re: "State desperate for envoys to learn Arabic"
Robert at Jihad Watch shares his comments on a Washington Times article.
From the article:
"The State Department, in an unprecedented move highlighting its desperate need for Arabic speakers, is allowing U.S. diplomats to curtail their current assignments anywhere in the world and begin Arabic language training in September.
Foreign Service officers who are interested in learning Arabic or improving existing skills have until the end of July to apply for more than 100 positions in Arabic-speaking countries that will open in the next two years.
Asked why the program has been initiated only now -- nearly six years after the September 11, 2001, attacks and more than four years into the Iraq war -- department officials cited a lack of resources."
Key comment(s):
"(I)t would be refreshing if one day we saw the headline "State desperate for envoys to learn about Islam, jihad." "
From the article:
"The State Department, in an unprecedented move highlighting its desperate need for Arabic speakers, is allowing U.S. diplomats to curtail their current assignments anywhere in the world and begin Arabic language training in September.
Foreign Service officers who are interested in learning Arabic or improving existing skills have until the end of July to apply for more than 100 positions in Arabic-speaking countries that will open in the next two years.
Asked why the program has been initiated only now -- nearly six years after the September 11, 2001, attacks and more than four years into the Iraq war -- department officials cited a lack of resources."
Key comment(s):
"(I)t would be refreshing if one day we saw the headline "State desperate for envoys to learn about Islam, jihad." "
posted by Consul-At-Arms at 4:48 PM
2 Comments:
Claire Berlinski wrote an amazing article after 9.11.01 for the Weekly Standard entitled "English Only Spoken Here" which describes the appalling lack of trained linguists. She made a brilliant suggestion of training amateur linguists who would simply listen in where ever whenever. In fact, a number of software companies have developed software to train learners into an immersion style of learning a language. It is an approach to language acquisition which has much more rapid results than the grammar and book heavy methods taught in most schools....if they even bother to teach Arabic or Persian. Also, a good idea would be to take on the surveillance of mosques and websites in a private manner. The internet is a boon for this, and many people, armed with just a little Arabic (I have done this myself, using broken English) can worm their way into any chat room full of American Muslim jihadists and spy them out. The time to put away old ways of doing things is long past, and we should be as dynamic and quick to learn as our enemies are.
One of the benefits of having a privatized spy organization is that you localize the civil defense of mosque watching is that you eliminate the bureaucracy and red tape of legit policing organizations. We are, after all, in an asymmetrical war with people who weaponise little kids. Why wait for the training of State Department Appeasing Apparatchiks, when you can wage a more effective war without them.
Interesting ideas, but the State Department's specific lack of linguists is for language-designated positions at post in Arabic-speaking countries.
By way of example, at least a cursory command of a language is necessary to conduct a visa interview. Or to otherwise function when assigned to a non-English-speaking host country.
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