DARPA Funds Game To Teach Arabic To Army

finnhart writes "According to a [free reg. req.] New York Times article, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has funded a project at the University of Southern California's School of Engineering to create a 'virtual camp' in which US soldiers can learn to speak Arabic, as well as learn local customs: 'All discussions with the villagers will have to be conducted in Arabic, and Sergeant Smith must comport himself with the utmost awareness of local customs so as not to arouse hostility. If successful, he will be paving the way for the rest of his unit to begin reconstruction work in the village'."

Comments

Oh, for cryin' out loud

[Twirlip of the Mists]

So here comes the first massively politically incorrect, flame me back into the stone age comment of the night.

I've about had it with this whole "Ooh, let's tiptoe around the Arabs" thing. You know what? The Arabs do not live on an Arab planet. The Muslims do not live on a Muslim planet. I'm sure there are lots of folks in both groups who wish it were so, but it just ain't.

When's the last time you heard about the Army training its soldiers in the customs of the Chinese so we don't deeply offend Chinese people? Or the Dutch? Do we tiptoe around the Dutch? Or the Argentines, or the Poles, or the Russians, or the South Africans? Do we all get sent to special sensitivity training workshops to avoid pissing off the Uzbeks?

Fuck, no. Nor do the Chinese, the Dutch, the Argentines, the Poles, the Russians, the South Africas, or the Uzbeks worry themselves sick over the possibility of offending us.

The Arabs live on a big blue planet with lots of other kinds of people. Some of them know and respect Arab customs. Some don't. The sooner they, as a culture, learn to deal with this fact, the better for everybody.

Colossal waste of money this is. Teach 'em Arabic, definitely. And Farsi and Pashto. But don't waste a red cent teaching 'em how to kowtow in the suks. The Arabs are just gonna have to learn to deal.

Re:Oh, for cryin' out loud

[Twirlip of the Mists]

yet we expect them to tiptoe around us..

Hardly. When's the last time you had an Arab cab driver? He barely knew the language and smelled like the underside of a Indian family's hide-a-bed, didn't he? Did you assemble a homemade bomb and blow it up outside a police station? No, you fucking dealt with it.

They apparently like their customs the way they are.

And they're completely 100% free to practice them. If they want to go home and smear goat entrails all over themselves and listen to Wayne Newton 45's on 78, that's their business. But if they expect us to do the same, they're in for a disappointment.

Maybe we can catch more with sugar than vinegar..

Fuck that. Seriously: fuck that. The whole problem with the Jihadist culture--Arab, Muslim, whatever any individual participant happens to be--is that they can't deal with pluralism. They can't deal with people who don't want to grow beards as long as their fist or who don't want to pray to Mecca or who don't want to cover their wives' faces in public. So they blow shit up. Their culture is broken, and the last thing we need to do is perpetuate the idea that a broken culture is just fine, no problems, welcome to the modern world.

Because it is a pluralist world, we--non-Muslims, non-Arabs, non-whatever--are not going to do things their way. That's because we're free. All of us, fundamentally, are free. That means I don't have to do shit the way they want me to. Laws, yes. I have to obey laws. But customs? Not my problem. If they don't like that, tough shit. Let 'em grouse about the infidel barbarians and then get over it, just like we have to when one of them drives our cab or runs our convenience store or joins our graduate research project or marries into our family or becomes our boss or whatever. When people from two different cultures have to interrelate, they have a responsibility to be accepting and tolerant. This one-way tolerance shit is for the birds.

Me? I'd really like it if Arab men would learn that aftershave is not the same as a bath. But am I getting my wish? No way, man. It's a free planet, and if they don't wanna get friendly with Mr. Soap, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm polite as I can be, I may occasionally complain about it in the third person. That's all I expect of anybody. Be polite, complain when I'm not around, just generally deal.

I don't suck your cock, you don't suck my cock. We just tolerate each other and then go home.

Why this isn't blindingly obvious to everybody is a question that will always baffle me.

Re:Oh, for cryin' out loud

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Okay, if we're talking about SF, that's a different matter. SF units often have to immerse in the local environment and work closely with indigenous forces. In that case, it's their job to make friends. In that particular context, I'll take back everything I said.

But the whole idea of giving every soldier a crash-course in how not to piss off the natives--or, as I have personal hands-on experience, giving every journalist who goes in-country such a crash-course--is bogus. It's not our job to become Arabs or Pashtuns or Muslims or whatever. It's their job, as human beings, to tolerate us.

We need less emphasis on sensitivity for the nasty, dirty infidel barbarians and more on tolerance for the natives. Just because you've never seen a clean-shaven white Christian person before, Mohammed, doesn't mean it's okay for you to freak out and try to blow him up.