First, apologies for the extensive slacking that has left my blog in a state of temporal neglect. I wish I could say I had been surfing far off destinations this entire time. Truth is, I have only been surfing exotic locales part of the time., the rest of the time I have been inexcusably lazy, and packing surf gear for trips to warm waters.
That said, while reading the New York Times this past week, I encountered the impetus for my return to the blogosphere. In what was otherwise a banal article about US concerns over expansion of China's Navy, Rumsfeld was quoted :
"The People's Republic of China is a country that we hope and pray enters the civilized world in an orderly way without the grinding of gears and that they become a constructive force in that part of the world and a player in the global environment that's constructive."
As a graduate of the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where we studied the refined art of diplomatic communication, it is with particular appreciation that I consider the inspired and tactful words of Mr. Rumsfeld. What delicacy and precision. I mean, mere rookies would have tossed out a laundromat joke or made a gratuitous slanty eye reference. But, Rumsfeld has decades of experience skillfully offending others. He excels at trampling years worth of improvement in bilateral understanding and cross-cultural comprehension and has an unmatched knack for revealing American ignorance and xenophobia.
Soon enough, the Pentagon scrambled to nuance Rummy's genius:
"Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon spokesman, said later that Mr. Rumsfeld did not mean to suggest China was not a civilized nation, only that it had been 'an inward-looking government for decades and was now emerging as a global actor.'"
In a similar vein, and actually, in the same newspaper, was the following thread in a piece regarding a halt to the Israeli practice of destroying the homes of families of Palestinian terrorists:
"A military statement did not say why the policy was being changed, but the newspaper Haaretz reported on its Web site that Maj. Gen. Udi Shani, who headed a committee reviewing the matter, had challenged the existing military position that demolitions were an effective deterrent. It said he had concluded that the policy had caused Israel more harm than good by generating hatred among the Palestinians."
A clear cut, empirically founded explanation for the cessation of this practice - Israel's own data says it doesn't work. Yet, the NYT went on to quote another source :
A military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, offered a slightly different explanation, saying the demolitions were not regarded as necessary during a period of relative calm. "House demolitions are just one measure of deterrence, and at present, it doesn't play the same role that it did previously," the military official said. "It's not something we consider necessary at this time." [emphasis added]
Slightly different?! These guys couldn't be farther apart on this issue. One says demolitions don't work, but you can barely hear him over the din of the other guy revving up his bulldozer.