Why Oh Why Are We Ruled by These Clowns?

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach him now:

Think Progress: FBI agents still don't know Arabic. Five years after 9/11, "only 33 FBI agents have even a limited proficiency in Arabic, and none of them work in the sections of the bureau that coordinate investigations of international terrorism, according to new FBI statistics."

Comments

[John Emerson]

What they're probably doing is hiring qualified Arab-Americans, but refusing to put them on the terrorism beat because they might be moles.

The State Department has a similiar policy, I think, and the old British foreign service. Don't want anyone "going native" on you.

[evagrius]

Can't those Arabs just speak English like everyone else?

[Michael Carroll]

When my instuctor shocked me by passing me on my oral exam after a semster of Modern Standard Arabic. He assured me that Arabic takes at least ten years to learn and even then you won't understand half the dialects. Sure, maybe more could be done but don't pin the whole problem on the the FBI. Even if they had 100 guys speaking Arabic how many would know Pashtun, Farsi, Urdu or what have you.

[kid bitzer]

I think evagrius' request is a perfectly reasonable one.

Indeed, I would permit them to continue using Arabic for all personal correspondence, as well, providing that they will switch to English for any terrorism-related activities.

Could anything provide better proof of the Bush administration's fundamental lack of concern about terrorism?

He just doesn't care. He didn't care before 9/11, and he hasn't cared since. It's a pretext, an excuse, and a convenience. Nothing more.

[Cranky Observer]

Yeah, but of those 33 I bet none are gay.

Cranky

[guachi]

How is this possible?

There are dozens of military Arabic linguists leaving the service every year. I work at a base with several hundred of them and work closely with about 50.

Why doesn't the FBI get in touch with the military and troll the bases for military members leaving the service?

[dcb]

How many know Farsi?

[Barry]

guachi, the FBI probably won't hire them because they don't have degrees; or wants to hire them at GS-none levels.

If I were leaving the military now, with arab language proficiency, I'd probably go to a private firm. Aside from much more money, another advantage would be the ability to switch firms, in case the firm I worked at turned out to be corrupt (like the FBI, DoD, DoJ, and, presumably, most defense contractors).

[Barry]

Michael Carroll: "Sure, maybe more could be done but don't pin the whole problem on the the FBI. Even if they had 100 guys speaking Arabic how many would know Pashtun, Farsi, Urdu or what have you."

Given the priority that this should have, a lot more could be done. And adding another several items is an odd excuse, considering that item #1 hasn't been even attempted, as far as we can tell.

[Michael Carroll]

Barry, I think your wrong. First even the FBI has limited resources. If they hire someone then they are basically looking at 20-30 year employee. I'd say to get the most bang for the buck they want their anti terrorism guys to be good analysts because the translation can probably be outsourced to a large extent and if it is outsourced then you are less dependent on the language your opponent speaks.

Further, there is absolutely NO reason to think that the next attack comes from guys whos operational language is Arabic versus any of the othe langagues I mentioned ore even French or English (the language used by both waves of the London Bombers).

The amount of resources it would take to get a large number of people proficient in Arabic, then proficient in a broad range of dialects, then proficient in the slang of 20 year old men in that dialect is probably better spend in training solid analysts and giving them good support including access to translators when appropriate. I'm sorry but Brad is using a bad metric to measure FBI incompetence here.

[dubblblind]

The FBI really only needs to know English in order to support the Bush administration position, whatever that may be.

[Aaron]

Michael,
WTF? Limited resource? didnt I hear something about a war on terror? G-d damnit if its a war, then lets do what it takes to win it.

and, I dont know how long you think this little shindig is gonna last, but 20-30 years sounds like a minimum.

But this administration has consistently decided to play things cheap. after all, theres no money for your crony buddies in hiring linguists. not like a new weapon system.

Perhaps you may have heard, that there was a communication saying that the operation would occur the next day. it was translated on 9/12/01.

I agree. Impeach Bush. Impeach his whole administration. Impeach them now before they screw something else up. again.

[a]

Them terrorists will just have to learn English.

[save_the_rustbelt]

This belies a more important issue.

The FBI is really a poor place to do counterterrorism.

The management structure, office structure, training, recruiting, the basic mission, none of those are really compatible with a counterintel, counterterror operation (I believe the NYT did something on this in the past few days).

The CIA and military intel are not allowed to do this domestically (except the military I believe does some counterintel in the proximity of key bases and contractors) so who is left?

No one.

We aeither need a new agency or a radical restructure of the FBI so the counterterrorism group can be kept largely seperate from the routine law enforcement groups.

Bush 41 almost wrecked the Bureau by dragging it into the war on drugs, we had agents and Assistant US Attorneys doing nickel-dime drug cases in the early 90s, duh.

The Bureau can't be all things to all people. Something has to change.

[christofay]

Rather than linguists the govt is focusing on domestic spying capabilities. Domestic journalists will speak English, tip o da hat, evagrius, so they will be easier to track.

Anyways, what the president really needs now, more than anything else, is a devastating domestic attack.

[Dean Baker]

One reason that the FBI may have trouble getting Arabic speakers is that the prospect of indefinite imprisonment and torture does not provide good incentives for Arabic speakers to work for the FBI.

Remember, many of the potential applicants are non-citizens. Under the law (just passed by Congress) any of these people can be detained indefinitely for unspecificed reasons and subjected to all forms of creative interrogation.

Suppose that one of the bosses thinks that a translator has become sympathetic to a detainee (something that happens occasionally among human beings). That's the end of the story for this guy/woman in George W. Bush's America. I don't know anyone who would take a job with this sort of fringe benefit package.

I hope that all the members of Congress who supported this bill feel safer now.

[d'Nile]

Aside from the usual republican incompetence and inability to govern, there are a number of other reasons to explain why Arabic coverage is so weak.

The fear of analyists turning into double agents is a big one. Shrub has stated in not quite as many words that he doesn't consider muslims to be true Americans. By now, this attitude has certainly trickled well down into the FBI. Untrue americans aren't going to be trusted with counterterrorism work. Once muslims are defacto disqualified, that leaves very slim pickings when looking for arab speakers.

The other component is that it's absolutely not in the administration's interests to prevent terrorist attacks. Getting the rubes to ralley around the flag has obvious political advantages.

There is also the matter that, since August 2005, the official plan in the event of a major terrorist attack has been to nuke Iran, regardless of if the attack was of Iranian origin. With the administration desparately looking for a pretext to vaporize a few million brown people, there's absolutely no reason to put any real effort into preventing such a pretext from landing on their doorstep.

The need for a pretext is almost certainly why they did absolutely nothing in response to the warnings prior to 9/11.

[ned]

Soon after 9/11 I heard from one of the former executive secretaries from my work. She was an Afghani who had become an American citizen in 1988. She was very proud. In any case, she had continued to educate herself and had moved up into a managerial position (about $80K per year), but her job was being phased out. Since I had been in HR, she asked if I could help with her resume. In reading it, I was struck by how her language skills (Arabic and Farsi in addition to English and a couple of Afghan languages). I talked to someone I knew at the FBI, who referred me to their recruiter. I contacted him on her behalf. Neither I nor she ever heard from him....

[Jon Fernquest]

World War II provides a precedent for quick language education.

Linguists were recruited to put together quick spoken language courses (audio-lingual) for almost every commonly spoken language on earth. Half a century later these are still some of the most useful books for learning a language. For example:

"Spoken Burmese, by W S Cornyn. 1945, Henry Holt, New York; reprinted 1979, Spoken Language Services, Ithaca NY. Two vols, tapes. US War Dept Education Manual 541-542, designed for US Army personnel in wartime; forerunner of Beginning Burmese; uses pre-decimal coinage, discourteous style, but has good exercises. No script."
(Source: http://www.soas.ac.uk/departments/departmentinfo.cfm?navid=696)

Better than expanding the Defense Language Institute on the Presidio in Monterey:
http://www.dliflc.edu/Alumni/about_aro/history_of_dliflc.htm

Expand FLAS scholarships, and not myopically on the currently most important language. It takes years, decades to build up an ***infrastructure of linguistically capable*** government workers, scholars, business people, so a long-term approach has to be taken and a broad spectrum of useful languages has to be targeted.

[wkwillis]

Think about it. If you are an FBI agent and speak Arabic, where are they going to send you? And if you are an FBI agent and speak French...
What was the life expectancy of French vs Russian speakers in the Wehrmacht in 1940?

[James Wimberley]

What's the use of Arabic anyway? the Bush administration only counts in Roman numerals.