Watching Iraq

by President Henry A. Zimon

s we watch the rebuilding of Iraq unfold from day to day, the formidable complexity of the work is slowly dawning on Americans. For most Americans, the responsibility for rebuilding an entire nation from the ground up is terra incognita, the uncharted regions indicated on a medieval map with the legend, "Here be dragons."

The American public now has had an unprecedented hour-by-hour window on the job at hand, with an opportunity to see the veneer of a nation stripped away and to really observe the deep complexity of what lies beneath.

Watching Iraq is much like seeing that first, perception-busting photograph of planet earth from space. Any illusion of independence and self-sufficiency vanished in a single photographic instant with that shot of a big, blue marble poised against the blackness of space. Likewise, watching Iraq is allowing us to see something that is easy to forget – the frighteningly immediate interdependencies of a nation’s infrastructure, its culture, and its physical and emotional survival.

Everything is intertwined. Hospitals need water for basic sanitation, but water starts with electricity. To restore the power grid, equipment must cross the now-bombed-out bridge. The equipment to repair the bridge has to arrive via non-functioning roads. The economy depends on people traveling those roads to shops and offices with goods and records savaged by looters. Constraining looters requires both law and enforcement. Because there is no clean, running water, public health is threatened when cholera breaks out. The hospitals fill up… "For want of a shoe…"

No matter what you may think of the war, watching Iraq must be an enlightenment - especially for our youth, the students who stand next in line as the national and international leadership and workforce. Those of us who educate them have an obligation to make sure they understand that world- and nation-building requires more than soldiers, diplomats and construction workers.

This job involves science and technology of all stripes. It involves politics and humanitarian aid, law and food, public health and healing in its broadest sense. It involves religion and history.

Relationships must be built and maintained. Trust must be earned, and alliances forged. We must learn other languages, literally and figuratively, in order both to understand and be understood, hence the job includes not just linguistics but also semantics, individual and mass communication, and public relations.

The job includes economics, trade and transportation, but also archeology, anthropology and art history as we try to prevent the devastation of an ancient world culture.

As we watch Iraq, it becomes clearer and clearer that successful building of nations, cities, or systems must be in the hands of individuals who understand that there is a big picture. People with broad, multi-layered, interdisciplinary perspectives who know how to connect the dots across professions and disciplines. We need the engineer who understands something about public health, and the doctor who understands religion and history. We need people who can work collaboratively and cross-culturally, first to define complex problems and then engender effective, creative solutions.

American liberal arts colleges have fostered broad perspectives for generations, but now they -- and all institutions of higher education – must even more strongly encourage our students to become truly interdisciplinary thinkers. By connecting knowledge, broadening their perspectives, and being ready to step across boundaries, our students will be better prepared to be global citizens who must take charge of a world of staggering complexity. This is the real job for American educators – to make sure our students are not just watching Iraq, but learning from it.

This piece appeared in The Reading Eagle on May 27, 2003.