Arabic--It's Like a Whole Other Language

Actually, more like a whole other SET of languages, if I remember right--in other words, Iraqi Arabic is very different from Moroccan Arabic which is different from what is called (I think) modern standard Arabic...

And it's also not an easy language to learn. Which means, in a war like the one in Iraq, you need translators. Duh. But, thanks to the miracle of a sole source Pentagon contract, yet another critical element for success in war is in terribly short supply (hat tip to Today in Iraq for the link):

The widely reported shortages of vehicles, armor and other equipment have demonstrated the level to which the Bush administration has not provided our soldiers or their Iraqi allies with the basic tools needed to do the job. But a less remarked-upon problem, the extreme shortage of translators to help our soldiers communicate with Iraqis, is particularly puzzling.

Without an interpreter, our people are essentially blind to what is happening around them. They cannot tell if the loud argument in the market is over the price of tomatoes or a threat of murder. And because in general we hire local Iraqis to surmount the language hurdle, Americans don't even know if they can trust their own interpreters. Equally important, Iraqis who want to share important information with an American patrol cannot unless there is an interpreter - a message as simple as "look behind the grade school" is impossible to convey in hand signals and pigeon English. How can average Iraqis help us secure the country if they can't speak to us?

Yet American forces in Iraq average only one or two interpreters per company (about 150 soldiers or Marines). When I was there on active duty last year, I worked in the department providing all American logistical and maintenance support for the nascent Iraqi armed forces. Our office had two Americans and 22 Iraqis - and not a single translator. At the various military bases we oversaw, conversation between American advisers and their Iraqi counterparts was catch-as-catch-can. And we were banned from hiring Iraqis on our own because we were told that one American contractor had a "sole source contract" with the Pentagon.

Why couldn't the contractor provide sufficient translators? While I never received an official explanation, I did get a pretty good hint: the translators we worked with told me they were getting about $400 a month for their services. This is clearly insufficient to encourage many Iraqis to risk their lives to help us. The American businesses in the region, like the oil contractors and even press organizations, paid much more.

Knowing the dauphin's own language "skills," I'm not all that surprised HE didn't think too much about this--but a $400 billion dollar operation like the Pentagon SHOULD.

I remember going to Morocco a number of years ago (um, ten, to be exact), and being as baffled by the language as you'd expect (though I did manage to communicate a bit--just a bit--in French, which is a second language to most Moroccans). Some of the Americans I was with, though, took the opposite tack, and had several long laughs about being able to say almost anything to anybody--in English--and get away with it.

In Iraq, the opposite situation--as Hammes notes--can be lethal.