Reply #140: You are missing my point, which is Obama was wrong

[wmbrew0206]

There are enough Arabic speakers in Afghanistan.

I'll give Obama a pass on this one since he was speaking off the cuff. I think he realized he made a mistake and was just trying to cover for it.

I disagree with the idea that we would be training E-1 through E-5 to speak Dari or Pashtu if they weren't learning Arabic. These are very low density languages. The requirement to for this languages will not last more than seven years, where arabic is spoken through out the world and there will be a long term need for it. It doesn't make much sense to start funneling a large portion of your linguists toward a language that we won't have a large demand for later on.

The better way to handle the lack of Dari and Pashtu speakers, is spend more time and money finding native speakers and getting them clearances, combined with taking your E-4 to E-7 who have a natural ability with languages and putting them into Pashtu/Dari conversion courses and make it a MOS.