When I read the Washington Post story on the FBI’s struggle to find Arabic proficient agents this morning, it occurred to me again that what the country needs with this long war ahead is an academy dedicated to producing law enforcement/homeland security professionals who arrive at their first job with a skills package that includes the languages and technology training that the modern FBI/CIA/NSA/Homeland Security Agency need in alrge numbers. Recruiting from college campuses will always be necessary, just as it is for the military services who then send the able would-be officers off to OCS of one sort or another.
But if you want and need a particular type of young professional, the quickest and most secure way to get them is to buy them as the military does via the service academies. The midshipmen and cadets get a free education. The country gets their service for at least five years, and often for their entire careers.
The president should ask Congress to work with him to establish such an academy and to staff it and enroll a class asap. (No tenure for the faculty, please!) There are a legion of superb uniformed faculty at the academies who can get such a school opened, and scores of retired or nearing retirement professionals from the agencies that would be looking to the new academy for recruits who can assist in designing the specialized curriculum.
And Arabic, Chinese, Farsi or some other critical language skill would not be an elective, but a required course depending on the needs of the country’s law enforcement/counterterrorism agencies.
An interesting idea…
Dan
I’ve been wondering for years why they don’t have a program like this in place.
Pb
Yeah, but reform the FBI first. It won’t matter how good they are if they get forced out for being honest, like Sibel Edmonds was.
John D.
Why not just use the one in existence — Defense Language Institute, Monterey, CA?
It is a joint service posting, with personnel from all branches of the service, as well as FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.
The problem is not a lack of opportunity, the problem is a lack of willing volunteers. Arabic is a 63 week course there — and that is ALL you do for those 63 weeks. Arabic is *hard* to learn. You will need every scrap of that time, even with total immersion learning.
There is no really good way to speed that up.
Kirk Spencer
Actually…
Four years ago I started pushing the idea that we needed a better language program starting at high school level. Every high school does Spanish and at least one of Latin, German and French. We (the US Government) used to fund programs for high school Russian, though getting teachers was a stretch for most schools.
We make taking a couple of years of a foreign language mandatory in almost all our high schools. Why not make that more useful?
John Cole
Given the immigration hysteria in current right-wing political circles, they would argue that the foreign language that should be taught in High Schools is “English.”
Mike
Huh? Hugh Hewitt is such a POS. Now he is saying that “law enforcement professionals” should be part of the War On Terra. Seems to me that concept was ridiculed by the Bush-lickers repeatedly over the last several years.
Bombadil
Or maybe they can just keep the ones they already have, rather than firing them because they’re gay.
DoubtingThomas
It’s not so surprising that you could find agreement with Hewitt, after all a stopped clock is still right twice a day!
Ned Raggett
Yeah, I was about to say. Great institute; friend of mine did his training in Korean there when he was potentially going to be stationed on the peninsula. Also, speaking as an area booster (my dad is a Carmel kid), it’s a really engaging part of the Central Coast!
Pixie
I totally agree with Kirk, foreign languages should be taught as early as possible since studies show (pardon me, I dont have the link for that — SOME people say that kids pick up langauges faster than adults. I remember back to my grade school days, I could not WAIT for high school so I could finally take a foreign language! What a gift it would be to have programs that would teach our young children Chinese, Farsi, Arabic, Spanish, etc. I agree with John though, the wingnuts would most likely have a fit. I remember working at a software store as a high school student and this lady was looking at this Spanish language software in complete disdain and she said “No child of MINE will be learning to talk that stuff!!!!” omfg….we need to get rid of this attitude ASAP.
Steve
I’m just surprised that more people, completely of their own volition, haven’t gone out and become fluent in Arabic, since it would seem to be a meal ticket for anyone who’s having trouble finding work. I mean, if I was working at Starbucks with my art history degree, and I wanted to do something better with my life, it’s the first thing I would think of. There’s got to be such a huge demand and there’s barely any supply.
Urinated State of America
“The president should ask Congress to work with him to establish such an academy and to staff it and enroll a class asap. (No tenure for the faculty, please!) There are a legion of superb uniformed faculty at the academies who can get such a school opened,”
Guess nobody told Hewitt that the faculty at the academies (except the ones on temporary assignment on a rotation) have tenure.
John D.
I served in the Army as a 97E during Gulf War I, and was stationed there in 1990/91 (learning Arabic).
If I had a spare million or two in cash lying around, I’d move there in a heartbeat. Never gets hot, never gets cold, fogs hard twice a day, Bargetto Winery is down on Cannery Row — the list of things I love about that area is endless.
Plus, I met my wife there and had a son at Ft. Ord. OK, that last bit was the “not-so-fun” memory of that time (Army births suck hind tit).
Barry
Pb Says:
“Yeah, but reform the FBI first. It won’t matter how good they are if they get forced out for being honest, like Sibel Edmonds was.”
Yes – even if somebody was totally motivated by pure patriotism, it’d make more sense to work for a contractor company. That way, if things were screwed up to the max, you could always change employers.
I remember seeing an article a few months ago, saying that not all FBI agents have access to *e-mail*, let alone 21st century resources. That’s got to be a frustrating place to work.
SeesThroughIt
Yeah, Monterey is great. I’ve day-tripped down there a couple of times (once for the purpose of plundering the area’s thrift/secondhand/antique stores for records), and I always enjoy it. Don’t go thinking that you can just walk right up to the aquarium and buy a ticket, though! I learned that one the hard way.
Tsulagi
We do have an excellent training facility in the Defense Language Institute. One thing we could stop doing is stupid shit like this. Discharging linguists because they are gay.
I watched one funny interview on TDS with an idiot who was claiming it was necessary for national security. Because gay linguists wouldn’t be focused on their work taking time to hit on straight guys and messing up their work too. Also straight guys would be intimated when showering.
The TDS interviewer said something like “Yes, far better for thousands to die a horrible death at the hands of terrorists than face an uncomfortable moment in the showers.” The idiot agreed with him.
SeesThroughIt
Also, said faculty are all America-hating radical leftist indoctrinators. David Horowitz said so, and right-wing douchebags agree, so it must be true.
RSA
Can’t make an omelette without a little sprig of right-wing ideology. Hewitt also may not realize that tenure has real value to academic types, and that if there’s any need for externally acquired faculty, that will translate into extra dollars the academy would have to pony up (prompting complaints that professors make too much money from Hewitt-types, of course).
Jill
A fine idea that should have been started 6 years ago atleast. It’s a crime that Arab speaking cia/fbi, etc. haven’t been sought out or trained in the years since 9/11. Just another failure of the leadership of GWB.
shecky
Foreign languages are for pussies. The only reason you’d need them is to negotiate, and no red blooded American will ever negotiate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h3GPc_yMCE
sidereal
Hm. What’s that remind me of? Oh yeah.
Priorities, people. Priorities. It’s more important to keep our services free of The Gay than it is to understand terrorists.
The Other Steve
When my father was stationed over in Taiwan back in 1960 he went through the Defense Language program, only back then it was taught at Yale University. It was only like a six week course at that time. It was living, eating, sleeping and shitting in Mandarin. But that still only got them the basic rudimentary knowledge.
HyperIon
not that easy. here in seattle (an extremely diverse area language-wise) there are few opportunities to pursue arabic language training. and when i recently checked out the resources at the new flashy downtown library, they were pathetic…very old.
after 9/11 i was hoping that UW would offer arabic in their extension program. i was able to study italian for 4 quarters that way; they were offering japanese at one point. but the last time i checked, UW extension offerings in foreign languages have been cutback severely. i’m glad i did the italian when i did.
self-study would be hard IMO. first, the differences in the “alphabet”.
t. jasper parnell
Hewitt is really, albeit nearly silently, coming out against Bush and the whole GWOT strategy plus the right-wing attack on education. First it is clear from Hewitt that what was needed after 9/11 was a pause a moments reflection on how best to defeat our enemies. Clearly, he now realizes, trained cadres of hardworking intelligence/police agents not the mindless stomping of an unrelated regime, i.e, as pointed out, stealing Kerry’s lines. Secondly, he is attacking the current administration for its continued assualt on higher education, rising loan rates and declining pots of money. Then, as several posters have pointed out, he lambasts the military and others for attacking teh Gay as anti-patriotic. QED Hewitt a shrill liberal deep in the grips of BDS.
Tony Dismukes
Actually, if you want kids to really learn a foreign language, you should start sooner than high school. Research has shown overwhelmingly that language skills which are easy for young kids to learn become increasingly difficult as they mature. It’s just inherent in the normal biological development of the brain.
Steve
My cousin was a Japanese major at U-Dub once upon a time. I guess it never occurred to me that a major university like that wouldn’t offer Arabic, but yeah, I guess common sense tells you that you can’t just keep a staff of Arabic-language professors on hand hoping someone will show up to take the class.
I actually knew a guy in college way back when, a bit of a fundie type actually, who was studying Arabic. I wonder if he’s putting it to good use at all these days.
craigie
Great idea. And I’m completely certain that this crew will set up a top notch program, that won’t be a stealth recruiting ground for christianists or black helicopter crackpots. Nope, this program will be run as effectively and efficiently as every other thing they’ve touched.
Now where is that list of successes… I had it here someplace…
DougJ
I’m sure they’ll get a lot of first-class professors there without offering tenure.
Do you think Michael Brown could learn to teach people how to speak Arabic? Those horses were arabian, right?
skip
It’ll never happen. The Israeli lobby knows that if you have too many people learning Arabic it would hamper the Middle East Media Research Institute’s (MEMRI) sucessful current campaign to artfully “translate” speeches culled from moslem sources. MEMRI would lose its Mossad funding and ex-Mossad leadership.
VidaLoca
If I were a first-class (or even second-class) professor of Arabic and I were looking at how John’s evil doppelganger Juan’s career has been going recently — I think I might look at the career choices in some other country that actually, you know, spoke Arabic.
If I could even get a visa to come over here that is.
Of all the pretentious nonsense. Hewitt hasn’t wrapped his head around the idea that living in the US is not necessarily a career draw for all people in all places. Come to the United States where you’re treated with suspicion (if not outright contempt) because you’re likely to be an Arab and/or a Muslim — and work for the US government training people to be more effective at torturing Arabs and Muslims!
And if you think that that last sentence is extreme… consider that while it may not be the fact, it will be the perception, so it might as well be the fact.
Tax Analyst
An excellent idea, of course, Mr. Cole. And as several commenters have mentioned, an idea that would surely be under-funded and ham-handedly managed by the current Adminstration if they were to propose it and it were adopted. Yeah, DougJ spoofs and nails the truth…Michael “Heck-0f-A-Job, Brownie” Brown, the feeble FEMA Fuck-Up would be just the type of feckless, clueless, useless lackey the Bushies would put in charge of this type of program. Of course they would have to keep the whole thing kinda “Hush-Hush” because encouraging folks to learn to speak those “Rag-Head” Languages would have to be just about the most sacrilegious, Anti-American rubbish on Our God’s Green Earth, next to maybe lettin’ gays do anything important in the military or ‘anywhaar’ else, for that matter. And just imagine if someone with a Middle-Eastern “look” – dark-complexion…maybe Semitic-looking…maybe even having one o’them funny names, to boot, came sashayin’ into the local McDonald’s readin’ a book written with that “Ay-rab” gibberish instead o’ real words, like Americans talk. The Local Law would probably have ’em hog-tied and packaged for the “Gitmo Express” in a spittin’ minute. Yassuh…OK, so I’m being grossly unfair to the many good and reasonable and intelligent folks who populate the American South. I’m truly sorry to tar said folks with such a dirty stereotypical brush, but it fits my mood at present moment. Still, sans the smarm (at least some of it) & cynicism (same deal, some of it), I would have to say it’s a great idea…that couldn’t be feasibly be fleshed out into a workable program until, oh, sometime AFTER January 1st, 2009 at the very earliest – and Jesus, that’s WITHOUT the smarm/cynicism – Woe the F*ck is us!
badtux
We already have such a program. It’s called the “National Security Education Program”, it was signed into law by George Herbert Walker Bush (the “good Bush”, the one I voted for twice), and is directed out of the Department of Defense. Foreign language instruction in a foreign country (in order to achieve fluency in the language of that country) is a requirement of the program.
The fact that it is not producing sufficient Arabic language speakers to meet the needs of the FBI and other agencies is a problem is mismanagement of the program (what? The Bush II administration mismanage something?!), rather than caused by us having no program to create foreign language speakers.
-BT
Bruce in Alta California
Oh my goodness. Are we suggesting the FBI emulate the Canadian Mounties?
Without doing any fact checking, I recall reading someplace that in addition to speaking either English or French, all RCMP applicants must be fluent in at least one of the minority languages in Canada, which could include any of several indigenous populations
HyperIon
i would love to learn a language from the horse’s mouth.
Krista
I think that’s changed a bit. They used to be a lot more stringent, and you HAD to be bilingual to even have your application considered. Now, I think they’ve loosened things somewhat. But, like any other job, you are definitely looked upon more favourably if you speak any other languages, like Mandarin, Japanese, Arabic, or Cree.
Zifnab
Why not let the private sector handle it? We’ll just outsource all our language needs to foreign countries. It’ll work great, I promise. Bush has lots of Saudi friends, right? They’ll just do all the translating for us.
p.lukasiak
It’s not so surprising that you could find agreement with Hewitt, after all a stopped clock is still right twice a day!
yeah, but how often do two stopped clocks show the same time?
Bombadil
To be fair, only one of the clocks is stopped. The other one is just a little slow.
Michael Demmons
Hey! As long as they keep firing the gay linguists, I’m all for Hewitt’s suggestions!
binky
NSEP pays for more than just language training too, and has a requirement that post-scholarship, the recipients work for a specified period on the intel side (broadly construed) of the US government.
In the meantime, there are some of the other kind of Academy (including Mercyhurst in Erie, and that place in Morgantown) which are offering programs with practical training in intel as well as foreign policy analysis, and at least getting language on the table. The problem with “obscure” foreign languages is that it’s seen as very hard (read: expensive) to create and sustain a program. Of course, there’s always Middlebury in VT for intensive Arabic training.