http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/promos/wirepicks/story/540051.html

The U.S. military has barred Iraqi interpreters working with American troops in Baghdad from wearing ski masks to disguise themselves....
Many interpreters employed by the U.S. government and Western companies in Iraq do everything they can to avoid being recognized because extremists have tortured and killed Iraqis (working for Americans).
....
“We are a professional Army and professional units don’t conceal their identity by wearing masks,” Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a spokesman for the U.S. military, wrote in an e-mail.



Obviously, this Lieutenant Colonel has been promoted by shuffling papers (or maybe even by peddling politics). The half-colonel (or, whoever ordered him to "spoke" what he spoke) should never have been put in charge of people(human beings), including being a spokesperson who talks about people. He should have only been managing machines/items, perhaps the guy who make sure all the supply items are being shipped and stacked, or all the reports are well written and categorized, even a very high-ranking manager of items.


He probably sits in the "Green Zone" all the time and Iraq is that outside world about as far away as the other side of the planet. Imperial Life in the Emerald City. They built an entire replica of the United States in the Green Zone, with fast food (not allowed to eat Iraqi food -!-), readily available entertainment, the point is as far removed from Iraq as possible and as close a simulation of "back home" as possible. I am extremely doubtful if the "spokesman" or whoever orders the "spokesman" to "spoke", ever set foot in the residential districts where the Arabs live, or go on the evening stroll with the heavily packed soldiers.

Put it simply, the "spokesman" or whoever orders the spokesman, values PR more than he values people's lives as human beings. Perhaps the colonel or his superiors should:

- move their entire families, that means wife, sons and daughters, and relatives, into the neighborhood of Baghdad. That means living among the Sunni (actually more something like "Sanna") and the Shia. Pick your neighborhood, but all the neighbors are Arabs, and the house is the same as everyone else's.

- their families have to live permanently in Baghdad, and everyone knows their husband/dad is an American military-person, or assists the American military in some way.

- by the nature of Arab society, everyone in several street blocks around knows who lives where, what's their name and what their family does. And even people from half a city away (that could mean, Jaish Al-Mahdi, Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, people of different tribes/clans, criminals and extortioners common in every urban society) can find out who lives where.

- their kids have to go to school with everyone else, and have to walk to school by themselves everyday

- When their day of 9-to-5 is done, the "spokesman" and his superiors have to leave the Green Zone and go home, driving by themselves, and go live in their house in urban Baghdad.


Maybe the colonel and his superiors got spoiled from their abundance of consumer goods, air-conditioned offices so remotely separated from the Arab street that they might as well be living in suburban America, food segregation so they might as well be eating at McDonald and Pizza Hut at the mall every day, and the only Arabs they interact with are the ones doing maintenance, whom they don't really care whether they live or die anyway, as long as the carpet is clean and the ethernet ports are connected and the soda machine is working.

You forget that you take the ability to sleep in the Green Zone without getting kidnapped or having your throat slit at night, is an anomaly in Baghdad. At the most the Green Zone gets a few mortar shells. But that is less than 0.01% of Baghdad. In 99.99% of Baghdad, people have to sleep in regular houses, without the luxury of a fortress perimeter around their simple houses, without the luxury of having their wives and children and parents and relatives on the other side of the planet, isolated by the Atlantic and the Pacific from all the bloody killers in Baghdad. With their faces showing, any Iraqi interpreter going on mission in which there is firing and some Baghdad-person gets killed or even bullet-wounded, that person's tribal group, or guerilla group, or neighborhood clan, or direct family, or merely themselves are very likely to try to get back at the Americans. And since the Americans are so well armored and retreat into their barracks at night, it's so much easier to vent their rage on the Iraqis whom they see helping the Americans, even if the interpreter doesn't fire one round.

Since you aren't moving your families and yourselves into Baghdad (and I mean, NOT the Green Zone, but the real Baghdad where the Iraqis live), since you aren't going home to a regular Baghdad neighborhood, you have no place to call "unprofessional" the Iraqis who try to protect the lives of their families and their own lives.

And, seriously, if you don't understand this, or think that American PR (means, personal prestige) is more valuable than Iraqi lives, then you shouldn't have intruded upon someone else's country in the first place, since the official Army stance is to consider Iraqi lives as worth less than that of Americans.

How can you fight for someone's freedom, or put up a slogan about fighting for someone's freedom, when you don't even see them as worth as much as you are as a human being?

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on a more lighter comment, since the purpose of the ski masks are to camouflage the person's face, they don't have to wear black masks. They could be allowed to use their full creativity to paint their masks with smilies, or other colors. There is also those things where there is a huge portrait of a person, only with a circular hole by the face, and you can put your face there and take a picture. So on the picture you could see some celebrity or movie character's body, combined with your face. The same thing can be done with the facemasks. Ski masks can be produced to have the replica of a person's face, head, hair, all around, but painted on the ski mask. Only the part of the eyes and the mouth would have holes, and those would be the real person's eyes showing, and mouth showing. So, in other words, some random Arab face could be printed on the face mask, with three holes for the eyes and mouth of the person wearing it. Even at a close distance it would l0ok really real, and it would not look like a mask at all. This proposal would satisfy PR and safeguard lives, and I really don't think it costs anything, about as much as making a custom-made T-shirt.
People's lives should come first, then the fashion prestige of the Americans.