Military trains troops to not burn Korans

The Stars & Stripes/LA Times reports on yet another indoctrination block of instruction for the troops in Afghanistan and teaches them to not burn Korans.

Now, all Army forces are required to undertake six to eight hours of online training before they deploy, and Marines get two days of classroom courses.

According to Rochelle Davis, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars who is writing a book on cultural training in the military, troops she has interviewed found such training useful and commanders recognize its value too.

“Over the past decade we have created a military that is the strongest, most powerful military in the world, but we haven’t been able to achieve what we wanted to achieve in Iraq and Afghan,” she said. “Culture and interacting with the populations has been one of the ways that they think it can happen.”

Yeah, culture and interaction – why don’t we have the Afghans teach classes on why the members of their military, while collecting the paychecks at least partially funded by the US kill our troops while we’re trying to help them. I don’t know how many times you can say “Don’t disturb anything written in Arabic script” in an eight-hour or two day block of instruction.

Thankfully, the five guilty parties of the burning a few weeks ago have been exonerated of intentional culpability by NATO, but I guess they’ll still get punished according to the article;

An investigation by NATO officials into the burnings found five U.S. troops responsible, but it concluded that the actions were not deliberate and were the result of a miscommunication. The troops could face disciplinary action, but commanders in Afghanistan have not yet announced the form it will take.

Yeah, if they don’t get punished, and severely, there will be more riots and violence – that’s what happens when you apologize for something when it’s really not your fault to begin with. There’s a perception they have to deal with. I understand the culture well enough to know that, even without my two-day block of instruction in a classroom.

Category: Military issues, Terror War