4A -The Michigan Daily - Monday, November 5, 2001 OP/ED 4 ixbe wrt:kbitwu 1 lId 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 daily.letters@umich.edu EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 GEOFFREY GAGNON Editor in Chief MICHAEL GRASS NICHOLAS WOOMER Editorial Page Editors Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. NOTABLE QUOTABLE If a humanitarian catastrophe is attributed to our military operations, it could pull apart our international coalition to fight terrorism, radicalize more people who might be sympathetic to the terrorists' views, and may even make the American people more vulnerable in the end." - Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn) as quoted by the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail in yesterday's edition. SN~oT!MrN Y . or. THEY HAVE ALWW VYLATE 1~aU6 LE KE -ri N&sTEAL Fot MY AvPI01 4EI i OF TIME AROURM .00~ WCL(OMETo .....\\Q_ _ CD ;t X / ~7 7 6 The linguistics of ignorance JOHANNA HANINK PARLANCE OF OUR TIMES 6 merica has a problem of security: We don't under- stand the languages of our attackers." So begins Dennis Baron's Oct. 27 New York Times op/ed contribution, "America doesn't under- stand what the world is saying". Fair enough. We don't understand the lan- guages of our attackers. But we don't under- stand the languages of our allies, either. Eighteen languages are spoken natively in Pak- istan alone. And I don't know one of them. It is important to be equally bothered by a collective inability to understand the languages of enemies and friends - or equally unboth- ered. Language literacy should not be consid- ered a weapon of war. Through de facto discouragement of bilin- gualism and educational policy, the U.S. contin- ues to build our language barriers. Granted, it is unreasonable to expect Pashtun departments to spring up across the country. But dialectical dif- ferences aside, Arabic (the most common forms of which are Egyptian and Algerian) is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world - and is the dominant language in what is arguably the most volatile area. Baron's column elicited a large response from the Times' readership. In one of the three letters the Times printed, "The language weapon," C. D. Anandasegar of Brick, N.J. writes, "Dennis Baron's reminder of our weak foreign-language knowledge in an era of com- plex global politics is an eye-opener. Our ene- mies have the advantage of conducting their 'business' in their native language as long as we don't understand." They're tricky, those enemies of ours. Sneaky. Devious. Underhanded. And clearly not playing by the rules. The FBI, the CIA and a hundred other acronymed government organizations, looking for new recruits, are approaching Middle East- ern studies departments at universities across the country. They're clambering to find speakers of Arabic. Speakers, at least, who can get through security clearance and background checks. What these government organizations don't seem to get is that it's not a game or a contest. And if it's a contest, it's completely one-sided. The "they" has got our language figured out. And so does the rest of the world. But back in our hemisphere, we need to realize that it's not World War II and we're not looking for crypt- analysts in a scramble to break German Baudot Code. Arabic is not a secret. I can't help but imagine George Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence at the CIA, as Ralphie Parker from the 1983 film "A Christ- mas Story" - harassing the mailman day after day, waiting for his Little Orphan Annie decoder ring to come. Learning a language is not about beating ter- rorists at their own game. They haven't written their notes or captioned their diagrams in Arabic just to be tricky. But it's been a fun side effect. As much as we like to.fool ourselves Eng- lish, has not been lingua franca-fied enough yet for us to sit back and expect the world to come to us. And it shouldn't take terrorist attacks to wake us up to the realization that for six percent of American college students to be currently enrolled in language class is abysmal and embarrassing. It's just another indication that for too long we've been living the un-examined life. At this point, the argument goes beyond the intrinsic benefits of learning a foreign language, beaten to death in recent months by academics and members of the media. It's not just for per- sonal edification anymore - it's about being an informed and contributing citizen of the world. Native speakers of English have an incredi- ble advantage. Our first words were spoken in the language of business and academia, modem diplomacy and even entertainment. And the majority of us decide to waste that advantage with complacency and ignorance. But concurrent with the solemn head nod- ding in response to calls for more foreign lan- guage education is the persistent expectation that everyone speak English in that television- anchor middle Ohio dialect. In a Nov. 2 letter to The Daily ("When has GEO ever cared about students?"), University alumnus David Taub writes, "I doubt I'm the only who had a hard time understanding a word of foreign GSIs in their pathetic attempt to speak English when conducting a discussion section." Taub's unappraised argument, besides being constructed with pure class, is merely indicative of the outlook that has gotten us into so much trouble already. The double standard once again rears it's ugly head. 6 6 0 Johanna Hanink can be reached via e-mail atjhanink@umich.edu V LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Political parties have same goals, different ideas to achieve them TO THE DAILY: In the few weeks since I've come to this University and started reading the Daily, I have disagreed with the editors often; I've even thought some of their views were simply not well-reasoned. However, I have never been offended enough by any statements made to write a letter. Ari Paul's Nov. 2 In Passing changed that ("Republicans at their worst"). While one may disagree with another's point of view, to call it "disgusting, selfish and repug- nant" without understanding it is patently irre- sponsible. If Paul took the time to listen to some of those who thought differently than he did, he would understand why Republicans stand in opposition to "big government": We simply believe that individual people can generally spend their money better than large institutions, which come under pressure from many direc- tions. There are no hidden agendas in that; there's no cynical protection of political goals at the cost of the common good (some people are exceptions, of course, but such people exist in the Democratic Party, too). Does it occur to Paul that Republicans might be concerned about criti- cisms of anti-terror legislation because they gen- uinely are worried about protecting our national security? I disagree with some of the legislation myself, but see DeLay's and Armey's and oth- ers', points of view. As for the Republican Party being "guilty of being hypocritical," I would like to ask Paul to point to just one large organization of people that hasn't at times been hypocritical - all organizations represent people of vastly differ- ent views and therefore change policy as power changes hands. Like Democrats, Republican individuals in general want nothing more than to improve the lives of the people of this country - we just have differing ideas about how to do so. JOSH LAVIGNE LSA freshman Don't take cheap shots on differing views TO THE DAILY: I would like to comment on the viewpoint "Anti-choice terrorism" (10/31/01), written by Katrina Mann. Please, let's not be petty. It's not right to take cheap shots at a differing viewpoint, just because you disagree with it. I would hope that no matter what side of the argument Mann's viewpoints lie, she would recognize that not all "anti-choice"/"pro-life" proponents are terroristic psychos calling for death to all "pro-choice"/"anti-life" providers, nor are they all going to drive a vehicle around displaying graphic pictures of mutilated fetus- es/babies. Let's be serious. Just because some people claiming Islam as their religion attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, no one believes that Muslims inheritently want to kill all Americans. Also, even though some support- ers of affirmative action scream their viewpoints from the steps of the Grad library, we don't automatically assume that all of the supporters of affirmative action are like this. Just because the viewpoint of "anti- choice"/"pro-life" isn't popular, doesn't mean you should demonize it. I'll grant you that recently (as far as I know) there hasn't been a very good rep around to give educated opin- ions on the "anti-choice"/"pro-life" view- points, but then neither has their been an educated discussion of the "anti-life"/"pro- choice" viewpoint. (I do not view Mann's viewpoint as educated or a discussion). I myself would be interested to hear a civic debate on the issue, so I can see a much wider picture of the issue in whole. On the topic, I don't really think that Mann, as an advocate of "pro-choice"/"anti-life" you really should be telling the world exactly what the "anti-choice"/"pro-life" believes in regards to the mother and her mental and physic'al health as you really aren't a qualified representative with the best concerns of the said platform in mind. Now I also would agree that the terroris- tic acts should stop immediately, and that the gunning downrof abortion providers is defiantly wrong, but I'm sure that a true person who views himself/herself as "pro-life" would also. So please, let's not be petty. SARAH SPRINGSTEEN LSA freshman 4 V VIEWPOINT The real terrorist: Planned Parenthood BY THE STUDENTS FOR LIFE EXECUTIVE BOARD Katrina Mann's viewpoint ("Anti- Choice terrorism," 10/31/01) is full of ignorance and inaccuracies. First, she insinuates that the pro-life movement sup- ports and even condones the extremely rare actions of a few on the radical fringe. This is absolutely untrue. Furthermore, extreme individual acts' of violence can never be used to stereotype a whole group of people. If it is wrong to stereotype all Muslims as terrorists, then it is just as false to equate all pro-lifers with violence. ductive "Choice" Campaign involving mobile trucks featuring large images of aborted babies. The pictures depicted first trimester abortions in total accuracy. They are not pictures of third trimester abortion victims or pictures of miscarried babies. CBR is currently suing a number of organi- zations that have made this false claim. Fourth, her statement, "the number of Planned Parenthood's patients receiving pre-natal care double those seeking abor- tion" is a blatant lie. In truth, according to Planned Parent- hood's own 1998-99 Annual Report 80 per- cent of patients seeking pre-natal care from tional organization that wages a subtle international"war" on Third World peoples and minorities in the western world. While the people who run Planned Parenthood are mostly white, affluent upper-middle class feminists and wealthy doctors, the majority of the people they target for their "ser- vices" is the exact opposite. Again, in its own 1997-98 Annual Report, Planned Parenthood describes its core clients as "young, low income, and women of color." In fact, Planned Parent- hood is proud of the fact that over two- thirds of its abortion clinics are in predominately African-American and His- AM