Iraq Update
Iraq Update
From the washington post, via Hit and Run:
"We don't lack for people to go thump in the night," said Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, who commands the task force responsible for the Mosul area in northern Iraq. "The challenge is getting the intel." But officers noted that linguistic and cultural factors limit the ability of U.S. troops to interact with Iraqis and develop their own actionable intelligence. "Where we're going to get a lot of this is from the Iraqis," Casey said. "They know themselves, and we have to leverage that." Other officers, however, described Iraq's reconstituted intelligence service as poorly organized and short of resources. Its capabilities remain immature and will take time to develop, the officers said. The United States is the first global megapower, but in some ways there is nothing global about Americans at all--even or especially in contrast to the Brits in the days of their empire. Americans tend to act like they're in Bloomington, Indiana or someplace like that--or they'll get back there as quickly as possible. They have spread an economy they are used to all over the world; American technology has probably changed family life all over the world as much as any single factor; and if the U.S. succeeds in Iraq, or anywhere else, it will be by making it as much as possible like home. By comparison, the Brits always accepted, expected, even encouraged a certain amount of real diversity in their empire. Not necessarily a better or worse approach, but in an obvious sense less imperialistic, and more conservative. It's still almost unheard of for an American to "go native" in any foreign country. Maybe Padilla is an example (Hamdi, although a U.S. citizen, has Saudi parents and has largely lived in Saudi Arabia). It's still difficult, it seems, for the CIA and the military to find people who speak any language other than English. |
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