Word: brig
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...article published in the current edition of Military Review, Brig. Ailwin-Foster rips into the American military, charging it with arrogance, self-righteousness and cultural insensitivity bordering on "institutional racism." These traits, he suggests, prevented the Americans from building productive relationships with Iraqis - they may even have helped fuel the insurgency that wracks the country today...
...Having helped train Iraqi troops, Brig. Ailwin-Foster has had plenty of interaction with the American military. And, having myself watched the U.S. military from close quarters in Iraq for nearly three years, I find it hard to disagree with him. American cultural insensitivity was on display even in the minutes before Saddam Hussein's statue was famously toppled in Baghdad - remember the soldier who covered the statue's head with the Stars and Stripes? The Iraqis gathered in the square to celebrate the dictator's downfall took offense to that gesture...
...thing, nobody serving in the British contingent in Iraq was even alive when it was part of the Empire, so Brig. Ailwin-Foster's fellow soldiers don't have any real colonial experience. For another, the British were hardly beloved as colonizers - they were booted out of Iraq, just as they were from most of their colonies - so there was no reservoir of goodwill awaiting their return...
...behavior by British soldiers is no excuse for similar behavior by the Americans. The U.S. military would be well advised to take Brig. Ailwin-Foster's criticism seriously and train troops to be more sensitive to Iraqi culture and better behaved toward Iraqis. But it would be a good idea for the British military to do likewise...
...weeks ago, in a case involving Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen accused of plotting with al-Qaeda to detonate a dirty bomb in an American city, U.S. Appeals Court Judge Michael Luttig refused to go along with the government's plan to transfer Padilla from a military brig to civilian custody. Originally, the Bush Administration named Padilla an enemy combatant, prompting his lawyers to challenge that designation. Just as the Supreme Court prepared to review the case, a federal grand jury indicted Padilla in a Miami court on charges of conspiring to carry out attacks abroad. (In the new indictment...