ChapmanR_Post 1_Prompt 1

Becca Chapman

Make Films Not War

Blog Post

Prompt 1

1. A link to a media account of a news item related to the Middle East along with your own overview of how the item connects to our course.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/12/us/troops-cultural-training/index.html?hpt=imi_t3

This article talks about the importance of understanding different cultures and how crucial it can be in certain situations. Knowing the right and wrong way to show respect in someone else’s country is significant. Our military and soldiers are sent to all of these different places all over the world. They are the ones interacting with different types of people. They are talking to them and communication somehow. These soldiers spend months training for the physical conditions of war. They are exposed to the climate and the terrain of the country they are going to. “According to Gen. Ray Odierno, Army chief of staff, the biggest takeaway from Iraq and Afghanistan is the importance of "understanding the prevailing culture and values."” Getting involved with something we know nothing about will just hold everything back. The Middle East is complicated. Our soldiers are given crash courses on Middle Eastern culture, the do’s and don’ts. They take a two-week language course and are given translator dictionaries. “Currently, anthropology, language and 10,000 years of heritage are squeezed into troops' curricula a few weeks before deployment, what Dowling calls "cultural training on steroids." Between pre-deployment paperwork and drills, they are handed a small pamphlet outlining some history and cultural no-nos to avoid.” Military training will be tailored to the specific regions they are assigned to. This is to hopefully avoid miscommunication and mistakes from happening.

            This article also talks about what the military can take away from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. There is a lot to learn and understand about the Middle East and it is probably a good idea to become familiar with it before showing up on their front lawn with guns and tanks.

“The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated how cognizance of cultures, ethnicities and religions was essential to understanding the source of conflict”

This connects to the course because we are trying to understand and familiarize ourselves with the Middle East. We are training ourselves in a sense with this culture just like soldiers are. If we can have a form of understanding about someone or a group of people there wouldn’t be so much conflict.