“Don’t use your left hand for contact with others,” advises the U.S. Marine Corps in a new edition of the Iraq Culture Smart Card (very large pdf) which is distributed to military personnel in Iraq. “It is considered unclean.”
It seems late in the day for such niceties. Amid the daily brutality of the Iraq war, there is probably little to be gained by courtesy or to be lost by mere rudeness.
But the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity evidently thinks otherwise.
The MCIA has produced an updated Iraq Culture Smart Card, dated May 2006, which features rudimentary information on Iraqi customs, religion and language. A copy was obtained by Secrecy News and is available here (in a very large 22 MB PDF file).
The public rarely sees the quiet, often messy work that goes into creating, passing, and implementing a major piece of legislation like the CHIPS and Science Act.
If this proposed rule were enacted it would have deleterious effects on government workers in general and federal researchers and scientists, specifically.
When we introduce “at-will” employment to government employees, we also introduce the potential for environments where people are more concerned about self-preservation than service to others.
There is no better time to re-invigorate America’s innovation edge by investing in R&D to create and capture “industries of the future,” re-shoring capital and expertise, and working closely with allies to expand our capabilities while safeguarding those technologies that are critical to our security.