From CounterPunch
By Robert Bryce

Most of the time, I believe that the U.S. and other Western countries, can, if they really work at it, bridge the cultural gap and reach some kind of understanding with the Arab and Islamic worlds. At other times, I think that the cultural differences are just too great.

Lately, I have been leaning toward the latter view.

That change in thinking comes on the heels of news that the U.S. military has kicked out 58 Arabic language experts because of their alleged homosexuality. Although the military wants to focus the debate about the firing of the 58 linguists on their sexual preferences, the broader issue is about America’s dire need for more personnel who can speak, read, and write Arabic.

The U.S. military in Iraq–and the entire U.S. government–is so short of people who can speak Arabic that any loss of personnel with Arabic language skills is a tremendous blow. And now, the military has dismissed nearly five dozen of the personnel who are most needed.

The acute shortage of Arabic-speaking personnel is not new. Late last year, the Iraq Study Group, which was headed by James A. Baker III, the former U.S. secretary of state and a true pragmatist when it came to the Middle East, released its 160-page report on the situation in Iraq. Baker’s group offered a number of suggestions about how the U.S. and the Bush administration might be able to salvage its reputation and its future involvement in the Middle East. But a close read of the document reveals a critical point about America’s fundamental ignorance of Middle East politics, history, and culture. On page 92, the document says that the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, which, by the way, is the largest U.S. embassy on the planet, has some 1,000 State Department personnel. (That number does not include all of the service workers and security providers.)

Read more Language Barrier