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It is not just the language. It is the culture. Americans live in their own isolated world. If you understand the culture you don't need to make the war or cou

It is not just the language. It is the culture. Americans live in their own isolated world. If you understand the culture you don't need to make the war or could reduce it to the minimum. E.g. In the first Gulf war the Americans told the population to go against Saddam because they were to enter Iraq. A significant part of the people did. But Americans left betraying those who had supported them. Repression by Sadam was terrible, over a million people died. Americans couldn't care less about them. This action alone meant USA was never going to be trusted again in Iraq because families don't forget the betrayal, and never will until the widow of the man who was tortured and killed for helping Americans is alive. Another example is how the Americans burned poppy fields in Afghanistan while not replacing it with anything that could make the families live. Helping people growing food puts families on your side. I had been in safe places of Afganistan and Iraq. The people there prefer non Americans like British army because they have much more experience helping native communities, and understand their culture much better.

smacktoward 12y ago
I actually agree with this sentiment, but learning the local language is the best first step to learning the local culture. It's much, much harder to really understand how people live without first understanding how they talk to each other.
- bkmartin 12y ago
  And I think that people really underestimate how hard it is to learn these languages well. It can take years of immersion to be fully fluent to where communicating really really effective. I would think that we would have jobs in our military that would be responsible for learning languages from all kinds of places around the world, should we need to be there.
  - smacktoward 12y ago
    The Army, at least, appears to already have a MOS for interpreters/translators: http://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/browse-career-and-job-categories/intelligence-and-combat-support/interpreter-translator.html http://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/browse-career-and-job... But they clearly either don't have enough people in that MOS or have enough but specializing in the wrong languages, if frontline units still need to rely on hired translators.
    - blister 12y ago
      The Defense Language Institute has massive failure rates for students in the Cat 5 languages. Most of these courses are also at least a year long, if not more. They would probably have to increase the overall size of that facility 20-fold to produce enough linguists annually to have qualified linguists embedded in every unit. The other big problem is that the people that (traditionally) do best in a linguistics MOS are usually highly intelligent and work well in an intelligence type of career field. Most of these would not do well in a battle-hardened infantry unit.
      - bkmartin 12y ago
        There has to be enough people in our ranks with enough intelligence to learn these languages. You don't have to be the best linguist, just a capable one that is willing to work hard. Not to mention that every combat troop should probably be getting at least cursory training in the local language as part of their on going training when not out in the field engaged in combat. Our soldiers are not stupid, and if we treat them like the intelligent and invaluable human beings that they are then I think we might see far more success that we can even imagine. Imagine if you could understand the locals even 20% of the time vs our current nearly 0% for most units. How much more effective would we be in not only our intelligence in the field, but being able to convey our support for them and helping to relate to the local population.
        jwhitlark 12y ago
        It's not intelligence, but motivation that line units lack, in my experience. People who volunteer for the front line are more interested in solving problems with firepower than more peaceful interactions. This sort of observation led to a suggestion that the American military should be divided into a Leviathan part and a System Administrator part, an idea I think is worth considering. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon's_New_Map http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon's_New_Map for more.
      - venomsnake 12y ago
        You will be surprised how motivating to learn a language is the knowledge that your life literally depends on it.
  - hobo_mark 12y ago
    They (=the us government) actually do, and the foreign service institute has some of the best language programs around [1] (some old courses are now even in the public domain [2]). Unfortunately those are mostly reserved to diplomats and would be hard (impossible?) to scale to occupation-army levels. [1] http://www.fluentin3months.com/diplomat/ http://www.fluentin3months.com/diplomat/ [2] http://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/ http://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/
  - venomsnake 12y ago
    > It can take years of immersion With both Iraq and Afghanistan people were immersed for (too) long if you ask me. By 2005 ... almost any unit should have been able to have at least a couple of persons that can speak native languages acceptably.
    - megaman22 12y ago
      That might work, if units weren't on 6-12 month rotations. If anything, our "professional" military is probably not professional enough. If we were actually going to attempt to garrison these places and build relations with the natives, you'd need to commit to leaving units in place for years, and allow officers and men to develop the intimate local knowledge and relationships to succeed.
- prawn 12y ago
  Would ground troops be more reluctant to kill when required if they had more understanding of (and potentially empathy for) their adversary?
marincounty 12y ago
I do agree in part. I don't know if it's a American way of doing things--Clint Eastwood style, or we are just Thick? I have felt for a long time we need to change the way we train our military, and even our local police forces. I know it all goes out the window once someone is killed, but there has to be a happy medium? I know these orders come from above, along with just how much you can get away with. What I am trying to say is besides a little common sense thrown into boot camp and military intelligence(yea, it's ironic, and I feel weird putting the words together-); we need to get rid of the bad Apples. We all know that guy who shouldn't be holding a gun, or promoted to ridiculously high ranks, but it just goes on and on? No--I don't want an army/force of Stewart Smalliey's. I am just tired of people in authority who are just too eager to kill someone, or make someone's life miserable--just because they can? And I have witnessed that plus 95% of the people will push that button towards death--in real life and the Millgram experiment. I have found very few people will stand up for the right thing--if standing up affects their future? (Please--don't respond with we produce results. All I see is we alienated another generation of people who are angry--and not just abroad. It's funny, I am hesitant on posting this, but because I know poeple are leaching off my IP they would have to take out at least three homes? Paranoid--a little?)
crdb 12y ago
I disagree with the assertion that "isolated" Americans can't learn the culture. During the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, plenty of Americans with no local experience picked it up fast enough when deployed for results that were tactically very effective.

smacktoward 12y ago

I actually agree with this sentiment, but learning the local language is the best first step to learning the local culture. It's much, much harder to really understand how people live without first understanding how they talk to each other.

bkmartin 12y ago
And I think that people really underestimate how hard it is to learn these languages well. It can take years of immersion to be fully fluent to where communicating really really effective. I would think that we would have jobs in our military that would be responsible for learning languages from all kinds of places around the world, should we need to be there.
- smacktoward 12y ago
  The Army, at least, appears to already have a MOS for interpreters/translators: http://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/browse-career-and-job-categories/intelligence-and-combat-support/interpreter-translator.html http://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/browse-career-and-job... But they clearly either don't have enough people in that MOS or have enough but specializing in the wrong languages, if frontline units still need to rely on hired translators.
  - blister 12y ago
    The Defense Language Institute has massive failure rates for students in the Cat 5 languages. Most of these courses are also at least a year long, if not more. They would probably have to increase the overall size of that facility 20-fold to produce enough linguists annually to have qualified linguists embedded in every unit. The other big problem is that the people that (traditionally) do best in a linguistics MOS are usually highly intelligent and work well in an intelligence type of career field. Most of these would not do well in a battle-hardened infantry unit.
    - bkmartin 12y ago
      There has to be enough people in our ranks with enough intelligence to learn these languages. You don't have to be the best linguist, just a capable one that is willing to work hard. Not to mention that every combat troop should probably be getting at least cursory training in the local language as part of their on going training when not out in the field engaged in combat. Our soldiers are not stupid, and if we treat them like the intelligent and invaluable human beings that they are then I think we might see far more success that we can even imagine. Imagine if you could understand the locals even 20% of the time vs our current nearly 0% for most units. How much more effective would we be in not only our intelligence in the field, but being able to convey our support for them and helping to relate to the local population.
      - jwhitlark 12y ago
        It's not intelligence, but motivation that line units lack, in my experience. People who volunteer for the front line are more interested in solving problems with firepower than more peaceful interactions. This sort of observation led to a suggestion that the American military should be divided into a Leviathan part and a System Administrator part, an idea I think is worth considering. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon's_New_Map http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon's_New_Map for more.
    - venomsnake 12y ago
      You will be surprised how motivating to learn a language is the knowledge that your life literally depends on it.
- hobo_mark 12y ago
  They (=the us government) actually do, and the foreign service institute has some of the best language programs around [1] (some old courses are now even in the public domain [2]). Unfortunately those are mostly reserved to diplomats and would be hard (impossible?) to scale to occupation-army levels. [1] http://www.fluentin3months.com/diplomat/ http://www.fluentin3months.com/diplomat/ [2] http://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/ http://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/
- venomsnake 12y ago
  > It can take years of immersion With both Iraq and Afghanistan people were immersed for (too) long if you ask me. By 2005 ... almost any unit should have been able to have at least a couple of persons that can speak native languages acceptably.
  - megaman22 12y ago
    That might work, if units weren't on 6-12 month rotations. If anything, our "professional" military is probably not professional enough. If we were actually going to attempt to garrison these places and build relations with the natives, you'd need to commit to leaving units in place for years, and allow officers and men to develop the intimate local knowledge and relationships to succeed.
prawn 12y ago
Would ground troops be more reluctant to kill when required if they had more understanding of (and potentially empathy for) their adversary?

marincounty 12y ago

I do agree in part. I don't know if it's a American way of doing things--Clint Eastwood style, or we are just Thick? I have felt for a long time we need to change the way we train our military, and even our local police forces. I know it all goes out the window once someone is killed, but there has to be a happy medium? I know these orders come from above, along with just how much you can get away with. What I am trying to say is besides a little common sense thrown into boot camp and military intelligence(yea, it's ironic, and I feel weird putting the words together-); we need to get rid of the bad Apples. We all know that guy who shouldn't be holding a gun, or promoted to ridiculously high ranks, but it just goes on and on? No--I don't want an army/force of Stewart Smalliey's. I am just tired of people in authority who are just too eager to kill someone, or make someone's life miserable--just because they can? And I have witnessed that plus 95% of the people will push that button towards death--in real life and the Millgram experiment. I have found very few people will stand up for the right thing--if standing up affects their future? (Please--don't respond with we produce results. All I see is we alienated another generation of people who are angry--and not just abroad. It's funny, I am hesitant on posting this, but because I know poeple are leaching off my IP they would have to take out at least three homes? Paranoid--a little?)

crdb 12y ago

I disagree with the assertion that "isolated" Americans can't learn the culture. During the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, plenty of Americans with no local experience picked it up fast enough when deployed for results that were tactically very effective.