Jon Soltz of VoteVets and John Aravosis of AMERICAblog appeared on Paula Zahn’s show on CNN this evening. Waiting to watch it, I figured the topic would just be another segment on how best to end the war. Boy was I wrong.
Instead, the segment centered around the recent news that 40 members of the House are demanding a hearing over why Republican traitors have allowed the Defense Department to fire 58 Arabic translators for being gay, in a time when the military they broke is already suffering from a severe shortage of such qualified linguists.
Personally, I don’t need a hearing. I know why this is happening. It’s because the fundamentalists in the Bush administration are more afraid of gays than they are of al Qaeda—an ironic fact, because hating gays is actually one of the things the Bush administration has in common with al Qaeda. And this irrational fear has caused our Republican leaders to betray their own country—by making it less secure and by directly hindering the war effort. Like typical chickenhawks, they talk tough about doing whatever it takes to defeat al Qaeda and to "win" the war in Iraq, but when it comes down to it, they’re just not serious. But don’t take it from me—read it in the Iraq Study Group Report on page 60:
Our embassy of 1,000 has 33 Arabic speakers, just six of whom are at the level of fluency. In a conflict that demands effective and efficient communication with Iraqis, we are often at a disadvantage. There are still too few Arab language-proficient military and civilian officers in Iraq, to the detriment of the U.S. mission.
From personal experience in Iraq, I can tell you that there can never be enough Arabic translators. Our troops are starving for them. Because every soldier who goes outside the wire deals with Iraqis, theoretically, every soldier could use his or her own translator. We are literally short by thousands of linguists. We don’t have Arabic linguists to waste. Combat veterans know this. Apparently the Bush administration does not. Because for every Arabic linguist they fire, pages and pages of Arabic terrorism-related text go untranslated—just as the pre-9/11 warnings did. And I have no doubt that this pleases Osama bin Laden; that he goes to bed every night knowing that the Bush administration is assisting his organization. Simply put, by firing qualified Arabic linguists in the face of such a shortage, the Bush administration is aiding and abetting the enemy. They are endangering the lives of our troops in Iraq.
On the Paula Zahn NOW show, Soltz and Aravosis argued these points with the Republican apologist whose name I can’t even remember. I wish the transcript were available, because it was pathetic. Soltz and Aravosis shredded this unprepared buffoon. Essentially, it ended with Soltz, the combat veteran, telling the self-righteous, homophobe Republican that the gay Arabic linguists who served in Iraq had done more for their country than the Republican ever would in his entire life. Then he suggested that the Republican go enlist. I can only assume he was implying that the Republican should enlist as an Arabic linguist—in order to replace one of the fired translators.