Kelmanskiy and 125 other soldiers assigned to Fort Lewis’ newest Stryker Brigade Combat Team are part of a new program to teach soldiers rudimentary Arabic. The idea is that once deployed to Iraq, they’ll be able to communicate with local Iraqis to help their units better distinguish between allies and enemies.

Fort Lewis soldiers learn Arabic to better prepare for war

Just in time, too. I hear we’re talking about launching an armed conflict in Iraq. It should only last a few months but anything we can do in advance to try to smooth out communication problems should be worthwhile.