Apr 05 2009
The Importance of Education
My program at Kansas State has a lot of serving military officers going through masters and Ph.D programs. At least to judge by what they tell me, they get a lot out of the history and political science courses we give them. And in this time of tight budgets everywhere, it’s worth pointing out that we work cheap.
Still, every once in a while it’s nice to get some independent evidence of the importance of good education on the complexities of the outside world–like not opening yourself up to the snarky comments of foreign media.
To wit, I give you a bit from a recent Johnson’s Russia List:
BBC Monitoring
Russian TV pokes fun at top US general struggling with Georgian names
Vesti TV
March 31, 2009The state-owned Russian news channel Vesti TV has ridiculed a senior US general’s inability to pronounce the names of the Georgian capital and the country’s president during his visit to Georgia.
Throughout the afternoon of 31 March, Vesti repeatedly showed a clip of Gen James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressing a joint news conference in Tbilisi with President Mikheil Saakashvili. The general could be heard saying in English: “The beauty of Tbili- of Tiblisi is world renowned. President Shaskakhvili and I had a very productive-”. The Russian translation then kicked in: “The beauty of the city of Tibl- Tiblisi is world renowned. President Shashkashvili and I had a productive meeting.”
The presenter commented: “US General James Cartwright has vowed to help Georgian defence. Among his top priorities is memorizing how to pronounce the name of the Georgian capital and president’s surname.”