Almost 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.