[lg policy] US: Speaking the Language

[Harold Schiffman]

Speaking the Language

To move beyond merely rhetorical question-asking, who is the
highest-ranking American official who speaks the languages they use in
Afghanistan? Moving quickly down the list, it seems that neither the
President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, nor the
Secretary of State makes the cut. Nothing in the background of
Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake
or Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East Colin
Kahl (oddly, State and DOD slice up the world differently) suggests
that they do. Nor does Richard Holbrooke or Ambassador Karl Eikenberry
or General McChrystal (or, for that matter, General Petraeus).

The leading contender that’s been suggested to me is Puneet Talwar,
who does Iran-Iraq issues at the NSC and I’m led to believe knows
Persian which (going under the name Dari) is used as a lingua franca
in Afghanistan. But he works at a different desk. Spencer thinks
Vikram Singh, who works for Holbrooke, may be the person I’m looking
for.
At any rate, Americans are famously poorly endowed with foreign
language ability, and the issue becomes especially acute as our
national security policy becomes more-and-more focused on places like
Afghanistan and Somalia rather than France and Germany.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/11/speaking-the-language.php
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