There is a sad but funny commentary on Alternet titled, ‘The Iraq Debacle- Failure to Communicate?‘ I took a semester of Modern Standard Arabic ages ago and this article and the subsequent commentaries discuss the lack of available Arabic translators amongst ‘our troops’ and the various causes for that.
Following is my comment under one of the threads discussing this article.
Nothing new here…
Posted by: logansafi on Apr 9, 2007 7:14 PM
There’s nothing new here with our clownish military and our clown CIC. Nobody knew how to speak Albanian or Serbo Croat either, and God save us if they ever go into Darfur-Chad-Sudan! ‘Saviours’ without a clue they always are.
It is obvious why the US military is so in bed with Israel. Israel is the only country that has some Arab linguist ability, especially when you count their Falangist Lebanese killer friends.
MTA should be what this lingua franca should be called. Modern Torture Arabic. Good for use while stealing Iraqi oil.
Yeah, I thought it was more than just kinda dumb when they discharged a double digit percentage of their Arabic translators over the “don’t ask,don’t tell” rule. Then there’s the truly idiotic paradox inherent in the USA PATRIOT ACT which means if you can be identified as Arabic or Arabist-leaning you are automatically a Terror Suspect.
“Sure, let’s waltz into a war with 20% of the people of the earth and cut our own throats by firing our translators so we won’t know what the fuck they’re saying…”