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Thomas J. "Ozzie" Conners enlisted in the U.S. Army after his graduation from Bridgewater State College in 1965. After basic training, Conners joined the 196th Light Infantry Brigade and was transported to Vietnam. As a member of Company C, 27th Regiment (the Wolfhounds), Conners was wounded within a month of his deployment, during the Operation Attleboro campaign.

In November 2006, US Army Major Bill Edmonds took to the pages of The Nation with a simple but powerful message: American soldiers in Iraq, where Edmonds had served, were not trained or equipped to grasp the complex realities that shaped Iraqis' daily lives. Such cultural blindness had undermined US efforts to stabilize the country. Edmonds then issued a blunt warning: "If we are to succeed in Iraq," he remarked, "we must either change the way we perceive and treat those we want to help or we must disengage the great percentage of our military from the population."1 Edmonds' critique pointed to a larger problem in American foreign policy. As the US finds itself more deeply involved in a "globalized" world, the government needs detailed knowledge and understanding of foreign cultures, now more than ever. Countless civil servants and elected officials help to meet this requirement. Still, officials often find themselves woefully under-prepared to understand and, ultimately, to shape policy towards a number of foreign countries and cultures. In fact, numerous US government departments and agencies discourage policymakers and officials from developing expertise in particular countries or regions, instead requiring them to rotate to other subject areas in order to support career progression. The broad effect of this development has been to bring American soldiers and diplomats into contact with myriad tribes and ethnic and sectarian groups, most of which are little-understood by policymakers and practitioners. Throughout these engagements - not just in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and a number of other countries - cultural misunderstanding of the type Major Bill Edmonds described has remained a key impediment to US success. Adapted from the source document.