Tongue-Tied in the Arab World (Washington Post)

Fri Jul 11 14:36:41 UTC 2003

Not only that, on top of it, they recently fired 26??? (I think it was 26)
arab-speaking interpreters because they were gay. Stupidity! Christina

----------
>From: Aurolyn Luykx <aurolynluykx at yahoo.com>
>To: lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu
>Subject: Re: Tongue-Tied in the Arab World (Washington Post)
>Date: Fri, Jul 11, 2003, 9:49 AM
>

> Interesting that Fukuyama (yes, the same who declared
> "the end of history" inasmuch as Western capitalism &
> democracy no longer faced any serious challenges!) and
> his ilk fear that learning the languages of those
> dangerous cultural "others" may lead to feelings of
> sympathy with their points of view. Is not this hope
> of empathy through cultural understanding part of what
> motivated many of us toward linguistics in the first
> place?
> Aurolyn Luykx
> University of Miami
>
> --- "Harold F. Schiffman"
> <haroldfs at ccat.sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
>> This article is not surprising, and the disdain for
>> knowledge of Arabic
>> (or any other language spoken "east of Suez") is
>> well-known.  To those of
>> us who have specialized in the less-known and
>> less-studied languages of
>> the world, the article could be written with any
>> less-commonly known
>> language substituted for "Arabic".  People like
>> myself, who took the leap
>> and specialized in Tamil back in the 1960's, thought
>> that the eurocentric
>> bent of American education, where people only
>> studied European languages,
>> whether in high school or beyond, was over, and that
>> the change of
>> emphasis in the 1960's meant that eurocentrism was
>> dead.  But then in the
>> 1970's the disdain for knowledge of the rest of the
>> world returned.  This
>> was particularly true during the Vietnam War,
>> because Nixon and others
>> felt that we specialists were "tilting" towards the
>> "enemy" and "going
>> native" and "sympathizing too much" with "those
>> people."  Just the same
>> attitudes as quoted from Francis Fukuyama below.
>> (Is this the same person
>> who predicted the "death of history"?)
>>
>> Suddenly, on September 12, 2001, somebody in
>> Washington DC woke up and
>> realized that we really don't know enough about
>> "those languages" and
>> maybe we ought to have someone who does.
>>
>> (Sigh)
>>
>> Your moderator,
>>
>> Hal Schiffman
>>
>> On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 ronkinm at georgetown.edu wrote:
>>
>> > washingtonpost.com
>> >
>> > Tongue-Tied In the Arab World
>> >
>> > By David Ignatius
>> >
>> > Friday, July 11, 2003; Page A21
>> >
>> > PARIS -- The Post ran a story this week about an
>> explosion on a bridge
>> > in Baghdad that targeted U.S. troops. Sadly, such
>> stories are
>> > becoming routine, but something in the lead
>> sentence caught my eye: "The
>> > combat engineers inside the tan Humvees had
>> traversed the
>> > Wedding Island Bridge dozens of times to fetch
>> their translator."
>> >
>> > "To fetch their translator." That's the worrying
>> detail. None of the
>> > engineers spoke Arabic, apparently. Which meant
>> that, like most of the
>> > 150,000 U.S. personnel in Iraq, they were
>> dependent on interpreters.
>> > That's a dangerous vulnerability. But, as with so
>> much else about
>> > postwar Iraq, nobody seems to have thought it
>> through carefully.
>> >
>> > This is a self-inflicted wound. For until
>> recently, fluency in Arabic
>> > was often suspect in Washington, a sign of
>> potential pro-Arab
>> > sympathies. It could be dangerous to your career
>> health.
>> >
>> > The ideological purges of the 1950s wiped out a
>> generation of
>> > Sinologists who were deemed too close to Beijing,
>> leaving America
>> > without needed expertise when it went to war in
>> Vietnam. So now the lack
>> > of Arab-world expertise limits America in Iraq.
>> >
>> > The shortage of Arabic speakers has become so
>> acute that one of the U.S.
>> > government's most fluent Arabists recently had to
>> interpret trivial
>> > housekeeping questions at his headquarters in
>> Baghdad. This is a man who
>> > could help create a new Iraq; what a waste that he
>> must spend time
>> > minding the domestic staff.
>> >
>> > The lack of Arabists already was severe during the
>> Afghanistan war.
>> > Indeed, I am told that an Arabic document found in
>> Kabul before the
>> > murder of Daniel Pearl outlined a plot to kidnap
>> an American journalist
>> > in an unnamed country. But it was ignored in a
>> heap of documents by
>> > an overwhelmed Pentagon bureaucracy.
>> >
>> > Once upon a time it was different. There was a
>> caste at the State
>> > Department and the CIA known as "the Arabists."
>> Often their parents had
>> > been missionaries or teachers in the Arab world,
>> so they grew up
>> > learning subtleties of language and culture.
>> Sometimes, they became
>> > Arabists by choice rather than birth -- drawn to
>> that part of the world
>> > by its exotic if dangerous political history.
>> >
>> > I think of people such as Robert Ames, a young
>> basketball star who fell
>> > in love with the Arab world in the 1960s after CIA
>> language school.
>> > As I wrote in a 1987 novel based loosely on Ames's
>> experiences, "he felt
>> > the Middle East like a physical sensation on his
>> skin." The real-life
>> > Ames developed secret contact with the PLO's chief
>> of intelligence
>> > during the 1970s that saved hundreds of American
>> lives.
>> >
>> > Or I think of Ray Close, who was CIA station chief
>> in Saudi Arabia for
>> > seven turbulent years and helped limit the damage
>> of the 1973
>> > Arab-Israeli war and subsequent oil embargo. He is
>> descended from four
>> > generations of missionaries, teachers and
>> diplomats who came to
>> > the Middle East starting in 1853, and he has spent
>> 37 years of his life
>> > in the region.
>> >
>> > Or of Daniel Kurtzer, an Orthodox Jew whose fluent
>> Arabic made him a
>> > valuable ambassador to Cairo in the late '90s,
>> when he wasn't
>> > fighting Egyptian prejudice. The point is, these
>> people knew enough
>> > about their part of the world to help protect
>> American security
>> > interests.
>> >
>> > But during the past two decades, the Arabists
>> began to fall into
>> > disrepute. They were accused of being too
>> sympathetic to the culture
>> > they had mastered, and they were attacked for
>> having an implicit bias
>> > against Israel.
>> >
>> > In his 1993 book "The Arabists," Robert D. Kaplan
>> quoted a particularly
>> > vitriolic assessment from former State Department
>> official Francis
>> > Fukuyama, who said the Arabists "have been more
>> systematically wrong
>> > than any other area specialists in the diplomatic
>> corps. This is
>> > because Arabists not only take on the cause of the
>> Arabs, but also the
>> > Arabs' tendency for self-delusion."
>> >
>> > Not surprisingly, when fluency in a foreign
>> language came to be equated
>> > with "self-delusion," the Arabists' ranks began to
>> thin, as ambitious
>> > CIA and State officers looked for other billets.
>> Both agencies tried
>> > hard in the 1990s to expand their Arabic training
>> programs, but the
>> > stigma remains, as does the dearth of officers who
>> can really thrive in
>> > the local culture.
>> >
>> > We are paying the price for demonizing specialists
>> who knew the Arab
>> > world -- whose expertise could be helping the
>> United States in Iraq.
>> > We are also paying for America's decades of
>> neglect, in government and
>> > outside, of foreign languages and area studies.
>> >
>> > It's not a question of pro or anti, but of having
>> the skills to get the
>> > job done. I can't think of anything more dangerous
>> to America's national
>> > security, or Israel's for that matter, than to
>> have
> === message truncated ===
>
>
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