Barack Obama visited rural Cape Girardeau, Missouri yesterday.
During his speech he talked about the need for more Arabic speakers in Afghanistan.
Obama insisted:
"If they are all in Iraq, then its harder for us to use them in Afghanistan."Truly.
The problem with this thinking is...
Afghans don't speak Arabic.
They speak Dari and Pashto-- Haider Ajina says the official language is Farsi.
Here's the video:
Change?
The Political Radar has more on this latest foreign policy gaffe by Obama.
Here is the transcript from the speech in case the video gets yanked:
Obama advisors need to drop that talking point from their Iraq cut and run speech.
It doesn't help with their argument.
Ed Morrissey notes another gaffe during the same Obama speech.
Remember why Al-Qaeda is called Al-Qaeda ("the base"), that recruits come from all over, that Al-Zawahiri is Egyptian, and Osama himself is a native Arabic speaker, and note that Obama said "of course" not all fighting in Afghanistan, but the same problem with resource distribution was going on with the other languages spoken there, Urdu and so on. It's really reaching to think this was a goof, what he said was exactly right, as usual. - ER
ReplyDeleteMy god you are stupid. The point of having military assets familiar with the local language is so they can interact with the local population - NOT with a OBL and a small band of terrorists hiding in caves. You think we need arabic speakers in Afghanistan so we can talk OBL into surrendering? LOL. This is an OBVIOUS gaffe.
ReplyDeleteER you're a goof! Oh that's right BHO wants to open dialog with OB.
ReplyDeleteOMG, can you imagine if Bush had say this...???
ReplyDeleteBut I wish the primary was not so long, so he could make all these mistakes during the national level..the long primary has Obama a chance to get trained and learn how to campaign
Wait for the media to report this as a George W. Bush gaffe
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure OBL speaks English.
ReplyDeleteOf course, we've got an awful lot of our English speakers deployed to Iraq, meaning that they can't be in Afghanistan at the same time...
A.W. here...
ReplyDeleteUm, wait a minute... Now it is my understanding that most muslims learn arabic in order to read the Koran. Is that true?
btw, not an obamatron here, just wanting to be fair.
In other news, i talked to a guy who claimed that yesterday he saw on cnni that obama once again said he had campaigned in more than 50 states. last time he counted 57 states. this time, 56. So he's getting closer to the actual number...
Anyway, any verification on this?
What language are Al Qeada's intercepted messages in?
ReplyDeleteI'd guess arabic. The tape of Bin Ladin speaking with a visitor released in 2001 was in arabic.
Many Muslims learn Arabic as many Catholics once learned Latin -- they can chant the sounds but they have no idea of what they are saying. I have read that even modern Arabs grasp the Koranic Arabic poorly because of language changes over 1400 years -- think King James bible only more so.
ReplyDeleteRemember that Obama appeals to people who wouldn't know the difference between a Arab and a Pashtun, or a Sikh and a Persian. If it's a slam on GWOT, then it makes sense to them.
ReplyDeleteThe terps aren't there to intercept AQ transmissions, they are there to help communication between english speaking troops and the locals. They therefore need to speak the local language, not arabic.
We need more troops familiar with arabic in the military. And more familiar with chinese. And more familiar with pashtun. But if you think a Democrat in the White House means an expansion of anything in the military, you're dreaming.
Just watched the video, and Obama did correct himself immediately after making that comment.
ReplyDelete56, 57. Both of these are numbers that are cited for the number of members in the Organization of Islamic States or the Organisation [sic] of the Islamic Conference. (The actual number appears to be 57.)
ReplyDeleteSo maybe Obambi is just confused about which presidency he is running for.
imho This wasn't a goof by BHMO. True enough, we need people that speak the local language wherever our troops are - English works well in NA. But like Clinton he won't increase the size of our Army and his offer of increased Vet benefits is disingenuous.
ReplyDeleteimho This wasn't a goof by BHMO. True enough, we need people that speak the local language wherever our troops are - English works well in NA. But like Clinton he won't increase the size of our Army and his offer of increased Vet benefits is disingenuous.
ReplyDelete'my understanding that most muslims learn arabic in order to read the Koran. Is that true?'
ReplyDeleteOnly if they went to Madrassas, and thats virtually none of the Afghan population. Urdu might very occasionally be useful, but its mainly Pashto, as that is the language on both sides of the NWFP border.
The bigger point though is Obama is obviously way outside his comfort zone knowledge-wise when he starts talking about anything but nebulous crap like 'changiness' and 'hopeiness'. Who needs a greenhorn like him in charge of anything? I wouldn't want him as dogcatcher.
GP,
ReplyDeleteGiven the high number of posts you publish in a day, I'm forced to make an important point here, despite it's off topic nature.
I just don't get the erroneous insistence that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Forget personal conviction, or family history. Any tie to Islam, no matter how tenuous or far-fetched, counts. A name. An agnostic father, whose family members were Muslim. A visit to the Middle East. My God, all our troops will come home Muslims !
Come on. Let's use some common sense here.
For the record, if you recall Monday's misleading post, it appears that Edward Luttwak should bursh up on his Islamic law, or consult with someone more familiar with the Islamic legal tradition, such as Ingrid Mattson, before alleging that the Muslims will view Obama as an apostate.
As for the post above, it is true that Arabic plays a role in Islamic learning. However, that does not mean that every pious Muslim speaks the language.
And Edmond Ironside, madrass means school in Arabic. If I were to employ the same logic as your comment at 9:08, then everyone who attends an école is a Catholic.
BHO is one smooth talker who can wax eloquent on the fly without really knowing what he is talking about. While he did correct himself immediately on the tape, he undermines his argument that Arabic speakers need to be deployed in places other than Iraq. The gaff is strategic rather than factual, and in a sense, all the more telling.
ReplyDeleteI'm just as anti-BHO as anyone here, but c'mon. This is nothing. He said "obviously they don't speak Arabic there" right after.
ReplyDeleteThere's plenty of legitimate stuff to attack him on, but this isn't one of them.
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ReplyDelete"57 States"
"Arabic"
Obama is not addressing US..
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The Obama campaign and its weird offshoots have Gateway Pundit on RSS feed. It's amusing how often the very first reply to a post here or on other conservative blogs is from a frothing-at-the-mouth Obamaniac insisting that the post is all lies and no one - no one! - believes any of it.
ReplyDelete"He said "obviously they don't speak Arabic there" right after."
ReplyDeleteThen the point is kinda mute, isn't it?
Why pull Arabic speakers from Iraq, where they are in use with the population to Afghanistan, where mainly, they are no use for the population.
The whole point was, we are diverting resources from Afghanistan to Iraq and by lumping Arabic speakers into this argument, he lost the point.
/passes GP the popcorn.
ReplyDeleteGP,
Have you noticed the desperation that is starting to creep into the Obama campaign?
They are beginning to grasp the situation they are in.
Disagree TheBronze,
ReplyDeleteObama was making an attack on the current policy. If you're going to do that, you should at least have a point. If "obviously, they don't speak Arabic there" is the case (which it is) why make the attack?
Isn't Obama The New Adam? Isn't he The Great Man. Come to tell us all, he shall tell us all? He's going to change us with his wisdom and melanin?
And yes, Obama is campaigning in 57 states. The other 7 are France, China, Iran, Gaza, Syria, Venezuela and Cuba.
Then why the Politics of Cheap, Ignorant, Political Nagging?
How can this be? Sen. Obama (D-Carter's Second Term) is absolutely the smartest guy in the room; right?
ReplyDeleteHe's got the *BIG* concepts down; no sense getting bogged down in little details.
*BIG* concepts: hope and, uh, oh yeah, change. That's it.
Wait, I thought one of the things that made him more "qualified" was his couple weeks in Pakistan when he was a kid?
ReplyDeleteDKK
Maybe Obama expects Afghanastan to become the 58th state.
ReplyDeleteThanks canadian tar heel for again showing us that your grip on reality that was already tenuous at best is slipping still...
ReplyDeleteVery entertaining and I thank you for that...
"There's plenty of legitimate stuff to attack him on, but this isn't one of them"...
Everytime Hussein the Inane opens his pie hole there's a legitimate attack in the offing...
Attacking him on his point is valid, but trying to say he's stupid because he said that they speak Arabic in Afghanistan is silly. That was the point I was trying to make.
ReplyDelete"madrass means school in Arabic."
ReplyDeleteIt's actually madrassa, canadian tar heel.
Clearly Obama was about to say that we needed Arabic interpreters in Afghanistan, but he did stop himself before saying that. On the other hand, he was also inaccurate about saying that Urdu was a common language in Afghanistan (Ethnologue doesn't even list it as being spoken there). Pashtu, which he also mentioned, is indeed a major language of Afghanistan, but it's not used in Iraq, so obviously the war in Iraq isn't going to affect our use of Pashtu interpreters.
ReplyDeleteAfghanistan is a very complex country. We all know that, but we don't all know that it is also linguistically very complex. I speak Farsi, but some dialects of Farsi are very different there, and I can hardly understand them. There are seven main dialects used in Afghanistan, including Dari, Pashto, even Punjabi, etc. Since the Taliban, an originally Pakistani group is there, obviously Urdu, the language of Pakistan, is used there by the people the US is targeting. Arabic is widely known there too, because of Islam and the Arabs that infiltrated with the Taliban. I took a Farsi class here with an Afghani man, and it was shocking how many words he did not know the proper Farsi word to. He instead only knew the Arabic word, but pronounced it like it was Farsi. My Farsi teacher luckily knew Arabic, and told him that. I do feel for Obama, because the linguistic landscape of Afghanistan is so confusing, and the needs of the military are not always so understandable to the public. I think he hesitated, because he felt he wasn't talking in layman's terms. BTW, there are most likely a lot of US military Farsi speakers in Iraq because of the Shiite area. They could be used in Afghanistan, but I don't think he wanted to go into much detail. Anyways, even if this was a mistake on his part, it was only a mistake in how he said it, which was a bit confusing, not what he was trying to convey.
ReplyDeleteEdmund Ironside,
ReplyDeleteMadrassa is the Arabic word for school, although it is also for a religious school. In Farsi it is "madrasse", and it means "school". In every school, Arabic is learned once the student enters middle school. It is like Latin is taught in Europe, but everyone must take it. Many go on to study Arabic further. In a country as Islamic as Afghanistan, there are a lot of Arabic speakers.
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ReplyDeleteArabic, Farsi, etc..
matters not, Obama always makes his gaffe's in English (with a slight accent or twang indigenous to the audience he's addressing, ie: poor folk, billionaire folk, etc..) :D
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ReplyDeleteGeoff, I was surprised to see how many Farsi speakers can comfortably read the Koran. I know some who use the Koran to tell their fortunes who are not religious at all, and are young and fun (yeah, I couldn't believe it at first myself). They just turn to any page, and understand what they read. Since they were taught it early on and retained it through practicing reading, they understand. Anyways, there is a HUGE divide between Afghanis and the freaky foreign Taliban. We are targeting the Taliban, so we're dealing with people who are VERY interested in speaking Arabic or are native Arabic speakers. And we are wasting our bright Arabic interpreters in Iraq. They should be used for the Taliban, and while they do that, they should also learn the Afghani languages/dialects.
ReplyDelete++
ReplyDeleteHT : Pajamas Media
an Obama gaffe most everyone apparently missed..
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ReplyDeletere: bg @ 12:17 AM..
"we are no longer a Christian nation" - BHO
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Even if some Taliban do speak Arabic, it's not their native language and likely wouldn't be used in normal circumstances. Pashtu and Dari and overwhelmingly the majority spoken languages in Afghanistan.
ReplyDeleteAnd the "they can read it so they can speak it" arguments are pretty worthless as well. I can read Spanish and Latin to a pretty good degree, but I wouldn't dare speak them for fear of looking like a moron, for example.
As mentioned, it's also not the job of normal interpreters to interrogator high-priority terrorist suspects. Your typical 10th Mountain 'terp won't be drilling UBL on the location of stolen nukes of anything. I'd assume that in such a situation the prisoners would be quickly carted off to a CIA prison and dealt with by the professionals.
My 2 cents, for what it's worth.
hey guys listen, i am afghan. Lemi solve your problem about the languages in afghanistan. there are two major languages in afghanistan; pashto and dari. there is no Urdu, no arabic or any other language. of course there are Uzbeki and Turkmeni, but they are spoken in north by a small minority. and the north is mostly secured place. Most of the problem is with the Pashto speakers areas who are the dominant tribe there. I havent heard what obama has said. but i can easily understand why he has mentioned arabic and Urdu for afghanistan. Nearly all Arabs present in the region speak Arabic. And their communication is more important to intelligence agencies than the Urdu or Pashto conversations. Because mostly arabs are in the higher and commanding ranks. so obbviously what they speak is more important. 2nd degree is Urdu, eventhough its not the language of the region. But due to huge presence of Pakistanis together with Al-Qaeda, it becomes important to trace what they talk too. and in the 3rd degree is the Pashto speaking Local Talibans.
ReplyDeleteBut beside all this, as you may know there are different people from different parts of the world with al-qaeda, so you can easily find chichnian dialogs, oyghor(spelling wrong)the language of china state bordering afghanistan. and many other languages, like Uzbek speakers of Uzbekistan and so on. But these miscellaneous foreign speakers mostly know arabic or urdu or pashto or all of them. so what obama had said was completely correct. You need perfect Arab linguists to trace the dialogs with different and strange dialects containing so much slung.