There is a part of this article that is missing. That part is the cultural legacy of Iraq on all of us that have been deployed there. I find myself using the Iraqi arabic lexicon all of the time. Hell, I gave my blog a name that came from that experience (Jundi is Arabic for soldier), complete with a photo of an Iraqi Jundi. I personally know of two contractors that have married Iraqi women. Even drinking tea is viewed differently after working in Iraq, because tea is such an important drink for business and interactions there. There is much that has worn off on me and the thousands of us that have interacted with the Iraqi population during this war, and I think that would make for a great follow up article to this story. –Matt
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Mark Apram is the most popular tattoo artist in Baghdad, and his room is a potpourri of American influences. “Anything American, I love it,” he said. (Nada Bakri – The Washington Post)
A Quiet but Undeniable Cultural Legacy
U.S. Occupation of Iraq Will End, but a Host of American Influences May Linger
By Anthony ShadidWashington Post Foreign ServiceSunday, May 31, 2009
BAGHDAD
Across the street from the tidy rows of tombstones in the British cemetery, mute testimony to the soldiers of an earlier occupation, Mustafa Muwaffaq bears witness to the quieter side of the United States’ six-year-old presence in Iraq.
In wraparound sunglasses, shorts and shoes without socks, the burly 20-year-old student waxes eloquent about his love for heavy metal of all kinds: death, thrash, black. But none of it compares, he says, to the honky-tonk of Alan Jackson, whose tunes he strums on his acoustic guitar at night, pining for a life as far away as a passport will take him.