Dan Ephron at Newsweek penned
an interesting piece for the June 26, 2006 issue pointing out that DHS, CIA and other agencies are having a hell of a time recruiting Arabic-speaking translators to help in the effort to protect our country from jihadist terrorism. Why? Because the government that Rove and Cheney have seized and pull the strings on denies security clearances to people who have actually been to the countries whose language they speak, apparently for no other reason than that they have been there. If they happen to have family there, the government says they are subject to "foreign influence."
Says Ephron/Newsweek:
"Lawyers and lawmakers who deal in the matter say that long after 9/11, the security-clearance system is still stacked against some of the best linguists--those who learn their language natively. 'The system inhibits individuals who, on their own initiative, traveled to the region, learned the language and want to contribute to the U.S. security effort,' says Rebecca Givner-Forbes, an analyst at the Terrorism Research Center, a for-profit, nonpartisan think tank in Arlington, Va."
And later in the same article:
"While most U.S. universities teach modern standard Arabic, the colloquial Arabic actually spoken across the Middle East is a different vernacular--and it varies from country to country. The result: schoolbook linguists are ushered in while the really proficient speakers are kept out."
Howard Dean said it exactly right in his much discussed (E.g., here, by Al Rogers) June 19 pasting of Bush & Co. on CNN's Situation Room when he said,
"You can't trust the president to defend America, not because they don't want to defend America, because they're not smart enough to defend America."
It seems as though it should and would be a simple matter for that idiot Bush (he does any damned thing he pleases anyway) to change things so actually having lived in a country whose language we need to understand doesn't bar loyal and willing Americans from lending their expertise. Hell, the government has all these peoples' emails and phone and financial records anyway. Their loyalty could be confirmed in two shakes! But no! Dean had it right: they are just too damned dumb!
They were too damned dumb (not to mention arrogant) to appreciate the longstanding political and religious hostilities in Iraq that have so frustrated their shortsighted and unwarranted occupation of that country. And now they remain too damned dumb to even hire people with language skills that could help them understand the meat grinder they so stupidly stuck the national pecker into. Just too damned dumb. Dean said it and I think he meant it. That's good, because he was right.
This would never have happened under Clinton, or probably even under Daddy Bush, and somehow I don't think that John Kerry (who actually served in an actual war in an actual foreign country) would have put up with it for long either.
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p.s. For a wide-ranging look at issues relating to security clearances generally, see the works collected by the Federation of American Scientists on its website here.