opposite. We are fighting this war to preserve the principle of “ live and let live.”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker