I've heard the problem runs the other way, too: the U.S. doesn't want people inclined to see Arabs sympathetically, and the funny thing about living in another country long enough to become proficient with the language and the culture is that you tend to think of them as people.
I thought it was that Arabic speakers are all gay.
Hmm... the part about current Arabic speakers not wanting to work for the military or this particular government sounds eminently plausible, but the part about having to learn the language requiring enough contact with the culture to turn anyone who learns it against the current mideast policy smacks of wishful thinking.
I thought it was that Arabic speakers are all gay.
More evidence that there are no homosexuals in Iran.
3: if I had a job in the US Army and spoke Arabic and they were looking round for people to spend all their born days in the front line in Iraq, you would not believe how very very fucking gay I would become, within minutes.
Russians, Chinese, and Americans are not politically especially different, IMO. That said, the US did well in WWII and the cold war from the decisions of powerful or knowledgeable defectors that the US was the lesser evil. Don't look similar decisions from AQ Khan (Pakistani, not Arab) or his people, to our loss.
The Defense Department has a foreign language institute in Monterey. It is said to be an outstanding place to learn a language. This blog posts a WSJ article about a soldier who learned Arabic, then was sent to Iraq. It speaks to the success of the program and it's consequences.
All the folks that I know studying Farsi right now work in film.
Tell me how the US treated Kiarostami, again?
2, 4: There was a push during the Cold War for people to study Russian, and I'd say most of the people in the U.S. who took up this call did so because they wanted to take part in the big geopolitical struggle, whether out of personal anti-communist feeling or because they simply saw good career opportunities because of government policies. (I started studying Russian in part because it was exotic -- the language of our arch-enemy! -- although the Soviet Union dissolved during my second year of H.S. Russian and I kept at it for other reasons.)
Non-Arab Americans who have become expert in Arabic at this point probably did so for reasons similar to why people might become expert in German or Swahili: interest in the culture and literature, etc. Now that Arabs are suddenly the Big Enemy, we need a new generation of ideological Arabic speakers who won't let their close contact with Arab culture get in the way of enhanced interrrogation techniques.
4: It seems at least plausible that an interest in Arabic isn't terrible compatible with membership in organizations that use anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism as motivation tools. As it happens, two such organizations -- the Republican Party and the US military -- thoroughly dominate current mideast policy.
thought it was that Arabic speakers are all gay.
That's Farsi speakers.
if only they were gay for each other! there would be peace and love.
6: I suppressed my knowledge of electronics and Morse during my \draft classification testing 'cause I didn't want to hump a radio or string cable through the jungle. I've never been able to figure out if that was a smart or dumb move.
The link in 8 is excellent. It's weird to find myself in a position of being upset with the WSJ for disclosing information that endangers people's safety, though. (What on earth were they thinking, publishing the details of how the soldier lies and says his mother is Lebanese? Do they think Iraqis don't read American media? Do they think the fact that the soldier was finishing a tour of duty means that he's unlikely to go back for another?)
There's a correlation between interrogators who whistleblow on prisoner abuse & interrogators who speak some Arabic, IMO. I assume this is less because of familiarity with Arabic culture in general than with the ability to speak to particular prisoners, though.
15: Well, you're here now, and seem relatively well adjusted, so it can't have been that dumb of a move. A sysadmin buddy of mine enlisted in the Army because it was the only branch that would allow him to pick his MOS (light infantry) rather than make him configure servers. That seemed a bit more questionable to me, but he's also still here and seems happy, so what the heck.
7: Russians, Chinese, and Americans are not politically especially different, IMO.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, but I buy the conventional wisdom that Chinese and American attitudes to politics are polar opposites. I also by the conventional wisdom that the difference stems from the difference between thinkers like Confucius and thinkers like Locke.
That said, some part of the explanation of w/d's counter example in 2 has to come from the fact that Americans perceive Russians as white people and Arabs and brown people.
I agree that different forms of stereotyped demonization are in fact different, and that some can be worse than others. But it can't be the bare fact of demonization that explains troubles recruiting Arabic speakers.
The US government's distrust of Arabic speakers has been going on for decades. Robert Kaplan wrote a whole book in the early 90s about how "Arabists" in the State Department were insufficiently sympathetic to Israel and were responsible for most of the wars in the Middle East. (I simplify, but not much.)
18 & 19: I got classified 1A, my boss wrote the draft board asking for delay so they could find a replacement, and the DF gave me a year's worth of "critical occupation" (driving rats psychotic with various psychedelics). Then the DF kept renewing it. Then I got too old to draft.
'Twas very Alice-in-Wonderland considering all the generalized angst and the machinations friends and acquaintances were employing to stay out. I didn't really care all that much back then, I just (in retrospect) lucked out.
22: This is what I remember as well. The State Department (especially under Baker) was considered to be very pro-Arab. Or at least pro-Saudi. Lots of folks hated them for it.
I think Vanya's comment gets to the heart of the matter. Especially in the age of the Neocons a lack of support for Israel is a career killer.
A weird twist is that a lot of the Arab-speaking experts are Lebanese Christians. They're recognizable by their dialect and are not well-liked, for example because of the Shatila massacre. One of the Lebanese Christian parties called itself Phalangist (= "fascist"!) for awhile, and i did tutor a Lebanese Christian immigrant once who favored extermination as a solution for social problems. (Just one guy, for sure, but definitely the most out Fascist I've ever met).
We're in a weird state now because we're simultaneously too pro-Israel and too pro-Saudi. It strikes me as an ultimately unstable arrangement.
what you mean by this
A general disinterest in the other side. Confidence in one's own capital city and culture, in one's own system. An eagerness to assume stupidity or evil in political opponents. Provincials in smaller countries, or countries under one of these three do not have the freedom to ignore the outside world, I think.
I think that wealth and engineering ability have displaced skin color; would the typical US functionary rather engage Albanians or Japanese? The current interest in Arabic is a consequence of a little bit of engineering in the interest of murder, not a consequence of poetry or theology, or even of hate.
10 is exactly correct, I think,... but I would argue that that new generation of national-security focused Arabic students is already an important component of Arabic learners in US universities. Tons of college kids are learning Arabic now, and not just for "cultural" rasons.
Another interesting phenomenon: for some reason, interest in Arabic-language instruction still completely dwarfs interest in other languages of the Islamic near east, including some with just as much "national security" relevance. At the university where I am a grad student, there are something like 5 introductory Arabic sections, with only one each of Farsi, Urdu, and Turkish. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, the whole of Islamic Central Asia and the Caucasus... their languages are more or less ignored.