Comments on
8. U.S. Personnel
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Kevin Baker
says:
This is a shocking figure, and it shows how very little the administration has done to improve U.S. security at home as well as abroad, in the wake of 9/11. How can so few Arabic speakers possibly be employed by the U.S. in Iraq, despite a large and growing pool of potential recruits in America?
The general difficulty in recruiting personnel for either the military or civilian support missions should put the lie, once and for all, to all the loose talk on the right in favor of a new, “American empire.” I refer particularly to Robert Kaplan’s advocacy of this over the past five years, in books and a long series of articles in the Atlantic Monthly.