Schmedlap said:

These guys might have grown up without plumbing and may be illiterate, but they are experts at survival, incredibly savvy when it comes to interpersonal skills, and they can be stone cold, calculating pragmatists with no allegiance outside the edges of their city block.
I agree, the leadership (those with charisma, resources, conviction and intellect) are sophisticated and shrewd in ways that escape many. I think this is in large part because we transfer our rationality to them.

Here, a school shooting occurs and it gets media coverage on all the major networks, massive investigations are launched, anyone who is remotely connected is interviewed, school is canceled for a week or more, parents then take off from work, brigades of psychologists are brought in and collectively we condemn the actions, review our gun laws, contemplate cameras in classrooms, counsel teachers that any child who gets angry or mentions guns is suspect of being a potential killer.

There, a SVBIED kills a hundred and people seemingly just pick up the pieces and continue to live their lives - almost immediately. This just did not happen overnight, and I don't think it just began in 2003 or 2001. Its hard for us to imagine the scale of the killing that went on there in the Iran and Iraq War, or the bloody way that Saddam Hussein played off the tribes (to include Kurd on Kurd) over the years. A government that bought people off, installed its own sheiks (aka the 1990 sheiks), had the power to forcibly resettle groups, gassed thousands, charged the families of those executed for the means used to kill them. His sons raped and tortured at their leisure, and Iraqis saw no end to it. These are hard, shrewd folks regardless of their education or infrastructure, their calculus has been honed through survival - meaning the ones that did not measure up did not get recycled or told they could still be on the soccer team.

I know a BDE level IA officer who I admire, like and have a great deal of respect for, but would not consider as someone I'd want to see promoted to high up because his calculus default always weighs in on what is best for him above all others. I don't consider it his fault, its what has kept him alive - not employed, not in a job, alive. Every move he makes he considers the range of possible consequences first as they apply to him, then his family and tribe, then other things ranked accordingly. For instance, he and I both knew several IA leaders who were accommodating AIF in either their area, or that they were themselves involved with illicit activities which were hurting not only the BN I was working with, but the BDE as a whole and the U.S. efforts writ large, but his willingness to do anything about it was extremely limited. He had to consider what came after - there is always an after if you don't rotate out of there. He had to live there. It was not until we'd changed the geometry by removing some of the consequences and created some new conditions favorable to our interests, and his while possibly adding in some incentives that it became too good to pass up.

He was never above seeing what else could be gotten out of the bargain, and he often did, because we most often did not understand what his threshold was, and what we had to give often seemed of little consequence to us. This not only advanced his position physically, but allowed him to ask for more the next time.

Hard times seem to hone those skills. Even today my Grandmother still haggles over small change. Its not the money, she has plenty, Its not just for the sake of arguing, she can do that with her son and daughters. Its a combination of her experiences from a time in America that is increasingly alien to a generation that buys off the Internet sight unseen, or picks up things- literally almost anything with the thought they will just try it out and if it does not work they can just return it for another, or just get rid of it with little consequence. We don't generally develop the types of shrewd negotiating skills we see elsewhere because we don't have to. We live in a society with fast food, relatively cheap goods, variable interest rates, disposable income, little consequence for behavior, rebates, refunds and host of other things to make life easier. When things don't go our way we cry, and demand justice to suit our individual position. The folks Schmedlap is referring to are the kind who are used going out an getting their justice, often at the expense of others - that is what they have known since they can remember.

Best, Rob