Friday, December 19, 2003
More on the Arabic Language Translator Shortage
The New Republic has a subscribers-only post, "Speechless", on the national security implications of the continued shortage of translators of the Arabic language. Readers learn:
The Army . . . has failed to attract Arabic speakers, resulting in a serious, sometimes embarrassing, strain on its Iraq operations. According to one American official in Iraq who speaks Arabic, "When one American official was giving a pep talk to his [new Iraqi] staff, basically saying, 'We expect you all to work hard for us, and, if you don't, you know that you'll be fired,' his words were translated as, 'We expect you to work hard for us, and, if you don't, you'll be lined up and shot.'" Many of the interpreters hired in Iraq, the official says, are from other Arab countries and speak dialects virtually impossible for Iraqis to understand.
On November 25th, Paul Krugman, managed to blame (you guess it) President George W. Bush's efforts to oust Saddam for this translator shortage. Krugman complained that "intelligence resources, including translators, were shifted from the pursuit of Al Qaeda to the coming invasion [of Iraq]."
Yet neither The New Republic nor Krugman have complained about the drain of Arabic translation resources for Clinton-era projects like Executive Order 13166. E.O. 13166 requires all but instant translation for any speaker of Arabic (or any other tongue) who wanders into any office in America which receives a penny of federal funds.
To folks like Krugman, the war against terrorism requires that conservatives must make sacrifices (e.g. repeal of the Bush tax cuts) while the most dubious liberal policies must outlast the pyramids of Egypt.
|posted by Jim on 2:53 PM|
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