Jason Warr of Rapid City was paying particularly close attention Tuesday morning during a forum on the Middle East at Mount Rushmore.

So were the eight or nine others at his table, and so were those at the next table.

Warr's day job is program chairman for accounting at National American University. Starting next week, however, he'll be Capt. Jason Warr, executive officer of Bravo Battery of the 147th Artillery of the South Dakota Army National Guard.

Warr and more than a dozen of his South Dakota Army National Guard colleagues are among 200 participants at the nonprofit Rushmore Institute's two-day forum titled "Understanding the Middle East Conflicts: Why should Americans care?"

Warr, 37, cares because he'll soon leave his wife and four kids, ages 3 to 17, and deploy to Iraq.

"I'm very interested in this panel of experts because they're not holding back punches," he said.

The panelists included scholars, diplomats and peace negotiators.

A couple of panelists pointed out that while Americans think of themselves as defenders of democracy, many in the Middle East view them as occupiers.

"That's instructive," Warr said.

Tuesday's session focused on Israel and Palestine, but Warr, whose unit operates rocket launchers, found it useful to put his mission in a larger context. "Though we're going to Iraq, not Israel, still, one of the points made this morning was that the key to peace in the entire region starts with solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Larry Zimmerman, 53, of Rapid City, who is postmaster at Spearfish, also followed Tuesday's session closely. As of yesterday, he turned into Command Sgt. Maj. Larry Zimmerman, also with the South Dakota National Guard.

Zimmerman will deploy in January to Afghanistan. His small team from South Dakota will train Afghan police, troops and noncommissioned officers in techniques of convoys and base security. They'll also act as liaisons between Afghans and U.S. forces.

Zimmerman was especially looking forward to today's sessions, which will expand to other parts of the region. But he added, "The history of the fight between Palestine and Israel, having that explained, is just priceless."

He's taking notes to present to his team.

Maj. Aaron Jordon of the 109th Support Group in Rapid City already has served a tour in Iraq, in 2003 with the 109th Engineers, the first South Dakota unit into Iraq.

Jordan, 41, is a full-time member of the National Guard. He wanted to learn more about the region to prepare for future missions and to understand how they relate to one of the oldest ongoing conflicts in the region. "I was a history major in college," he said. "You can see there are a lot of connecting, converging issues there and relationships that got us to this point."

Capt. Warr's interest is more immediate. "When something bad happens in Israel or Palestine, the protest spreads throughout the region," he said. "They pay attention."

Warr and the other soldiers refrained from offering their own political perspectives. "That's not really our job," Warr said. "We're really focused on our mission."

Warr's formula for success in Iraq is straightforward: "Go over there and flawlessly perform this mission, do our duty and bring everybody home. That would be the perfect outcome."

A little extra knowledge, he said, might help achieve it.

Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com