Someday My Son Will Talk Like a Terrorist

Your child’s first word is exciting, but not nearly as thrilling as his first sentence.

He is only 20 months old, so I asked my question merely as a joke. Little did I know that he would actually answer me.

“Son,” I asked, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” He looked me straight in the eyes and said, “I want to fight terrorists someday, Daddy.” What a coincidence! George Bush has an education plan suited for him:

President Bush announced a new initiative that will begin teaching Arabic and other ''critical need" languages to American students -- some as young as kindergarteners -- so they can eventually help the US government win the long-term struggle against terrorism. (link)

My son’s other options include Chinese, Hindi, Farsi and Russian.

Bush announced his “National Security Language Initiative” today at the State Department to an “audience of about 70 university professors” that, for some inexplicable reason, weren’t busy throwing Molotov cocktails and subverting the minds of the young with lies about Palestinians having points of view and rights. But the President was appealing to the damned liberal eggheads for help:

The president spoke at the start of a two-day meeting of university presidents invited by the State Department in part to discuss how universities can help further national security interests and help improve the country's image abroad. (link)

Also present were the USA’s “heck of a Secretary of State” Condoleezza Rice, Don Rumsfeld the USA’s “heck of a Secretary of the Defense” and John Negroponte the Director of National Intelligence and one heck of a terrorist organizer:

It's interesting, isn't it, [Bush said] that the State Department and the Defense Department are sponsoring a language initiative…But I also find it's interesting you're sitting next to John Negroponte, who is the Director of National Intelligence. (link)

Having those particular cabinet secrataries present for a talk on a domestic education ininitiative is “interesting” at a minimum, I’d say. But I’m thinking more along the lines of horrifying:

The program, called the National Security Language Initiative, will expand existing government-supported programs for language study and establish new programs -- dubbed Director of National Intelligence ''feeder programs" -- at elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and colleges. Those new programs would provide training in languages such as Arabic, Urdu, and Farsi to 400 students and 400 teachers in 2007 and up to 3,000 of each by 2011.

Bush plans to ask Congress for $114 million to fund the program in 2007; $24 million would go toward federal grants to teach ''critical need" languages -- including Arabic, Chinese, and Hindi -- from kindergarten through high school under the Department of Education's Foreign Language Assistance Program, and $13.2 million would go to expanding a program whose aim is to produce 2,000 advanced speakers of those languages.

The initiative will increase the pool of scholarships available for students to study foreign languages abroad, create a State Department-sponsored language immersion summer program, and beef up the US Fulbright scholarship program's language component. (link)

Why must we begin to train our elementary school aged children as soldiers, CIA operatives and Department of State propagandists?

Bush said the new language-training initiative is vital to long-term US military and intelligence operations. He said Rumsfeld ''wants his young soldiers, who are on the front lines of finding these killers, to be able to speak their language and be able to listen to the people in the communities in which they live."

''We need intelligence officers who when somebody says something in Arabic or Farsi or Urdu, knows what they're talking about," Bush said. (link)

Apparently, listening into American’s phone calls, infiltrating activist groups, and using people’s IRS records to track their political party affiliations just aren’t getting the job done to protect America from terror:

We're living in extraordinary times. I wish I could report to you the war on terror was over. It's not. There is still an enemy that lurks, that wants to hurt us. I hate to report that to the American people, but my duty is to lay it out as plainly as I possibly can. And that's the truth.

My son had just one question. Does his military training come with a uniform? With any luck, he doesn't like uniforms.