"Be polite, be professional, be prepared to kill." Lt. Col. Nagel summarizing a new US Army counterinsurgency manual (on the Daily Show)

This quote reminds of the critique of universalist pragmatics by Anna Wierzbicka. Wierzbicka and others (e.g. Goddard) points out that concepts like politeness (let alone professionalism) are extremely culture and language specific. Politeness is different in culture not only in its overt expressions but also in its cultural context (who to be polite to when) and social consequence. So as a result, soldiers trying to be "polite and professional" are more likely to have to kill people. And killing is of course the most universal of these three concepts (although, even there, interesting and profound differences can be found). The Army supposedly consulted ethnographers and it would be interesting to see what advice they gave, how it was conveyed in the manual and how its meaning is negotiated by soldiers on the ground.

Here’s a suggested formulation for the manual:

Deep down all people are the same and not just in that they bleed when you cut them. But their sameness is hidden under so many intersecting layers of surprising and unsystematic differences (kind of like a mutant cancerous onion) that it may take a life time of interacting with lots of people to find out what it is that they have in common with you. That's why you should try to kill as few of them as possible. In some cultures own death is not avoided at all costs if there is a common good to be had. Warriors have starved themselves to death to preserve resources for others or let themselves to be killed rather than kill someone (even in self-defence) who is important to the bigger picture or just to be polite and professional. Think about that!