New York Times
October 5, 2005
By Thomas L. Friedman
Aboard U.S.S. Chosin -- I never sleep well on warships.
So it was no surprise to me that I woke up at 5 a.m. the other day in my
tiny guest bunk on the U.S.S. Chosin, which commands the U.S. Navy task
force off the coast of Iraq. As I walked laps around the deck in the
predawn light, my mind kept coming back to the incredible clash I had
witnessed between the political culture of the U.S. Navy and the
political culture of both the Iraqis on land and the Arab fishermen in
the Persian Gulf.
Iraq is a multiethnic society that had to be held together by a
dictator's iron fist. What Iraqis are struggling with today is whether
they can forge their own social contract in which Kurds, Shiites and
Sunnis can live together - without an iron fist. That is critical
because virtually every Arab state today is a mix of religions and
ethnicities held together by a hard or soft fist. If Iraqis can find a
way to live together, any people out here can, and democracy has a
future. If the Iraqis can't, probably no one can, and we can look
forward to dictatorships and monarchies in the Arab world - with all the
pathologies they bring - forever. But change is hard.
When the Iraqi Navy drops you off on the Chosin, a guided-missile
cruiser, two things just hit you in the face: one is the diversity of
the U.S. Navy - blacks, whites, Hispanics, Christians, Jews, atheists,
Muslims, all working together, bound by a shared idea, not an iron fist.
To be sure, it took America a good 150 years after independence to
embrace pluralism and women's rights, and we're still working at it.
Nevertheless, America today is so different from anything in this part
of the world. The Iraqi Navy is all men, and almost all Shiites. We are
like Martians to them.
Mustapha Ahansal is a Moroccan-American sailor who acts as the Chosin's
Arabic translator when it boards ships in the gulf to look for pirates
or terrorists. "The first time I boarded a boat," he told me, "we had
six or seven people - one Hispanic, one black person, a white person,
maybe a woman in our unit. Their sailors said to me, 'I thought all
Americans were white.' Then one of them asked me, 'Are you in the
military?' ... It shocks them actually. They never knew that such a
world actually exists, because they have their own problems. I was
talking to one of their higher-ups in their Coast Guard and he said: 'It
is amazing how you guys can be so many religions, ethnic groups... and
still make this thing work and be the best in the world. And here we are
fighting north and south, and we are all cousins and brothers.' "
The other thing that hits you on the Chosin is that many officers are
women - so you hear women's voices all day long giving orders over the
ship's loudspeaker and radio. And because the local Arab fishermen also
hear this chatter, many of them probably think the Chosin is an
all-female ship! The 110-foot U.S. Coast Guard cutter Monomoy, alongside
the Chosin, has a female deputy captain, who often leads the landing
parties that inspect boats in the gulf; one of the Navy's fast patrol
boats, also alongside the Chosin, had a female captain. "Being a female
boarding officer is a huge asset because they are so curious they want
to talk to us more, so we can learn more things," said Renya Hernandez,
the 24-year-old female exec officer of the Monomoy.
Nagga Haizlip is an Iranian-American sailor who translates into Farsi
for the Chosin when it confronts Iran's Revolutionary Guard Navy.
Dressed in navy fatigues, she told me: "If I call [the Iranians] on
bridge-to-bridge radio they will not want to talk to me. ... They will
say, 'I want to speak to a man.' " As for the Iranian fishermen: "They
don't understand I am actually in the U.S. Navy. That surprises them.
... It is different from their culture. They ask how do people get along
[on the Chosin] and how do they live together? They are curious."
In trying to bring some democracy to Iraq, we are not just challenging
the dictatorial-tribal political order here, but the male-dominated
culture as well. In effect, we are promoting two revolutions at once:
Jefferson versus Saddam and Sinbad versus the Little Mermaids - who turn
out to be captains of ships. Succeeding in this venture, to stem the
drift of the Arab world toward Islamo-fascism and autocracy, is so much
more important than the war critics have ever allowed. But it is also so
much more difficult than the Bush team ever understood or prepared for -
even though it was warned. The Bush team's greatest sin was not thinking
that this war was important. It was thinking that it would be easy.
Because, as any ship captain on the gulf will tell you, we are sailing
right into the prevailing winds.
