Larry Johnson’s No Quarter blog had a guest poster two days ago. Major Bill Edmonds, a Special Forces officer, discusses his assignment in Iraq - an assignment that he was trained for, and apparently suited for by personality. MAJ Edmonds wrote this article originally for a magazine and it was forwarded to Mr Johnson by a friend.

For just a minute or two, step into my life. I am an American soldier in the Army Special Forces. I have just returned from a one-year tour of duty in Iraq, where I lived, shared meals, slept and fought beside my Iraqi counterpart as we battled insurgents in the center of a thousand-year-old city. I am a conflicted man, and I want you to read the story of that experience as I lived it. In the interest of security, I have omitted some identifying details, but every word is true.

MAJ Edmonds tells a story that we are all probably familiar with on a subconscious level, especially those of us who have served overseas and had daily contact with other cultures. Using pointed examples of his assignment, he explains just why the US is not going to prevail in Iraq with the current military methods.

"Two years ago I saw Abu Ghraib and what Americans did to women. I became an insurgent," whispers a man I call Kareem, another civilian turned insurgent. "You come into our homes without separating the women and children, or asking the men politely if you may enter. Almost every hour of my life I hear some noise or see some sight of the American military. Soldiers talk with Iraqis only from behind a gun, from a position of power and not respect. Last week American soldiers got on a school bus and talked with all of the teenage girls. You had them take off their hijab so you could see their faces. You do not respect our women. This is the biggest of all problems of yours. You do not respect our women. How can we believe that Americans want to help when you do not even respect us or our faith?"

The US troops do not respect Iraqis for several reasons. Beyond the fear of death by sniper, IED, and gun ambush, the Iraqis are not respected because the American culture is so extremely isolationist and overwashed with a strong sense of exceptionalism and superiority. Living in a country that has only one border with a foreign language and lifestyle, Americans are unable to comprehend that people can live differently with a unique language and history and still be (for lack of a better word) ‘human.’ The isolation created by two large oceans has given America more than a sense of physical security.

I have come to realize that we isolate our soldiers from the societies in which we operate. We airlift and sealift vacuum-sealed replicas of America to remote corners of the world; once there, we isolate ourselves from the very people we are trying to protect or win over. An Iraqi once told me, "How you treat us must be like how African-Americans felt." If you're an American soldier in Iraq working as an adviser, ask yourself this: Is the Iraqi I live and fight with not allowed to enter any American facility? If you are a military adviser or training to be an adviser, look around where you eat: Are the Americans on one side of the room and the Iraqis on the other? Do you even eat with Iraqis? Do you go out of your way to avoid eye contact and thus not greet the Iraqis you walk by? Do you try to learn their language or follow their customs? Do you habitually expect Iraqis to share intelligence and then not respond in kind? Do you distrust them?

More to the point in Iraq, the troops don’t respect their occupied charges because there is no respect for the country at the very top. Soldiers relearn their attitudes from their leaders, and our leaders have nothing but contempt for the average man and woman in Iraq, and in the United States as well.

I have slowly come to understand that if we are to succeed in Iraq, 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. The Iraqi base where I now live was once a small American base. The anxiety and distress of American soldiers in years past are scratched in the ceiling over my bed. "The mind is a terrible thing...," "keep a sharp look-out during your descent," "happiness is a temporary state of mind," "control is just an illusion" and "nothing is as it seems." Across the room, on another wall, next to another bed, are other words from another soldier. They read, "My score in this War: Arabs=10, cars=10, houses=3."

As a soldier who lives with an Iraqi, I do hope to one day just sit and drink some tea with him. To sit and talk of family without a worry in the world. But to do so, I must do more than just train, advise and fight with my Iraqi friend. I must go out of my way every single day to disprove the "Ugly American" label that is attached to me. I must approach every personal interaction as a singular opportunity to battle the insurgency and then realize that my interactions with each and every Iraqi do have very lasting and very strategic consequences.

In one very real way the terrified and bigoted children on the right are correct: it is a clash of civilizations, but it should be a meeting rather than a clash. The solution is not to annihilate them all but to understand them, and get them to see we are like them in many ways.