When banter beats bullets
In Afghanistan and Iraq, soldiers try new ways to gain support
Afterward, Shaw went back to the detention facility, interrogated Noori's son, and determined he was not an insurgent. When he was released, Shaw offered to drive him back to his father's home. The normal human impulse might have been for Shaw to avoid the awkwardness of interacting with someone he had wrongly accused. But Shaw says the Army has to look for friends in every situation. "How do you arrest a guy and still be friends with him?" Shaw says. "You just have to work at it. . . . It is the only way to beat the insurgency. You cannot be the awful American." There was only one glitch--the jailers forgot to return the son's keys and identification card. Hence the nighttime visit. "I thank the coalition forces," Noori says through the interpreter, as Shaw returns the keys. "You have become my brother."
It is probably still the rare officer who has the mix of intellect and temperament to instinctively try to make friends out of enemies as Shaw does. But Gen. John Abizaid, the head of United States Central Command, says the best soldiers in Iraq have learned to handle ambiguous and complex situations with creativity. "Far from being rigid," Abizaid says of the young leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan, "they have learned to be very flexible in their thinking and dealing with problems."
For the American endeavor in Iraq to succeed, it will take as many flexible thinkers as the Army can find. Making allies out of enemies has helped win the war in Afghanistan and force the Taliban and militias into decline. The experience of soldiers like Shaw shows that even in the more difficult circumstances of Iraq, Americans can make friends and make progress. It alone may not be enough to make Iraq peaceful, but it may help push the country in the right direction.
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