Part of the problem seems to be due to the translator. Not the first time. Most of the translators are Muslims, and Muslims tend to put Allah first.
This is worrying, because the same forces of political correctness that sometimes have promoted women officers beyond their competence are also probably bending over backwards to promote Muslims, just to show we aren’t “profiling” them.
There was an article posted in FR a month or two ago saying that the military was making a very special point of admitting as many Muslims as possible to West Point, as a matter of political correctness. That sort of thing could backfire big time. I suspect we will continue to use Muslim translators rather than do the obvious thing, which is to train Americans in Arabic.
And that raises still another problem—that just about every academic middle eastern program in the country is run by Palestinian lovers and other hate-America types. So, how do we train people in Arabic without turning them all into good little arabists like the folks in the State Department? Especially since the Saudis have a long record of funding these departments in elite US universities?
That could be one of the reasons that they no longer require a language of 97E (Human Intelligence Collector).
First of all, I think Congress needs to investigate the way money is funneled to supposed 501, charitable organizations and educational institutions by foreign governments and consider legislation that prohibits funding, or at least eliminates the tax exempt status, of organizations that support the overthrow of our democratic institutions. Second, the government needs to consider strategic priorities in our educational system and channel money where it is needed to defend us as it did in the early days of the space program. That is, unless we can find individuals or institutions that will fund chairs of Middle Eastern and Arabic studies counter to what the Saudis are doing.
What we should do is use Israelis, who speak and understand it better and at a more idiomatic level than any American could, but we are forbidden to use Israeli translators of Arabic. Might offend the Muslims, you know.