Two ways of seeing the world. From the Fortress as a Conqueror or from the Community as a Partner
Telegraph
Continue reading 'British show the way'
The impression the American forces give as they thunder up Route Tampa towards Baghdad is that everyone outside their ranks is a potential enemy: certainly the awe-struck peasants whose nervous waves are met with blank stares; and possibly the "unilateral" independent news teams whose pleas for food, fuel and shelter are brusquely rejected.
Indeed anyone who is not in a uniform that they instantly recognise is seen as a threat. The other day, British soldiers who were working on the edge of a camp I was staying in were fired on by a passing American convoy, who thought it was easier to shoot than to ask questions.
The British troops, by contrast, seem remarkably well disposed towards the Iraqis, even though among those smiling and cadging cigarettes are men who would be happy to kill them. The confidence-building got off to a slow start. Then, as always, it was the children who came forward first. Now the gates of the bases in Umm Qasr and Zubayr have a permanent throng of the curious, the friendly and the importuning, just as they did in Bosnia and Kosovo.
British soldiers seem to have a natural sympathy for the poor foreigners they habitually find themselves having to sort out and a mild interest in the political and cultural forces that created the mess. If they are in a place long enough, they play football with the local men and sleep with and sometimes marry their sisters.
The right and wrongs of the situation may be of less concern now that the war has started, than the result of the Ireland-England rugby game. That is not to say that they don't have their own opinions, usually shrewd when they are expressed and laced with a genial cynicism that would probably dismay Tony Blair.
The American troops whom I have come across appear uninterested in their immediate surroundings. They do, though, pay attention to their leader and seem to accept the White House version of what this is all about. They talk without embarrassment about honour and duty. The boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne feel these things as profoundly as any American, but they would die of shame before they uttered the words.
They look on their allies with a mixture of alarm and condescension. The Septics, as the Cockneys call them, are often the first suspects when there is news of casualties. The Brits distrust their reliance on technology and laugh - though perhaps not without envy - at their superabundance of kit.
Many feel disquiet at the massive use of force that seems to accompany the most minor operations. Last week. British troops watched with horrified fascination as an empty building near Umm Qasr, which sketchy reports said may have contained a handful of Saddam's men, was bombed and rocketed continuously for several hours. The British are uncomfortable with displays of military macho.
The American military's awkwardness with the people it finds itself among used to be blamed on its lack of experience in messy, complicated places like Northern Ireland. But that has not been the case for some time. American troops went into Bosnia in 1995 as peacekeepers and later to Kosovo. In both deployments there was minimal contact with the locals and off-duty life was lived behind the ramparts of gigantic enclosures.
The American soldiers' conduct is the consequence of a doctrine that puts the security of the military - force protection - at the forefront of all thought and action. Even though the prosecution of this war is exposing American forces to far greater risk than any recent such conflict, and even though their rules of engagement are more restrictive than ours, that disengaged, by-the-book form of warfare continues to dominate their style in the field.
In practice, this means having as little to do as possible with civilians. On garrison duty in Europe or Asia, this attitude may not matter much, but in Iraq it has the potential to derail the mission.
Many, probably most, Iraqis are willing to be persuaded that the Americans are in their country as liberators, not invaders. To do that, American soldiers have to not only curb their trigger-happy ways, but also come out from behind their Ray-Bans. They must start to recognise when it is time to forget the rule book and think of local sensibilities. They should learn to do simple things like waving at the children and saying hello in Arabic to their elders. In short, they must work harder to show that they belong to the human race.
They do not have to look far to see how this is done. They are sitting alongside the most professional and humane army on earth. Britain's contribution in men and weapons to the campaign may not be large enough to give us much say in how the fighting is done. But the weight we bring to the parallel allied effort to persuade the Iraqis not to hate us is enormous. Posted By Gabriel Syme (Samizdata) at April 2, 2003 04:52 AM | TrackBack
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