And the candidates, in the form of John McCain and Barack Obama, were too noble to be distracted by the siren voices of the culture war.

而候选人，约翰•麦凯恩和巴拉克•奥巴马自恃高贵而不去在意文化之战悄然拉响的警报。

Call it the culture war or partisanship, but whatever it is that divides Americans against one another -distracting them from the real problem in Washington, DC -is also no hero in this story.

这可称作党派之争或者文化之争，但无论怎么称呼，这的确使美国分化成两个相互对抗的群体——也使他们分散了注意力，真正的问题出在华盛顿——也使这个故事失去了英雄。

Call it the culture war or partisanship, but whatever it is that divides Americans against one another - distracting them from the real problem in Washington, DC - is also no hero in this story.

这可称作党派之争或者文化之争，但无论怎么称呼，这的确使美国分化成两个相互对抗的群体——也使他们分散了注意力，真正的问题出在华盛顿——也使这个故事失去了英雄。

"Before the war, no one knew about the cultures from outside, but now so many people know about Western culture," says Kawakeb Salah Hamed, a sociology professor at Baghdad University.

“战争之前，大家对来自外界的文化一无所知，不过现在有那么多人喜欢西方文化”，巴格达大学社会学教授卡瓦科布·萨拉汉·哈米德认为。

And I put my money where my mouth was because I went to war, but I understood pretty quickly that this was another place, another culture, and we would never fit in there.

在战争期间我所有的钱都花在了吃上。那时我很快明白了这是另一个世界，另一种文化，我们永远融入不了这里。