Gee, Maybe Soldiers Should Learn Arabic
February 6th, 2006 Posted in WarAlmost three years after the invasion of Iraq the U.S. Army has decided it’d be a good idea to teach officers how to speak Arabic. You think? We decide to topple an unauthorized dictaorship (The Tick hat tip: “American Maid! American Maid! We’ve lost our arms, we’ve lost our arms!”) and then occupy the country for a while until we decide they’re on their feet–yet we neglect to bring along a few people who can speak the language (1 in 400 hardly qualifies as a “few”)? And we don’t begin to remedy the problem until three years later?
The image of U.S. soldiers–the best military force in the history of the world–doing a little dance in front of Iraqi locals in order to communicate is just embarrassing.
Sheesh. You’d think after 9/11 speaking Arabic would be one of the most in-demand skills. Why are we still teaching French in high school? We should be teaching Arabic and Chinese.
One Response to “Gee, Maybe Soldiers Should Learn Arabic”
By Lake Neuron on Feb 6, 2006
Speaking Arabic
Kevin Hendricks makes a great point about Americans’ language skills — or lack thereof — and how they relate to the new world around us.
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