About damn time

Read a fun NYT article entitled When Troops Need More Than Knowledge of War this morning about how the military is beginning to push cultural and liberal arts education soldiers in order to better equip them for service in Iraq and the Middle East. What the hell took so long? From the article:

“The military mission is not as easily defined as it used to be,” said George A. Pruitt, president of Thomas Edison State College, which, along with Burlington County College, is providing the courses at McGuire. “Today, the military is actually engaged with the civilian population where they are stationed. They need philosophy, religion, history to have a greater understanding of where they are.”

[...]

To build what Dr. Henk, an anthropologist, called “cross-cultural competency,” the center has been developing courses and programs intended to help acclimate soldiers to foreign cultures.

[...]

“It started off with language — Farsi, conversational Arabic,” said Robert C. Messina Jr., Burlington’s president, speaking of his meetings with Colonel Martin. “Then he said, ‘Could you get someone to talk about the culture of the Middle East? How you don’t go up and hug someone, and no bikini wearing?’ So we did that.”

Good, so no more U.S. troops wearing bikinis around Baghdad, which I can only imagine was really starting to piss off the locals. But hey, at least they’re learning about “cross-cultural competency.”

Maybe good ol’ Dr. Henk will offer a class on how murdering people, even when you can speak their language or recite their scripture, tends to damage rapport severely.