Quote Originally Posted by Massengale View Post
Why wouldn't cadets who grew up speaking Arabic or Mandarin or Russian be more ready?
From my limited experience, the Mandarin and Russian wouldn't have helped that much in Iraq, but the Arabic is useful. That said, my friends who attended NYU didn't speak any of those languages. Russian is probably helpful in Afghanistan. That said, a multi-lingual background doesn’t automatically free an individual from the prejudices of their culture and family, nor does it mean they are more receptive to other cultures.

Why wouldn't cadets who spent two years in Israel in high school be more ready? Why wouldn't cadets who spent the summer of their jr. year traveling in the ME or Africa be more ready?
Certainly, but I am not convinced that students at East coast universities commonly have such experiences. Again, in my experience, study abroad programs focused on Europe and Latin America. Three months of cultural tourism may be broadening, but I wouldn't say it prepares someone for anything like troop leading in stability operations.

For the record, I am a graduate of east coast prep schools and an East Coast University. I don’t feel that helped me corner any markets in cultural awareness or immersion. I married a fellow student who was a first generation American from a Korean family, who grew up speaking Hangul and practicing her family’s cultural traditions, and traveling back to Asia periodically. As far as I can tell after 18 years together, these experiences didn’t make her (or her family) any more or less open minded than anyone else I know. We are all subject to biases and human frailty.

There are millions of Americans who fit that description. The Army ignores them at its own (and the nation's) peril.
But I don’t see the correlation that officer recruiting in Northeastern schools really gets after this demographic.

How many lives were lost because of some retarded prison guards?
How was that not a leadership and training failure? An East Coast degree doesn't change that. For that matter, BG Karpinski is a graduate of Kean College of NJ, and COL Pappas graduated from Rutgers. East coast educational backgrounds among leaders did not prevent this problem. Of course, they weren’t Tier One graduates, so maybe that accounts for the less than stellar outcome.

Power-point slides and a few actors at an NTC are no substitute for prolonged, formative exposure to other cultures.
Amen brother. The crappy job we make of cultural immersion training is something we can discuss at length.