A Stitch in Haste

President Bush's latest boondoggle is a $114 million program to make Arabic-speaking people like us:

The plans, which represent an expansion of some programs and the start of a few others, aim to involve children in foreign-language courses as early as kindergarten while increasing opportunities for college and graduate school instruction. They also would draw more linguists into government service and establish a national corps of language reservists available to the Pentagon, State Department, intelligence community and other agencies in times of heightened need.

I wonder whether those "language reservists available to the Pentagon" will be subject to Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

More:

Bush portrayed the enhancement of foreign-language skills as a way of enlarging U.S. capacity to spread democracy. "You can't convince people unless you can talk to them," he said.

He described learning somebody else's language as a "kind gesture" showing care for another culture. It would be a way to combat the notion that the United States is bullying in imposing its concept of freedom, he said.

"When Americans learn to speak a language, learn to speak Arabic, those in the Arabic region will say, 'Gosh, America's interested in us. They care enough to learn how we speak,' " Bush said.

Actually, there's a much better form of "kind gesture" that members of one culture can show to members of another culture: The kind gesture of not flying commercial jets into our skyscrapers. Not to mention the kind gesture of not blowing yourself up in a coffeeshop full of civilians.

Shoring up language instruction for national security is all well and good, but such "priorities" are notoriously fleeting. For example, when I was a freshman, German was the "hot" language, only to be replaced by Russian by the time I was a senior. In grad school it was Japanese, then later Chinese. Now it's Arabic and Farsi. Tomorrow it will be something else -- probably a renewed interest in Spanish (to "ensure domestic tranquility"). In any case, the government tends to "learn the last language" much as it tends to "fight the last war."

But the idea that terrorists won't blow us up if we ask them, in Arabic, not to do so, or that Saudi Arabia will give us a "language discount" on the price of oil, is among the stupidest and most insulting warm-fuzzy-feeling programs to come out of this tax-and-spend White House yet.

If the Administration wants to, yet again, defend the indefensible in the name of the War on Terror, then fine and good luck with that. But dump the "Gosh, America's interested in us..." idiocy.

To corrupt a Teddy Roosevelt quote: "Speak English and carry a big stick."

More thoughts at Rolling Doughnut.