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Interesting question - got an answer?

Posted in Q & A on Feb 22, 2008

Every once in a while, I receive a compelling question from a reader. Check out the letter below. Try putting aside reactionary prejudices about America, pro or con, and appreciate the sincerity, hope and eminently human dilemma being expressed here. If you have an answer for her, email it to me and I’ll forward it to her…

Irshad:

I’m a soldier in the United States Army. When I joined the Army 5 years ago, I signed on to be a linguist working for Military Intelligence. They didn’t tell me what language until I got to the school. It turned out to be Arabic. I knew next to nothing about Islamic culture or the Arabic language, but over the first few years of my enlistment I became reasonably proficient at the language and somewhat knowledgeable about the culture.

Then I was deployed to Iraq, which is where the problem developed. You see, I think I’ve fallen in love with Iraq. Parts of it, anyway. Baghdad is gorgeous… The children melted my heart, and somehow I knew from the moment I saw the place that there are lots of good people there. Unfortunately, all these good people are dying by the dozens on a daily basis. Sometimes they die by the hundreds.

I do what I can to help find and capture the people responsible for it, but the most of the Iraqi people seem to see us as the enemy. Maybe it’s because we went into the country without knowing what we were doing, and we screwed things up so bad they don’t trust us anymore. Or maybe it’s that they’re more willing to blame their problems on the West than they are to look at the locals who are wreaking havoc on their villages, blowing up funeral processions, mosques, and the like.Whatever the cause, the end result is that millions of Iraqis are mad as Hell.

The only way the Iraqi people will ever rebuild their economy and live normal lives again (if they ever had in the first place - Saddam wasn’t exactly benevolent) is if they get pissed off at the right people and take action against those people.

This has become my fight. I’m not sure exactly why, but I know that my conscience isn’t going to be truly clean until I see a phoenix rise from the ashes in Baghdad. My fiancée was stationed in Tal Afar when he was deployed, and he tells me that the people started performing citizens’ arrests, to the point where the American troops sometimes had to calm them down. According to him, crime ceased almost
completely in the area.

I’m going to deploy to Baghdad again within the next month or two. The question I have is this: As a non-Muslim Caucasian female, in an American Army uniform, with just enough knowledge of Iraqi dialect to hold a simple conversation, what can I do to help? I want to just talk to Iraqis outright, but I’m not very good at speaking the language and I don’t think they’d listen to a white girl whom many of them assume is a whore (because why would an Army allow women within its ranks if not for the pleasure of the men? I know that sounds awful, but I’ve encountered this attitude more than once)…

Okay, people, what would you do after walking a mile in her boots? Again, please refrain from simplistic and sarcastic retorts like, “Stay the hell home.” The woman’s got a job and she’s not a Nazi who’s sending Iraqis to gas chambers. If understanding The Other is among the vexing challenges of our era, then she’s already there. Now let’s give her some decent advice, shall we? Email me your thoughts.