My single story

The start

As a high school student, just learning to be concerned with world politics and current events, my view of Iraqi and Iranian civilians was based mostly on a waning Cold War enemy perspective, and then as untrustworthy allies and potential adversaries during the war between the two nations. I believed what the media and my teachers and elders told me about Iran and Iraq. They were poor, a level of poverty not seen in America.  They were not educated and that their society was basically comparable to the stone age.
As a member of the US Armed Forces starting in 1989, my view broadened slightly, but not much.  Although Iraq was seen as a somewhat stable ally in the middle east, Iran was a hotbed of terrorism and hatred of America. I distinctly remember news footage of the Shaw shaking his fist and crying out "Death to America." It wasn't long after I had reported for duty aboard my first ship that the first Iraq invasion and liberation of Kuwait began.  A country that we had been trying to help with both money and weapons had annexed a neighboring, sovereign country and I was visualizing the civilians in Iraq celebrating their victory over their much richer, much more educated southern neighbors.  For me, that was where my stereotypes and impressions remained for many years.  I joined the crew of my ship when it returned from Desert Shield, and left for another school the very day it departed for Desert Storm.  The first Gulf War and all hostilities had ended before I finished that school.

The middle

Fast forward many years, I am no longer an active duty Sailor, fixing shipboard electronics, but a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy reserve, leading a group of Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen through their training for a deployment to Iraq near the end of the second war in Iraq. For the previous eight years, my focus was on Pacific rim countries, specifically North Korea.  I sat behind a computer and analyzed imagery taken from miles above the communist country. I didn't often think of it at the time, but I suspect the same perception of the middle east still remained as it always had.  But now I was preparing to to counter Improvised Explosive Device (IED) intelligence work sometimes with civilians, but with Iraqi military and police. Even before we started the training in earnest, those stereotypes I had started to surface. Some were even bolstered by the relative ease with which the Iraqi forces had been defeated during the previous Gulf War conflict.  Surely their military wasn't as advanced or capable as we were.

The realization

My team was very fortunate to receive training from United States Army soldiers, many of which had multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It was then that we started to learn the real culture that existed where we were headed, and what we needed to know to interact appropriately.  In the classroom, we learned the cultural do's and do not's.  When you sit down with your Iraqi counterparts, keep your feet on the floor.  Crossing your legs and showing the bottoms of your feet is offensive.  Don't talk louder, it doesn't make them understand English any better.  Learning phrases in their language does wonders for trust and cooperation.  If they offer you food or drink, accept it and consume it. Not doing so is insulting.  These things and much more were committed to memory, and we had one more exercise to complete.  In a dual purpose training scenario, we were simulating convoy operations, delivering supplies to a remote village ( at Ft. Hood, in Texas ) and interacting with civilians.  The fantastic part of this training was that the civilians were actual Iraqis, part of the interpreter corps that was on leave in the United States, but who also had very intimate knowledge of the Iraqi culture, since it was their primarily. Being one the senior enlisted members of my convoy, I ended up being the convoy commander and the individual responsible for making initial contact with the civilian, the village elder.  I remembered everything we had learned in the classroom, going over it all in my head again and again as we approached the mock village.  When we arrived, we dismounted and set a security perimeter and two Sailors accompanied me to the open courtyard area in front of the elder's house.  He welcomed me into an area that was covered, but still more or less outside.  We shook hands, exchanged some initial pleasantries and then I asked him where we should deliver the supplies.  It was at this point that my Iraqi counterpart broke character and said "Chief, lets sit down and talk about how obnoxiously American you are."  He went on to list my errors: I forgot to remove my Kevlar gloves before shaking hands, and didn't return the gesture of bringing my hand up and over my heart when we broke the handshake.  This shows trust and friendship, and my omission would probably have been taken as offensive.  I remembered to remove my helmet, but neglected to remove my sunglasses.  In an interaction like the one we were simulating, hiding your eyes shows distrust, pretty much the opposite of what you want to convey.  And lastly, in truly American form, I got down to business, asking where he wanted the supplies delivered long before the required conversation establishing trust had reached an acceptable level.  I learned from him that when meeting someone like we were, small talk isn't just a pleasantry, it is a required step in the interaction. I was supposed to show interest in his village, in his people, and how things were going for them.  In turn, he would ask about my journey, what our base was like and perhaps even some questions about America. So in an effort to professional, I had forgotten to be personable and trustworthy, two crucial aspects of interactions between people of such vastly different cultures.  I began to realize that Iraqi people are really not that different from anybody else.

The proof

What I began to suspect during pre-deployment training in Texas became blatantly true once I arrived in Iraq and began the mission of training Iraqi police and military forces to counter the IED threat on their own, in preparation for our departure.  I met more than one police officer or military leader that blew away any preconceived notion I had of middle easterners. They share the same dedication to duty, love of country and devotion to family that we Americans do.  Absolutely, there were bad apples. We discovered military and police officials in collusion with insurgents. We caught government representatives gaming the system to line their own pockets. We discovered that at both ends of the spectrum, Iraqis were not that different from Americans at all. The most memorable part of my time in southern Iraq was a visit from the Basra Police Department's Bomb Squad.  Their commander was a man about 45 years old, educated in the United States, trained by the very best in American law enforcement, that returned to his country to make a difference.  He spoke English better than many of the guys I was deployed with, and was friendly and grateful for the training we were providing his men.  Each time he visited our compound with his teams, he brought food prepared by his wife, and told stories of Iraq, before Saddam, before the wars.  In his own words, he convinced us that his commitment was first to his family, then to his country.  He loved his country more than his religion, something quite the opposite of what we had been told about his culture.  I paraphrase now because I don't remember his exact words, but he told us "I am Iraqi first, Shia second. I do my job to save lives, to save my country. I want to make my country safe for my family again."  If there were more people like him in Iraq, things would be different.  If there were more people like him in the United States, things would be different here too.