A Return to Segregation in Iraq?
Boy, it's certainly heartening to see that we're still making good "progress" on the whole "winning hearts and minds" objective:
Here at this searing, dusty U.S. military base about four miles west of Baqouba, Iraqis — including interpreters who walk the same foot patrols and sleep in the same tents as U.S. troops — must use segregated bathrooms.Another sign, in a dining hall, warns Iraqis and "third-country nationals" that they have just one hour for breakfast, lunch or dinner. American troops get three hours. Iraqis say they sometimes wait as long as 45 minutes in hot lines to get inside the chow hall, leaving just 15 minutes to get their food and eat it.
It's been nearly 60 years since President Harry Truman ended racial segregation in the U.S. military. But at Forward Operating Base Warhorse it's alive and well, perhaps the only U.S. military facility with such rules, Iraqi interpreters here say.
The rule to separate Iraqi latrines from U.S. soldiers' latrines was apparently enacted several rotations ago though the reasons proffered to explain this decision are mixed — some soldiers cited security issues while others attributed the new regulation to what they deemed "cultural differences" between the two groups. However you want to justify it, one thing's for sure: the Iraqis are none too keen about the new rule.
But the Iraqis who're paid $80,000 to $120,000 a year for their interpreting services are offended."It sucks," Ahmed Mohammed, 30, said of the latrine policy. He called the signs — in English and Arabic — "racist."
He's worked as an interpreter for the U.S. military since 2004. He's college educated and well versed in the ways of Western plumbing. He said Warhorse was the only American base where he'd encountered U.S.-only signs on latrines and country-of-origin restrictions on dining hours.
"I live in the same tent with 80 Americans," he said.
Let's hope this army base really is the only one to have adopted such racist regulations (though somehow I have my doubts...). Maybe it's just me, but I think this goes against the "freedom, liberty and tolerance" virtues we've been preaching to the Iraqis since day one. Just a thought.
photo by soldiersmediacenter via flickr