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THE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO IMPERIALIST ETIQUETTE. Friday pop quiz:American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis (as the people are called) like American soldiers or not.The preceding statement was excerpted from:
A) The Iraq Study Group Report (2006)If you guessed the correct answer (C), you're either spending too much time trolling Ebay or lurking around the National Archives on your lunch break. For those who haven't yet discovered the War and Navy Departments' World War II-era handbook (available in pdf format here), it reads like an Idiot's Guide to Imperialist Etiquette (forthcoming from the State Department this fall).The handbook was originally distributed to American soldiers stationed in Iraq at a time when Hitler was still eying the region as a potential "land bridge" to Asia. It clarifies, among other things, the correct pronunciation of the country (i-RAHK) and offers cautionary anecdotes illustrating the graphic consequences of the country's "blazing heat," exposure to which will almost certainly result in an outbreak of "black blisters and possible fever." As far as strategy goes, the U.S. military in 1943 was more conscious of the Iraqi population's capacity to wage unconventional, insurgency-style warfare than it was in 2003, when the Defense Department under the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld demonstrated its utter inability to gauge the intensity and duration of resistance to the American occupation. Sixty-four years ago, the prescient Guide to Iraq described the typical Iraqi civilian as "a first-class fighting man, highly skilled in guerilla warfare. Few fighters in any country, in fact, excel him in that kind of situation." It's too bad the handbook hasn't seen a printer (much less a policy-maker) in 64 years.--Mara Revkin
B) Republic of Fear: The Inside Story of Saddam's Iraq (1990)
C) A Short Guide To Iraq (1943)
