Thanksgiving with the Sheiks, Army Style

The Army goes all out for holidays when you are deployed. I remember in Haiti we would fly Thanksgiving Dinner to all of the teams in our sector, hang around for them to eat it, load up the turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and pies and fly to the next team. Here in Iraq all of the chow halls have an unofficial competition to outdo each other on Thanksgiving. There are a ton of decorations, cakes, food sculptures and other food related paraphernalia (see the pictures, honest).

Thanksgiving started off with a Tribal Sheik meeting which was pretty, ummm, entertaining. All of the powerful tribal sheiks in the area got together to talk about local issues and how things are going, most of the times these folks get together they are pretty tame, this one got a little heated towards the end of the meeting. Most of the sheiks have warrants out for their arrests, but nobody enforces them - - - all of the warrants against the sheiks are sworn out by enemies of one tribe or another, one sect or another or just someone that doesn't like what the sheik is doing for his tribe. Pretty interesting, I will have to write about tribal justice later on. Anyway, all of the sheiks agreed that false accusations must stop and they would work to stomp out false accusations. After the pleasantries, folks started to really get into it, I kept getting flashbacks to the scene in "Lawrence of Arabia" where the sheiks are all trying to decide how to rule the lands they had just taken from the Turks, throw in the confusion of interpreters and you have pretty much sheik overload. The General looked at me a few times and just chuckled. He gave the best speech of the day, he told folks they should look at themselves honestly, work hard to secure the area from insurgents, help Iraqis that have been displaced by the civil war to come back and support the Status of Forces Agreement, pretty enlightened.

After we were back in his HQs he talked to me about the dynamics of the Tribal Council. Basically, they are wise, but not highly educated, they understand their tribe and it's structure, but have problems seeing the whole of Iraq. I always enjoy talking to him about such things.

After the Tribal meeting, we had the traditional Army Thanksgiving meal, 1 each. All of the Sheiks dug in as did the security force leaders. One of the best ways to cement relationships is to eat together, if you eat with an Arab, you are on his good side for life. If you host him at your table, he remembers that.

Speaking if Internally Displace Personnel. . . . . Saturday was our next meeting and it focused on a small village to the north of North City. The village is basically rubble, but folks want to move back to their homes and get restarted. The General hosted another sheik council, a smaller one than the Thanksgiving one, just sheiks from the area around the village, and again, there was a lot of talking, but not much. The meeting started off with the usual pleasantries - - - folks are happy that the environment was so secure and they could begin to think about families moving back into the area. After about 45 minutes of small talk, the three main issues leaked out: Outlaws (insurgents from the area) must be captured, there must be social reconciliation and someone has to pay for all of this. After the three issues came out, there was an agreement for another three meetings on the subject. Long process, lots of talking . . . .

At each of these meetings the General normally turns to me and asks me to provide some coalition words of wisdom. The guys on the team have started to score my speeches on a scale of 1-10, they thought today's was an 8, I recognized a teenager in the crowd (a sheiks son, who was bored stiff) and told them that it was great that the younger generation of Iraq was being allowed to see how the new Iraq was going to be formed, with wise men working with the local government and the security forces to help people start their lives back. That bit of recognition apparently moved me from a 7 to an 8. Now that I know I am going to be scored, I will try to be more eloquent.

Other notes: The Huskers played a wild one, my Heisman vote is going to Alex Henery, 6'2", 175 lbs. sophmore kicker from Omaha Burke. He kicked a 57 yard field goal to put the Huskers ahead of the buffaloes 33-31. The Blackshirts sealed the deal with an interception return for a touchdown at the end of the game, and then sacked the heck out of Cody Hawkins on colorado's last series. Final score: 40-31. Pretty sweet game, even if I had to stay up to 3 am to watch it.

Fantasy Football: Team Fritz is off to a blazing start - - Brian Westbrook had 4 TDs, the Tony Romo offense was clicking and Dallas's defense finally showed up and held someone to less than 10 points.