"A Bad Deal...All Around"

 

August 19, 2021

“A Bad Deal…All Around”

By Jim Culp

 

Let me tell you how far you can get in a combat zone like areas in Afghanistan or Iraq without an interpreter. Sure, you can go all Stormtrooper and just kill everybody, but then you’re gonna play hell making it out. Interpreters act in many roles, but I can tell you…my interpreter in Iraq was invaluable to me. In fact, I had two. The one had at the meeting hall was a very young guy called Buddy (because no one could pronounce his proper name) that spoke nearly fluent English, he was fluent in Modern Arabic and Kurdish. He did interpretations for me daily and only asked for a can of Pringles in payment.

My other guy was a commercial contractor. Mr. Nohman was from a northern province of Baghdad, and had a lovely wife and three children. He wasn’t a terrorist or a thug; he was a good man trying to make money for his family. Nohman would get me everything from blankets to plywood, flash drives, and tools, nails… whatever.

When I watch the current crap going on in Afghanistan, I think about Nohman and how I would feel if he were to be left there after being such an asset to me for seven months. I would feel like a thug myself thinking of his children being rounded up to be slaves, or his inability to feed his family because the supermarkets had been closed to the public unless they complied with the thug’s wishes.

Every time I hear some stupid redneck says things like “screw them towel-heads, they started it!” or some other asinine bullshit. It makes my skin crawl. Educate yourself. Talk to veterans that have been through this kind of crap. It’s the same thing that happened in Saigon in 1975. A country collapses because the invading force had poor leadership and made really bad calls in the latter years. And no, it’s not just Biden.

 

Jim Culp

Veteran of OIF 1

February 2003 to May 2004

Tigris River Valley, Iraq

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