Language, culture and the intelligence failure

Submitted by James Archibald (Canada), Dec 12, 2006 at 21:54

The most important arms of war are language and the ability to understand the other's culture from within. This is what John Keegan very succinctly termed "intelligence in war". What the ISG has described is the opposite. America's putative enemy remains ununderstood.

The Iraq misadventure is in the broadest sense of the word an intelligence failure. This failure contributed to the US's inability to understand the socio-political context and the internal instabilities of post-Saddam Iraqi society. Such a lack of understanding leads directly to the fatal inability to predict an adversary's future actions.

The ISG recognized that Americans were handicapped by their "lack of language and cultural understanding" (p. 92) not only among military personnel but also among civilian contractors working on the ground in Iraq. This strategic error in intelligence has let to multiple inefficiencies and ineffective action. But more importantly it has led to death upon death. ISG's Recommendation 73 addresses this problem, but unfortunately the current problems in Iraq cannot be solved retrospectively. The dead cannot be brought back to life. ISG's discussion and recommendation only serve to point out a systemic failure in America. Solving it will not extricate the US from the Iraqi quagmire, but any improvement in America's ability to fully understand alternate social and political systems my help prevent other disasters of this magnitude.

A functioning intelligence service depends on language and cultural competence. Evidence seems to indicate that America's intelligence community is truly dysfunctional. Looking to the future, the US intelligence services will have to invest in the education and training of analysts capable of informing decision-makers of the full background in potential conflict situations before erroneous, inefficient or ineffective strategic decisions are made.

Let us hope that the United States will profit from the Iraqi situation and the ISG Report so that future strategic errors of this magnitude may be avoided in the interest of world peace.

J. Archibald

Department of Translation Studies

McGill University

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