Company running interpreter service praises community’s contributions

DEARBORN — A retired four-star Army general spoke at the Arab American National Museum on Monday about the role translators from the local community play in rebuilding Iraq.

Retired four-star Army General Barry McCaffrey (R) after receiving a key to the city from Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly at the Arab American National Museum on Monday. McCaffrey spoke to a group of community leaders about the role translators play in rebuilding Iraq. He is chairman of Global Linguist Solutions (GLS), a Virginia-based company that handles a $4.6 billion contract to hire linguists for the U.S. military in Iraq. PHOTO:Khalil AlHajal/TAAN

General Barry McCaffrey is chairman of Global Linguist Solutions (GLS), a Virginia-based company that handles a $4.6 billion contract to hire linguists for the U.S. military in Iraq.
McCaffrey is also an NBC News analyst and a consultant to military contractors.

“Your community has allowed us to bring in these incredibly talented people,” McCaffrey said to a group of community leaders at the event. “Their contribution, when it comes to Iraq, has been enormous.”

Bettering conditions in Iraq, McCaffrey said, have resulted in about 80 percent of translators sticking with the effort for long periods of time.

“They do so, not just because we’re paying them [up to $170,000] a year, but because there’s a tremendous sense of satisfaction from contributing to an Arab country,” he said. “This year, thank God, the danger has gone way down.”

As violence has decreased, close interaction with Iraqi communities has gone up, giving the linguists more rewarding encounters and a sense of making a difference, McCaffrey said.

He said translators work in hospitals, orphanages, women’s groups, and in other capacities from the highest levels of negotiation to speaking with farmers and people on the street.

The country, he said, despite disastrous mistakes on the part of U.S. leadership in the early stages of the war, is finally starting to see “the beginnings of political struggle, rather than violent struggle in the streets.”

“I am not a partisan person,” he said, “but we made some huge errors when we went into Iraq… Many of us felt that the execution was flawed.”

Osama Siblani, publisher of The Arab American News, which has vigorously opposed the war in its opinion sections since before it began, said he appreciated McCaffrey’s forthright message of recognizing the mistakes of the invasion and working to alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people.

While McCaffrey was in favor of invading Iraq, he publicly has harshly criticized its execution, at times describing former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as arrogant, reckless and incompetent.

When asked about intense bitterness remaining in the community about the war, McCaffrey said “I share their bitterness.”

As a professor at West Point military academy, McCaffrey writes academic reports based on regular trips to Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It is hard to not be bitter about the misjudgments and denial of the (Defense Department) leadership during the first years of the war,” McCaffrey wrote in his latest report. “It did not have to turn out this way with $750 billion of our treasure spent and 36,000 U.S. killed and injured.”

But moving beyond the failures of the past and looking to the future of the country was McCaffrey’s focus on Monday.

“The question is, what do we do now? We must not allow Iraq to be in chaos,” he said.

He said the incoming Barack Obama presidential administration brings hope.

“The current administration has been a disaster,” he said after reiterating his nonpartisanship. “But now, we have this beautiful young president coming in… Things are going to get better.”

About four in ten applicants pass rigorous language testing background checks in the recruiting process, according to McCaffrey and GLS regional co-manager Rana Abbas, who works in the company’s Southfield office. They said linguists must have a university-level understanding of Arabic and a strong understanding of English.

McCaffrey said that while rewarding, the job is tough, with translators frequently traveling throughout the large country and being on-call 24 hours a day.

“We’re paying extremely high wages, and we should be,” he said.