In a previous column I wrote about a new wind blowing through the military in Iraq: a counterinsurgency (COIN) academy aiming at helping soldiers understand Iraqis and their culture, language training for officers in the States. Here at the Naval Academy in Annapolis we're feeling this new wind too. It feels like spring, and not just because it's March here in Annapolis, in the process of coming in like a lion and getting ready to go out like a lamb.

It's a new wind for the mission in Iraq because it has nothing to do with the “shock and awe” we heard about initially. The times they seem to be a'changin. At the same time it's an old wind, because it's a sign of the military's pragmatism. This pragmatism is based on the fact that ultimately, the military ends up transcending ideology in order to accomplish mission. Politics, by contrast, need not ever transcend ideology: ideologues can go down insisting they are too right. That's what makes the military different from the politics it's used to serve.

That phrase “shock and awe,” I should observe before going on since relevant to the point here, has caused me problems since the get-go. I'd have been more comfortable if it had limited itself to “shock.” We might be able to control “shock”: that's something you do to others. But the “awe” is presumably what we hoped we'd inspire, and speaking of it assumes that people will in fact react the way we postulate they will. You can postulate a reaction for the sake of argument, but you can't assume it'll happen: for example that American soldiers in Iraq would be welcomed as liberators. And then you have to run the scenarios for a completely different reaction. It's better in the long run to know how to talk to those outside. This seems to be the goal of the COIN Academy -- and of the Naval Academy's recent developments in the same direction.

Here at Annapolis plans are underway to create a major in what will probably be some form of Middle Eastern Studies. It's in the planning stages, and the plans seem to change weekly. At first we heard about a “Regional Studies Major.” When we asked, what regions? the answer turned out, unsurprisingly, the Middle East. So developments seem to have moved toward calling things by their real names, complete with proposals for sending midshipmen to Muslim countries for study. (It's still unclear what form this would take either: where would they study? At the American University in Cairo? Military academies of allied countries?)

Already, a “post-9-11” course has appeared in the English Department as part of this same new wind, called "Multi-Cultural Literature." As it happens, I teach this. I've set it up to take three blocks of the world, Africa, India, and the Islamic world. There's a lot of overlap here. Though Pakistan was split off of India at Independence in 1947 to create an Islamic Republic whose two parts ultimately themselves separated into two countries, there are more Muslims left in the secular state of India than in Pakistan and Bangladesh combined. India for historic purposes in any case includes them all. North Africa is almost exclusively Muslim, while sub-Saharan Africa has been strongly influenced by Christianity. Thus countries like Nigeria and the Sudan which straddle north and central Africa tend to develop conflicts between their northern, more Muslim areas, and the south, at least nominally Christian (there's still a lot of animism in the mix with things the folks in the West might not think of as purely kosher). That's why evangelical Christians in the States are interested in these conflicts, invariably supporting the Christians against the Muslims. But the countries contain more than just the Christians they'd have us be exclusively interested in.

In “Multi-Cultural Literature,” we consider both how Westerners write about these non-Western worlds and peoples, and how their authors write about Westerners. Sometimes it's a conflict, these two points of view. But that's the point: to get across to these future officers that the other side has a point of view.

The students seem receptive and excited. We read great chunks of the Holy Koran (just before works by the Nobel prizewinner Naguib Mahfouz)-a first for most of them. They're surprised to find that it speaks of Jesus and his mother Mary and reiterates the Christian belief of virgin birth, but holds that another man was buried in Jesus's tomb. Jesus, according to the Koran, did not die on a cross, of course a standard Roman execution medium, like our electric chair or lethal injection. Still, he's a revered prophet. God tells the Prophet that Jesus was one of a number of His messengers; the messages became corrupted, however, which necessitated this final revelation to Mohammed.

Our course's interest of the Holy Koran is not limited to its pronouncements on subjects the students are familiar with. If for no other reason, we read it because millions of people have found solace and inspiration in it, and as an expression of the universal aspiration to the divine. It helps too to understand that Muslims believe that the Holy Koran is literally the word of God, who delivered His message in classical Arabic to Mohammed. Some folks back home in the USA are under the misapprehension that Americans have the monopoly on fervent belief: Not so. Realizing that others believe just as strongly what they believe as some of us believe what we believe is vital information, not just for the military but for anyone who ever hopes to leave Kansas.

I'd like to think that if Lt. Gen. (ret) Boykin had had a class like this, he wouldn't have made his nonsensical pronouncements a couple of years ago about the Christian God (he should have said Judeo-Christian) being “bigger” than the “Muslim God” -- they're the same: “Allah” means God in Arabic. And then Gen. Boykin hit the jackpot of “I don't believe he said that.” Only he did say it. Namely: “I knew that my God was a real God and his [a Muslim Somali's] was an idol.” That's right up there with President Bush speaking of US efforts in the Mideast as a “crusade” (the Islamic world is still mad about the Crusades of the Middle Ages). And “idol”? Heavens. The Muslim profession of faith states, “There is no God but God.” God is one, not the multiple idols worshipped in Arabia before Mohammed. And Islam, as some people have learned recently by following reactions to the Danish cartoons of the Prophet, has typically been quite touchy about making graven images of the Prophet. (It's forbidden in the Jewish Ten Commandments too, but Christians have chosen to disregard that one.)

My course isn't the only sign of new interest at the Naval Academy in the Middle East. I get e-mails weekly, it seems, about lectures from visiting scholars on Mid-East topics: the most recent is on “Mohammed's Daughter and the Virgin Mary.” And the History Department has long taught courses in Middle Eastern topics, and continues to do so, with several nationally respected faculty members teaching them.

What's new is the newly receptive attitude of students and the new interest on the part of the administration. More than a decade ago, I taught a whole course at the Naval Academy that I called “Islamic Literature,” all in translation, stretching from classical Persian poetry to the late 20th century. At the time, I had to field complaints from Christian students that they were being taught that there was a religion that believed just as firmly about itself that it was the Truth as some Christians are taught about theirs. Yes, I said, and a good thing too. In retrospect, I wonder if it wasn't attitudes like that that contributed, if only subtly, to 9-11.

Now I don't get the complaints. That's progress.