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Our monolingual journalists and “strategic thinkers” perform much the same function today. By limiting our knowledge of the invaded other to a “promontory view” that is almost always filtered through the lens of our own linguistic, cultural, and of course, “strategic” norms, they provide an invaluable service to the planners at the State Department and at the Pentagon.

A press and pundit corps that regularly tells us about those people without ever having to really talk with them and to listen to them on their own terms, which is to say in the language they most clearly and eloquently express themselves—(“Mrs. Mistaken Drone Attack Survivor: I overheard you talking about how your now incinerated daughter used to snuggle with you and your husband in bed in the morning, Could you tell us more?”)—, effectively discounts the true measure of their humanity, and in this way, sends a message to the general populace that their dreams and their hopes are fundamentally different, a.k.a. lesser, than our own.