re: "Language Shortfalls at the State Department, Revisited"

Domani Spero at Diplopundit ("Blogging the Foreign Service: Just one obsessive observer, diplomatic watcher, opinionator and noodle newsmaker monitoring the goings on at Foggy Bottom and the worldwide available universe.") posted an excellent piece on State's linguist shortfalls during wartime.

Money quote(s):

"(A)ssignments in hard locations like Afghanistan and Pakistan are usually “unaccompanied” and have one-year durations. Given that we’re seven years into the Afghan war, even if we reduce the number assigned to that region to 5 FSOs in each of the last 6 years, that still amounts to something like a 1 ½ tour for those qualified speakers. I suspect that almost all of those 18-language qualified employees would have done their second tour in the region by now.

Isn’t this the same old story that happened to the Arabic speakers sent to Iraq? At a certain point, you run out of qualified speakers. What do you do? Make people do repeat tours for a second, third, fourth time? Or maybe give others 3.5hours of Arabic training and send them off to battle sheep, the electric grid, water wells, etc. in the provinces of Baghdad. Only this time they’ll do this now in the rural areas of Afghanistan?"

"You know what’s going to happen – it happened before when we fumbled into Baghdad. There will be a mad scramble at the Hill to find out more about this language deficit. We don’t have enough people to go; it’s not like this is really news. But Congress will be shocked and the CRS or the GAO will be tasked to review the language shortfalls at the State Department, again."

"State’s philosophy is to hire officers with a wide range of skills that it believes are predictors of success in the Foreign Service. It does not hire exclusively for skills that State can train, such as foreign languages. As a result, State’s primary approach to meeting its language requirements is through language training, primarily through classes provided at its training arm, the Foreign Service Institute (FSI)."

&

"Our current universe is everything about risks. The current enemy stretches the globe like a giant octopus, with tentacles in many different hot spots around the world. Do you think our opponents in the "war of ideas" will wait quietly until we’re done and ready to counter them?

If there is ever a time when State’s hiring and recruitment philosophy needs an extreme makeover, that time is now. State does not have the luxury of time for training its officers from scratch whether in functional, regional or language areas. It needs to speed up, and it can't speed up using the same old SOPs from an outdated era. "

(Bold type added for emphasis. - CAA)

S&S - Troops in South Korea have new tour option

From my archive of press clippings:

Stars and Stripes

Troops in South Korea have new tour option

By Ashley Rowland, Stars and Stripes

Pacific edition, Sunday, April 12, 2009

SEOUL — Troops in much of South Korea will be able to serve two-year accompanied tours, offering them another option under a new policy that will let more servicemembers bring their families to South Korea, U.S. Forces Korea commander Gen. Walter Sharp announced last week.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"When Sharp announced the tour normalization policy in December, he said troops in northern South Korea, also known as Area 1, would be able to get three-year, command-sponsored tours but did not extend the two-year option to them.

However, under a revised Joint Federal Travel Regulation approved by the Department of Defense on March 2, troops in Pyeongtaek, Osan, Daegu, Chinhae and Seoul can now apply for two- or three-year command-sponsored tours.

Under the tour normalization policy, about half of the 28,500 servicemembers in South Korea eventually will be allowed to bring their families with them. "

WT - Gates mulling 3-year postings

From my archive of press clippings:

Washington Times

Gates mulling 3-year postings

Lolita C. Baldor ASSOCIATED PRESS

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

SEOUL Extending the tours of U.S. troops serving in South Korea to three years and allowing them to bring their families is overdue, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Monday as he arrived in Seoul. The change in deployments is caught up in the ongoing transfer of military bases to South Korean control, but Mr. Gates said it's time to stop the one-year, unaccompanied tours that forces currently serve here because it is considered a war zone.

Read the whole article here.