You have to read this story, which contains some of the sharpest reporting yet on specific instances of cultural incompetence in Iraq. Just staggering. And we're firing Arabic linguists in the military because they're gay?
Ellen Knickmeyer, Jonathan Finer, and Omar Fekeiki of the Washington Post report today on a high-level meeting between US military advisors and Sunni elders in Anbar about various problems faced by the Sunnis in this ravaged town. The reporting is smart as hell: either one of the writers is a fluent Arabic speaker in multiple dialects or the writers received linguistic assistance from a professor of Arabic at Anbar University who was reportedly in the crowd. The story reports several head-scratching disconnects between what American and Iraqi military leaders actually said and the way their words were utterly fucked up by the official translators who attended the meeting. Two examples:
[A]s always for Americans in Iraq, the inability to speak the language didn't help. Marine interpreters, Arabic speakers hired from outside Iraq, repeatedly bobbled the point. "Your best step would be to convince your sons to join the army and police, so these people not from your city can leave your city," Lt. Gen. Hikmet Hussein, commander of the Iraqi 7th Division here, told the tribal leaders.
"You need to move forward in this city,'' translated the Marines' interpreter, who appeared to be from North Africa. "You need to get involved."
And then, a few paragraphs later:
"We're here to work through the problems,'' Williams urged. "These are complex problems. There are not easy solutions, but there are solutions." His words were translated differently, however. "I don't have any time to waste," is how they were conveyed by another army interpreter, an older Lebanese man, seemingly impatient after five hours of talks, and improvising in an apparent effort to bring them to a close. "Even if you all do have time to waste, today's not the day."
[me again] It's almost as if the translators are deliberately fucking with the Americans, harshing up their message/attitude and trying to piss off the local Sunnis. Multiply these mistranslations by the thousand such exchanges that are taking place in Iraq between American military and Iraqi locals and you have--what do you have? Utterly unsurprising, of course, but truly truly fucked.