Is it possible for US soldiers stationed in Iraq to understand true Iraqi sentiment ?

[polm]

How often are soldiers able to conduct "heart to heart" conversations with local Iraqis ?

Do they have a lot of free time to travel out of uniform ?

 

[piasabird]

Not all soldiers in Iraq are Combatants. There has to be a lot of support staff there as well. In my estimation soldiers are not constantly being fired at. They often have to deal with civilians and interact with people on the streets. I can imagine soldiers buying goods in stores or in the market or buying souvineers to send home or whatever. So it just seems naturaly that they would talk to the people that they would meet. Contrary to what you may beleive most of Iraq is a peaceful country.

 

[sandorski]

I'd imagine it is possible, but a number of factors could prevent a soldier from having a clear picture of sentiment:

1) Language
2) how comfortable Iraqi's are with Soldiers
3) range of perspective. Most palces where a soldier can communicate with Iraqi's are probably friendlier with the soldiers than other places. Also, a single soldier only has limitd exposure to the overall populace

In short, it is very possible for 1 soldier to conclude that the Iraqi's love them, while another soldier might conclude that the Iraqi's hate them.

 

[CaptnKirk]

Absolutely not.

In order to do that you would have had to have born there, raised and educated in their culture.

 

[Genx87]

I am sure they have a better understanding than people who sit in a chair all day posting msg's about how the Iraqis feel.

 

[Gravity]

I listened to a presentation by a Col who went to Iraq to rebuild the juvenile court system. I think he understood where they were coming from. He helped arrange and formulate the processes but relied upon Iraqi's to implement the new system.

How could he not relate to those that he was working with?

 

[daveshel]

Talk about observer effect!

 

[b0mbrman]

There's quite a bit of opportunity actually. It's not all shooting at crowds of civilians...there's a lot of infrastructure-building such as making sure the water system works, calling in local contractors to revamp the phone lines, or even laying the groundwork for high speed internet 🙂

Obviously, you have to talk to a few Iraqis to do that...and as Iraqis tend to be friendly, try and stop them from introducing you to their cousins, friends, etc.

[Edit] Oh yeah...but this is all done in uniform

 

[zephyrprime]

How could they possibly know when they don't speak the language and it's dangerous to go out into the populace?

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Is it possible for US soldiers stationed in Iraq to understand true Iraqi sentiment ?

As much as it's possible for John Kerry to.

 

[preslove]

Originally posted by: piasabird
Not all soldiers in Iraq are Combatants. There has to be a lot of support staff there as well. In my estimation soldiers are not constantly being fired at. They often have to deal with civilians and interact with people on the streets. I can imagine soldiers buying goods in stores or in the market or buying souvineers to send home or whatever. So it just seems naturaly that they would talk to the people that they would meet. Contrary to what you may beleive most of Iraq is a peaceful country.

Yeah, because it's under insurgent control.

 

[AndrewR]

Originally posted by: Genx87
I am sure they have a better understanding than people who sit in a chair all day posting msg's about how the Iraqis feel.

Or the journalists who never leave the the US compounds and talk about the "feeling on the street".

 

[maluckey]

It is entirely possible, and actually happens that some of the U.S. soldiers not only understand the situation, but also speak the languages, and in some cases know the customs.

We have various Special Operations Units in-country. Among the Special Operations Units we have Civil Affairs (CA) units there. For those who don't know about the CA Soldiers....They are Specialists whose sole function is to make order out of the Chaos that is war, and/or disasters. Their missions are all about rebuilding the local infrastructure, to include schools, sewage treatment plants, churches, Police Stations, Movie Theaters, Banks, and just about anything necessary to make a community complete. These soldiers have a high percentage linguists in their ranks (normally more than a third of the unit is at least bi-lingual. Most all of the soldiers are very skilled in at least one civilian discipline relating to community rebuilding/maintenance. Most all are also Citizen Soldiers (Reservists), so they are current in their fields of expertise. To keep them sharp, they recieve extra pay for their language abilities, and recieve promotion points as well for their extra linguistic skills.