Opening Statement of Congressman Todd Akin

Jul 8, 2008
Press Release

Contact: Josh Holly; 202.226.3988 

Opening Statement of Congressman Todd Akin

Subcommittee Hearing on Department of Defense Language & Cultural Awareness Transformation Initiatives 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), the ranking Republican on the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, released the following opening statement for the subcommittee’s hearing regarding Department of Defense language and cultural awareness transformation initiatives: 

“Today’s hearing raises a new subject for this subcommittee—the Department of Defense language and cultural awareness transformation initiatives. This is a topic of increasing importance for the military. As we most certainly will hear from our witnesses today, warfare in the era of failed states and terrorism requires a military that is conversant not only in the conventional techniques of warfare, but also familiar with the languages and culture of the places in which they operate.  

“As we see in Iraq and Afghanistan, defeating the enemy is often more a matter of perception than meeting objective military metrics. We are learning that winning hearts and minds will probably not occur unless those fighting have some understanding of the hearts and minds they seek to win. This is why this subcommittee is focusing on the Department’s efforts to improve the language proficiency of our military and why we’re looking at how we train our servicemen and servicewomen to be ‘culturally aware’ when operating in foreign lands.  

“So before we begin investigating how best to generate a military with these ‘soft’ skills—an inquiry that will require this subcommittee to delve into the weeds and discuss the minutiae—we ought to keep in mind that this critical capability will likely be a contributing factor in our success or failure in defeating an insurgency.  Moreover, language training and cultural awareness provides our military with a virtual layer of armor that can save lives.  

“With this perspective in mind, I’d like thank Chairman Snyder for focusing the subcommittee on this topic. Anything we can do to advance and improve this initiative is worthwhile.”  

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