[HN Gopher] A Short Guide to Iraq (1943)
___________________________________________________________________
A Short Guide to Iraq (1943)
Author : quadhome
Score : 219 points
Date : 2021-07-17 14:30 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.history.navy.mil)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.history.navy.mil)
| pelasaco wrote:
| "One of your big jobs is to prevent Hitler's agents from getting
| in their dirty work. The best way you can do this is by getting
| along with the Iraqis and making them your friends. And the best
| way to get along with any people is to understand them" // Great
| advice from the dark times.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| >And the best way to get along with any people is to understand
| them
|
| I feel like this advice alone could help everyone globally when
| they condemn some political or religious group specifically
| because someone considers them "backward." Nobody ever stops to
| think that they got successful within that system, so what
| would cause them to ditch their beliefs now because you "an
| enlightened" individual "know better."
| pelasaco wrote:
| this sound like the most honest and positive advice that any
| army or government institution could give to your team
| working abroad.
| csa wrote:
| Not bad for a 1943 field guide.
|
| 1. It's a quick read.
|
| 2. It has a clear list of dos and donts.
|
| 3. It explains what the soldier's mission there is in a broad
| sense (defeat Hitler).
|
| 4. It has quite a bit of quick-and-dirty info like language
| basics and a map (I'm guessing more than a few folks stationed
| there would not be able to find Iraq on a world map before they
| went -- that's true today for sure).
|
| Not a bad effort.
| quartesixte wrote:
| Something about the language of manuals from this time is truly
| a masterclass in effective teaching. This and instructional
| videos from this time feels like a lost art
| lovecg wrote:
| It seems like a manual like that today would have to go
| through multiple layers of bureaucracy and legal approvals
| that would suck all life out of the language. I know that the
| army always had censors, etc. but maybe it is yet another
| example how things were "simpler" back then?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "It seems like a manual like that today would have to go
| through multiple layers of bureaucracy and legal approvals
| that would suck all life out of the language."
|
| That is a byproduct of having networked computers. It is
| easy and cheap to distribute first draft of a .DOC text to
| 10 000 officers for comments. It wasn't as easy with a real
| paper copy.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| It certainly feels a lot less sanitized or "corporate
| bland". The tone is very casual, like you're talking to an
| older buddy. Lots of colloquialisms like "southpaw" and
| "lick" as in beating someone. Even some puns "Yes, Iraq is
| hot spot in more ways than one".
|
| The one thing I can't tell if that's just how it was
| written naturally, or if that tone is on purpose like in
| the propaganda films and posters of the time. Obviously
| they wanted soldiers to read and follow the instructions,
| not get bored and toss it aside so I think the style is
| intentional.
|
| Can you imagine if it was written today, what would they
| use to make it approachable for young soldiers, emojis and
| memes?
| csa wrote:
| > Can you imagine if it was written today, what would
| they use to make it approachable for young soldiers,
| emojis and memes?
|
| Take a look for yourself:
|
| https://fieldsupport.dliflc.edu/
|
| Spoiler alert... no emojis or memes.
| lostlogin wrote:
| It also lacks an impenetrable safety section on the
| multiple hazard environment and a ridiculous preface
| explaining how amazing the authors are.
| dang wrote:
| Url changed from https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=477739 to one
| that doesn't do a file download. If there's a better URL, we can
| change it again.
| walrus01 wrote:
| There are a lot of problems that could have been avoided in the
| past 20 years if everyone deploying to Iraq, Afghanistan or a
| similar location was forced to sit through, and pass, a one week
| length cultural/sociological/religious/history class.
|
| I have found that the gaps in knowledge between your typical
| USAID worker in Afghanistan and some military members (even those
| who should know better, at E5 and E6 ranks and similar) can be
| quite vast.
| abarrak wrote:
| nice, the id in url is incremental integers, makes easy for those
| who want to script and get all materials!
| hedgehog wrote:
| The soldiers reading this guide would have had the truly
| remarkable opportunity to see the marshes in the south well
| before the more recent wars & Saddam's order to drain them. Worth
| reading about for anyone interested in the country.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamian_Marshes
| quercusa wrote:
| Wilfred Thesiger's _The Marsh Arabs_ is a fascinating look at
| the natives of the marshes. It appears that the marshes may be
| recovering to some degree:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Arabs
| meitham wrote:
| Not sure why the downvote, it was a common knowledge that Bush
| pronounced the country name incorrectly.
|
| >>> YOU HAVE been ordered to Iraq (i - RAHK) - Page 1.
|
| And we thought Bush was an idiot not knowing how to pronounce the
| country, when the official guide clearly says this is how you
| pronounce it!
|
| Page 25 shows 1 IQD = $4, today $1 ~= 2K IQDs
|
| Interesting to also see the use of "MOSLEMS" to refer to
| "Muslims", today this spelling is generally only used by far
| right American groups. Also interesting to see the use of "JAPS"
| to refer to the Japanese! This is extremely offensive to use
| today, and I was wondering if that was the case back then too.
| GCA10 wrote:
| Fascinating! Most of the messaging here is refreshingly open-
| minded, direct and timeless. I'd expected to read a lot of
| imperialistic bombast that aged horribly.
|
| Truth is, as many other commenters have pointed out, this
| document's overall tone reflects better on the American spirit
| than a lot of what's in the global conversation today.
| DSingularity wrote:
| "Twin pipe-lines have been constructed to the ports of Tripoli in
| Syria and Haifa (HAI-fa) in Palestine, on the Mediterranean Sea."
|
| A reference in US military to Palestine before it was gifted to
| European settlers and rebranded as Israel. Guess it wasn't a
| "land without a people" back then.
| rvp-x wrote:
| There were so few european settlers in the area before 1948
| that they managed to defeat the armies of multiple neighboring
| countries!
| sorokod wrote:
| Looks like the Special Service division was quite busy, more
| guides (including Iran, Syria and Great Britain) here
| https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname...
| tptacek wrote:
| The Iranian guide uses many of the same turns of phase as the
| Iraqi guide, but has nothing resembling the same energy. It's
| an interesting comparison. (I'm a little disappointed; Iran is
| a super fascinating country).
| jonplackett wrote:
| > American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether
| the Iraqis like American soldiers or not. It may not be quite
| that simple. But then again it could be.
|
| Wise words, not heeded.
| awillen wrote:
| I'm shocked by the clear, simple and thoughtful advice this
| booklet gives. It just feels like the antithesis to the kind of
| official government communications today that use needlessly
| complex language and seem to try to avoid actually saying
| anything of substance.
| baybal2 wrote:
| USA had it easy when in the days immediate toppling of Sadam,
| and the prognosis was bright.
|
| Even when Fallujah happened, they had more good popular
| disposition than not.
|
| It took US repeated, conscious, and really best to say
| concerted mistakes to make Iraqis hate them.
|
| 1. Fallujah
|
| 2. Fallujah repeated
|
| 3. Fallujah fiasco repeated in other cities
|
| 4. Relinquishing of control of civil administration
|
| 5. Botched ellections
|
| 6. Propping the unpopular government elected under dubious
| circumstances
|
| 7. Tolerance to massive levels of corruption
|
| 8. Tolerating Iranian interference early on
|
| 9. Staging, and intentional exploitation of Sunni vs. Shia
| confrontation. This truly was the "Genie out of the bottle"
| moment
| lumost wrote:
| 10. A 13 year long war/occupation spread over 2 decades.
|
| If the US had been conducting military operations in post
| ww2 France for that long the French wouldn't look kindly on
| the US either.
|
| The fundamental mistake was believing that occupation could
| be indefinite, and that there wasn't an urgently ticking
| clock until civil unrest.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| The continued occupation of Germany and Japan is far less
| fraught. Yes controversies arise, but not on the level of
| hostilities experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq.
| meepmorp wrote:
| You forgot step 0: ban every member of the Ba'ath party
| from participating in the government, thus ensuring a large
| supply of insurgents with military experience and access to
| weapons depots we didn't bother to secure.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Banning Baath was a very correct decision, were they let
| them stay, Iraq would've exploded, and boiled over
| earlier, and more violently.
|
| What was wrong was them failing to deal with Baathists
| themselves, not the party. Without Baathists question
| being ever given a final solution, it came to bit them
| back.
|
| While USA was struggling with rebranded Baathist
| remnants, actual Saudi backed extremists, and Iranian
| militias sneaked in, some times even with US own backing,
| ensuring far bigger troubles to come.
|
| Lastly, what I forgot to mention was US finally look
| every bit of face, and any rapport it had left with Iraqi
| population.
|
| US wasn't able to talk to people of Iraq with a straight
| face at a after around 2007-2008. Then, they resorted to
| pitting Shia vs. Sunni. It was not a bright idea, and I
| have no idea why they even came up with it.
| DSingularity wrote:
| Thank you! Paul Brennan will go down in history as a
| malicious individual who wanted above all to destroy Iraq
| and it back centuries. Of course, he also wanted to setup
| the US to profit nicely from the rebuilding efforts but
| that is a secondary pain.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Additionally, "With us or against us" isn't an ideal
| stance in a region as old and complicated.
| Oversimplification of complex issues seemed the method of
| dealing with allies and enemies.
| Pxtl wrote:
| You also neglected to mention Abu Ghraib. Which,
| realistically, the Iraqis knew the details about long
| before the photos appeared.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _It just feels like the antithesis to the kind of official
| government communications today that use needlessly complex
| language and seem to try to avoid actually saying anything of
| substance._
|
| That is changing. Slowly. The U.S. government has a program
| to train its people to speak and write clearly and in ways
| that ordinary people can understand. But it's a big
| government, and it's going to take a while to spread
| everywhere.
|
| A similar thing is happening in healthcare, which is where I
| work. It's called "health literacy," and everyone in a
| customer-facing role at my company gets lots and lots of
| training in it.
|
| I can't speak about the government's motivation, but for us
| in healthcare, it's because people who understand the state
| of their health get sick less and cost less money to heal.
| Sad that it took a bunch of studies to come to that
| conclusion, but bean counters gotta count beans.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Follow the incentives. Vague language dilutes responsibility
| and offends no one.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Almost like they should've gave the entirety of the politicians
| and core officers this booklet before going over there.
| hashbig wrote:
| > You aren't going to Iraq to change the Iraqis. Just the
| opposite. we are fighting this war to preserve the principle of
| "live and let live."
|
| Can we bring this America back?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The America where we pretend wars aren't about oil never left.
| dominotw wrote:
| .
| hashbig wrote:
| Oh you mean like they liberated the people of Iraq in 2003?
| yeah North Koreans are really missing out...
|
| And people in Cuba and Hong Kong raise American flags just
| because the US is an enemy of their State (enemy of my enemy
| is my friend) not because of "freedom and change".
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into ideological or
| nationalistic battle. It's repetitive, tedious, and nasty--
| the things we're trying to avoid here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| awillen wrote:
| I don't think the two are mutually exclusive - if we were
| going to liberate North Korea, the point would be largely to
| let the North Korean citizens live free of their horrifically
| oppressive government. You just have to distinguish between
| the culture of a country as defined by the traditions and
| history of its people and the culture as defined by the
| government, particularly if the government is a dictatorship.
| The former is good and should be preserved (generally) while
| the latter is generally to the detriment of the former.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into ideological or
| nationalistic battle. It's repetitive, tedious, and nasty--
| the things we're trying to avoid here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dominotw wrote:
| ok. Deleted the content of my comment.
| la_fayette wrote:
| "If you should see grown men walking hand in hand, igore it. They
| are not queer"
|
| I think this is still "normal" for guys to walk around hand in
| hand in arab countries, although it is a serious crime to be
| homosexual...
| f6v wrote:
| Have the Italians already settled in the US when this was
| written? Seems like they have a habit of warm greetings as
| well.
| oblio wrote:
| There were gangster wars between branches of the Italian-
| American organized crime families back in the 1930, so... :-)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castellammarese_War
| ChrisClark wrote:
| I saw it a lot in China too, and one of my friends would grab
| my hand while we were walking out for some food. It did feel
| wrong to me at first. But as it happened over and over again it
| started to just feel friendly, nothing more.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Seems fairly straightforward that there is nothing sexual about
| holding hands.
|
| In fact, here in America, it's common to see friends (who are
| both women) holding hands. But you'd almost never see two male
| friends do it.
| incanus77 wrote:
| The most stunning part of this to me was the humanity showing
| through, which is completely at odds with anything I'd expect
| from the military today.
| djanogo wrote:
| Maybe, just may be, your perception of today's military was all
| created by MSM?
| incanus77 wrote:
| Sure, and my dad, a three-tour, volunteer Vietnam vet, as
| well as friends and family in the modern military.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I think the GP is correct; not that the military is
| fundamentally inhumane but that as an institution its
| publications are almost absurdly bureaucratic. See, for
| example, any field manual produced in recent decades, or look
| into 'military powerpoint.' Military documentation today
| tends to be verbose, repetitive, legalistic, and laden with
| references to doctrinal matters, an excess of acronyms, and
| lacking any kind of writerly voice.
|
| It's not all bad; survival manuals are dense but concise and
| well-structured, for example. On the other hand, the Advanced
| Combat Helmet comes with a 200+ page manual whose useful
| content could fill maybe 30 or 40 pages. More abstract topics
| like leadership, tactics, strategy, and logistics are in many
| respects manuals about navigating the very large and complex
| institution of the DoD. The smaller branches produce better
| output, unofficially or quasi-officially, eg the Marines have
| some excellent writers as do SOF - not least because soldiers
| in those branches are expected to exercise greater autonomy
| and decision-making at all ranks, whereas the army in
| particular is more of an organizational machine for delivery
| of combat power, not unlike Amazon for explosions.
| nowandlater wrote:
| The FMs can definitely be dry as a bone, and way too wordy.
| When I was in (02-06) I remember getting these small comics
| filled with anthropomorphized military vehicles with faces that
| spoke and offered advice on basic maintenance. Pretty hilarious
| stuff. There's an archive of issues from 1999-2019 here
| https://www.logsa.army.mil/#/psmag if anyone is curious.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| I bought this field guide as printed book in Germany a few years
| ago, next to a booklet in the same format "Instructions for
| British Servicemen in Germany - 1944", and for American soldiers
| the "Pocket Guide to Germany - 1944".
|
| It's interesting to compare the British and US military
| leadership's view on their own soldiers and on the Germans. In
| general, the British seemed to be much more cautious towards the
| Germans, and the Americans seemed to have trusted their soldiers
| more to judge a situation.
| Kenji wrote:
| Guide to Iraq in 1943: This.
|
| Guide to Iraq in 2007:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CollateralMurder.ogv
|
| Looks like times have changed.
| eminence32 wrote:
| A [pdf] flag in the title might be a good idea.
| dang wrote:
| We've since changed the URL.
| dang wrote:
| This looks like a follow-up post to the following, which was a
| different military guidebook from the same period and is still on
| HN's front page:
|
| _112 Gripes About the French_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27852034 - July 2021 (238
| comments)
|
| I wonder if Leo Rosten also wrote it
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27865731). One thing's for
| sure, they had good writers working on these.
|
| Normally we'd downweight the follow-up post (see [1], [2] for
| why), but this case is such an outlier that I think two isn't too
| many the way it usually would be.
|
| [1]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
|
| [2]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
| lindseymysse wrote:
| My grampa was stationed in Iraq at this time. I bet he would have
| seen this manual.
|
| I remember him telling me about hunting Warthogs in the desert.
| Bullets were in short supply so hunters were given one bullet and
| knife. You had one shot, and then you had to go slit the animals
| throat with the knife.
|
| They gave the gun to my grampa a lot, he was an country boy who
| grew up target practicing on the range. He was always a solid
| shot.
|
| Thanks for the memory!
| nradov wrote:
| I've heard stories about Turkish soldiers deployed as
| peacekeepers after the Iran-Iraq War. They weren't permitted to
| fire their rifles at all so they hunted deer at night with
| jeeps.
| lindseymysse wrote:
| Guys want something other than rations. I have a hard time
| blaming them. Though the adrenaline in that deer is gonna
| make it bitter eating.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| "I'm hungry. It's time to Wrangler me up some deer for
| dinner!"
|
| What did they do? Run them over with 4x4s? How do you sneak
| up on a deer with a Jeep?
| gccs wrote:
| You just shine your headlights at them and they freeze.
| Spotlighting is illegal almost everywhere because if makes
| it so easy.
| eps wrote:
| I remember reading in the news that at a native nation in
| Canada got themselves an exemption due to it being their
| "traditional way to hunt."
| lostlogin wrote:
| I had thought the issue was more one of governance rather
| than a claim of traditional practice?
|
| The land is under shared management and one side decided
| to change the rules with insufficient consultation.
|
| I am far from an authority on the subject and there may
| be more than one situation in play.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| A deer had her babies this spring right in front of my
| window.
|
| All day I noticed a deer checking out my yard. I had no
| idea she was looking for a safe spot to give birth.
|
| I took a nap, and woke up to a wet fawn looking into the
| house.
|
| It looked like she had the other one behind the fence.
|
| My first instinct was she abandoned them, but I was
| completely wrong. She had her babies, cleaned them up,
| and she dissapears for a few hours. She does not want to
| bring any attention to her babies. Fawn don't have much
| of an odor when born, so it is to there benefit she isn't
| around except for feeding.
|
| Every night she would return to her young. It was pretty
| amazing.
|
| They slowly grew. The one by the window would only get up
| when mom came by--roughly 2x day. The babies are helpless
| to any predators. That is supposedly why the mom keeps
| them in different spots.
|
| Anyways, they now just visit. It's a good feeling they
| are healthy, and seem happy.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| I'd take "This place looks super safe, I think I'll have
| my babies here" as a compliment!
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I had no idea.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| It's why deer-vehicle crashes are so common. Deer are
| pretty fast, and don't have any reason to stand in a road
| (there's nothing for them to graze, after all). But if
| they're crossing the road when you come along and your
| headlights suddenly blind their dilated eyes...
|
| (By the way, their eyes are more like a cats, with pupils
| that can dilate far wider than a humans, so imagine a cop
| suddenly aiming a spotlight at you when it's pitch black
| - and then make it several times worse...)
| cutemonster wrote:
| (I suppose spotlighting works only in the darkness?)
| methyl wrote:
| Weird, I can't see any sign that you can find a Warthog in
| Iraq. According to Wikipedia they seem to be native to Africa.
| Maybe he meant Wild boars.
| fnord77 wrote:
| wow, that introduction is worth a read alone.
|
| seems like an entirely different army mentality that today.
|
| > The best way you can do this is by getting along with Iraqis
| and making them your friends
|
| ...
|
| > And secondly, so that you as a human being will get the most
| out of an experience few Americans have been lucky enough to
| have.
| jollybean wrote:
| This perception really isn't true though.
|
| That the general public has not been exposed to the equivalent
| current documentation doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
|
| The level of understanding that many leaders have going into
| these situations, and especially their earnestness to want to
| help in material ways ... is very high.
|
| The US Army didn't 'build schools' in Germany and many
| atrocities were committed there, far more so than incidents
| today which are generally widely reported.
|
| The US firebombed German and Japanese cities and burned them to
| the ground, with mass civilian casualties. It was a completely
| different story in Iraq for example.
|
| If the US were to have 'had to invade' Iraq in WW2, the era of
| this 'friendly publication' - well, they wouldn't have had a
| problem levelling entire cities either if it were deemed
| necessary.
|
| Large swaths of US activity in Iraq and Afghanistan focused
| directly on construction and support of civil services. More so
| than probably any intervention in history.
|
| That's not to say there aren't gaping holes in understanding
| and that it frankly may not make much of a difference anyhow,
| but it's more true that one would expect reading the slightly
| cynical comments here.
|
| I do appreciate the familiar tone of the publication, and I do
| agree that there's something there we ought to admire, however,
| we do live in different times.
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| The introduction reads like a Choose Your Own Adventure book.
| junon wrote:
| [pdf]
| sorokod wrote:
| Nicely done, from zero to a polite and not completely ignorant
| foreigner.
|
| Was there an equivalent US Army guide from the last few decades?
| Was there ones for Afghanistan?
| anonu wrote:
| Now I know why Americans say i-RAHK...
| umanwizard wrote:
| Presumably the manual says that because that's how Americans
| pronounced it, not the other way around.
| agustamir wrote:
| May be, but Iran is pronounced correctly in the guide (EE-
| RAHN, in section 'The Country'). Why mess up Iraq then.
| Strange.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Well, language being a social phenomenon, neither
| pronunciation is incorrect according to any objective
| standard, since they are both rather common variants.
|
| Is it "incorrect" that Germans call France "Frankreich" ?
| agustamir wrote:
| What I'm curious to understand is how Iran and Iraq came
| to be pronounced differently in this guide (or
| otherwise), when they are both spelt almost the same way.
| The social phenomenon explanation, while I get it, seems
| too broad.
| umanwizard wrote:
| I don't think there's really a difference between "Iraq"
| and "Iran" for most Americans (other than, obviously, in
| the final consonant). Both pronunciations exist for both
| words, with the one that's closer to the native
| pronunciation being more prestigious and the other one
| being often perceived as backwards or uneducated.
| (Nowadays, that is. I have no idea what the situation was
| in the 1940s).
|
| It's indeed surprising that the two are used
| inconsistently within the same book, but I suspect that's
| just due to some uninteresting artifact of random chance.
| Perhaps the two sections were written by two different
| authors, or perhaps there was one author who happened to
| have an Iranian friend who exposed him or her to the
| native pronunciation. Who knows.
| meitham wrote:
| I pointed this earlier and was downvoted. As far as I know only
| Bush called it i-RAHK! As an Iraqi of course I felt it was
| idiotic of him not to know how to properly pronounce a name of
| a country he's leading a war into!
| umanwizard wrote:
| That has always been the normal pronunciation in American
| English -- at least where I'm from. It's not something Bush
| invented.
|
| I am sure there are also plenty of countries whose names are
| pronounced differently in Iraqi Arabic than in those
| countries' native languages. That doesn't make it "wrong".
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(page generated 2021-07-17 23:00 UTC)