Uncle Sam is getting a little weird. Make that a lot weird. Uncle Sam has decided that the key to winning Afghan “hearts and minds” lies in the latrines with the US Marines Corps. No kidding. When nature calls, Uncle Sam has decided he wants every US Marine equipped with a map and compass, or some other way of knowing direction. This is to ensure that no US Marine in Afghanistan ever urinates in the direction of Mecca.
Now there’s a winning strategy.
It’s still okay to spread baksheesh (payola) indiscriminately, chase jihadists into twisting mountain gorges, clear any road laced with IEDs, blow up and bleed all over the place. Just make sure your sense of direction is sharp when it really counts.
Take spitting. According to the North County Times, the word is: Ix-nay on pitting-say toward ecca-May, guys. If there’s a pinch between teeth and gum while you’re hiding out in a cold valley, figure out where Mecca is (2,000 miles away) before letting anything out of your mouth.
Oh, and when it’s time to catch some shut-eye “when sharing a base with Afghan army troops” — if you can sleep, given the frightening odds that an Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier might turn his gun on you — don’t, whatever you do, let your combat boots point toward you-know-where.
That would be “culturally insensitive,” and, therefore, worse than anything Afghani (or Pakistani) jihadists do (beheadings, rape) because they, as Muslims, are automatically “culturally sensitive.”
Apparently to compensate, senior Pentagon brass created something called the Marine Corps Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning to teach Marines to exist in the Islamically approved fashion.
What Marines are learning is to become intensely sensitized to Mecca; how to be guided by that magnetic North for Muslims as a matter of the most personal habits and hygiene, all in accordance with Shariah (Islamic law). They are learning to act like Muslims.
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em?
Such “culture learning” blends seamlessly with an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) guidance to all troops in Afghanistan to revere the Quran. That’s the message of COIN Advisory #20100924-001, which I found on the ISAF website.
“Never talk badly about the Qur’an or its contents,” the guidance says, a no-nonsense formulation of Islamic prohibitions against any criticism of Islam. Touching it is out, too.
“It is considered culturally insensitive for any non-Muslim to touch a copy of the Qur’an,” the ISAF explains. Why that it is indeed the Islamic case, the ISAF doesn’t explain. Presumably, it might upset troops to learn that this injunction exists because Muslims consider non-Muslim “najis,” or unclean, and thus unfit to touch their religious book.
Before searching people, the ISAF advises, “Ask them if they have a Qur’an or religious item present. If so, ask them to remove it or put it in a suitable place before conducting the search.”
Think the SEALS who zapped Osama bin Laden asked him to put his Quran in a “suitable place” first? We can only hope.
“Additionally,” the ISAF continues, “verbal disrespect for Islam and/or the Qur’an is considered as inappropriate as physical desecration of the Qur’an. Insulting the Qur’an is an act of blasphemy.”
The way Islam treats women stinks = verbal disrespect for Islam. The verses of the Quran that call for jihad against infidels are heinous = insulting the Quran. But the ISAF, veritable mouthpiece of the coming caliphate, deems such talk “inappropriate” and outright “blasphemy.”
This might win the generals an extra cushion at the foot of the caliph’s throne. But, as the Marines are learning in their Culture Learning classes, they’ll have to drink all their chai and finish their goat, first.
Examiner Columnist Diana West is syndicated nationally by United Media and is the author of “The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization.”
