Hollywood

If I've learned anything in life, it is to expect more of myself and less of others.
-Annette Amadin

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"If you want an Iraqi to back off, if you wanna scare 'em, put an M9 in their face," SGT Tantrum declared. "They're not scared of the M4, but they'll shit themselves at the sight of an M9." The M9 is the Army's standard issue handgun.

SGT Tantrum elaborated, "That's the crazy thing about the Iraqis. You put your M4 in their face and it don't scare them. You could be at a checkpoint, you'd have one of them barreling at you in his car, yell at him, point your M4 at him, point the 240 Bravo at him--"

"Fuck the 240. Shoot at them with the 50 cal and they'll drive right into it," SSG Maverick cut in. "But point a pistol at them, and they'll get out of their vehicle with their hands up yelling Please! No shoot!"

"What the fuck?" I said. "That doesn't make any sense. Why?"

"A pistol's a symbol of power. Only officers carried them, and back in Saddam's regime, when they executed people, they'd drag 'em out into the middle of the streets, put the gun up against their head and shoot 'em. That's what the people see. That shit's burned into their memories, man. They lived in fear of being executed in the dark of night for decades."

I laughed in marvel.

"You know what else works, though?" SSG Maverick asked.

"What?"

"Green lasers. We'll sometimes come through and the kids'll all crowd up on you, and what're you gonna do? You can't use lethal force unless they're threatening you. They just want something, anything from you. Man, my boys tried everything on them. But green lasers work. You flash the green laser at them and they back off," SSG Maverick explained, his palms up. He continued, "It's all Hollywood, man. That's all they know about our culture. They see a green laser beam and they think some bad shit's going to happen. And it ain't just the kids. Everyone's fucking terrified of green lasers over there."

SGT Tantrum added, "Man, one of my favorite things is--especially when you get out in the fucking boonies, outside the cities--they refuse to talk to you when you have your sunglasses on."

"Why, because it's rude?"

"Well, yeah, that," SGT Tantrum said. "But it's actually more like they think we have lie detectors and computers built into our sunglasses, like in Terminator or something. I'm not even talking about the big goggles we got. My guys would be wearing Oakley's and they get all nervous around you. They think you can see into their soul or something. They'll ask you to take your sunglasses off before they'll answer your questions."

SSG Maverick added, "You know what we used to do when we did block parties*? If we got intel that there was a weapons cache in some guy's house, we'd capture him, and ask him where the weapons are hidden. Mr., I don't know what you talking about they'd lie. And then we'd put the night vision goggles on them, make them look at their house, and tell them, Now tell us again where the weapons are hidden. This can tell if you're lying. If you see purple, it means you're telling us the truth. If it's green, it means you're lying. Now, what color did you see? and then they'd look down at the ground and say, I saw green. and we'd ask, So are you lying to us? and of course, he'd say, Yes."

We all laughed, and then SGT Tantrum said, "Those backwards assed motherfuckers. It'll be a fucking miracle if they ever get a democracy going."

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*Block Party, AKA Cordon and Search: It's what we call it when we get intel that there is a target (e.g., safe-house, weapons cache, High Value Target) in an area and we section off the area, raid all the homes on that block, and pick up every male of military age.