"It's important to recognize that not everyone in Iraq is against us," King said
If Peter Jennings delivered a report suggesting that not all Iraqis are in love with us, he would be vilified. If he had reported that some soldier was learning the tribal system, well, you know.
Those of us who are carrying out the mission and those of us here at home need to understand how things work there, not demand to be fed feel good propaganda. Ignorance kills. Insight and understanding are what we need.
Last week when I was in a local kabob joint, I read as I typically do from one of the free newspapers that clutter ethnic eateries. This one was the Muslim Times, the only one there in English. There was an interesting column written by someone whose writing style indicated a native-born, educated American. He was talking about the significance of time in that part of the world as opposed to ours, how irrelevant clocks and calendars are there, how days begin when the sun sets, not on some fixed schedule, how different that is from cultures where it's important that the trains run on time. In the column he was advocating eschewing the Western sense of time despite the obvious pitfalls of that in terms of growth and development.
The point of that story is only that there are lots of cultural issues that we should understand as the clash between Islam and the West plays out. We should hear about cultural conflicts like that from reporters and news analysts. It is not useful or smart to fail to recognize or be dismissive of such conflicts. Or to disparage their sense of time, even as we recognize that it will need to change. That does nothing to help them work through the conflict or help us to deal with its implications.
Stepping off soap box now... |
