The New York Times’ Will Bardenwerper has a critical assessment of U.S. military efforts to train more soldiers to speak "strategically important languages" like Arabic and Farsi. The Pentagon doesn’t have a clear plan to increase these numbers, arguing, in part, that changing global security conditions made it hard to know what language to teach. But counterinsurgency expert Jon Nagl, a retired Lt. Col, ruefully notes that "we have a pretty good idea what countries we’re fighting in."

That all said, I don’t think the take away should be all doom and gloom. Courses in Arabic language and culture have exploded across the country. It’s not the fault of military language instructors that two full-scale Middle East war have necessitated a hyper-accelerated learning curve.-MB

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