Diplomatic nuance at its finest

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.

Comments

[Chester]

Bush, Rummy, and Co. are much too comically inept to be offensive.

Insofar as China goes, what are they afraid of -- that China might use some trumped-up pretense to invade a much smaller country in defiance of global concerns and for purely self-serving reasons?

There's also current rumblings about various proposed technology sales to China by Europe, but our presidential administration needs to really quit their nominal attempts at Commie scapegoating. For one thing, everyone already knows he has made chummy with the Chinese because both our countries will scratch each others' backs when it comes to overlooking constriction of civil rights/liberties in the name of fighting terrorism.

And, for another, if they're going to invest so much energy into the Far East in general, and China in particular, they might want to muster up enough will to stop being so embarrassingly outflanked and marginalized in negotiations regarding North Korea.

[abercrombie and fitch uk]

Well said, such a person should be a good sentence, or the future will be more rampant.

[abercrombie & fitch london]

I read this sentence out loud to a group of engineers from my team at lunch the other day and they cracked up like I did.
It touched off such a wave of nostalgia for the first machines we all used and when we first discovered the Internet. We all felt so old and yet so lucky.

[abercrombie fitch]

It is hard to say such a thing is clear.

[abercrombie]

talk about Oregon. It had a rhythm that kept me focused and didn't allow me to go numb at any point.1

[hollister clothing]

Caution to readers: do not confuse the tactics of a rookie like Saddam with an experienced gesticulator like1

[abercrombiemilano]

Love is a feeling, not only on the material to meet, but also to the spiritual dcare and stick

[gucci.uk]

Valentine's Day is the roses and a basin of aloe, but two dollars. She hugged the Lying-in basin of aloe, contentedly sitting behind his bike. "Hey in front of him: hey, she angrily," in the back ", "unshaven bell. Their hearts are reunited other softly. After getting married, he still as spoil her baby. Every night when he asleep to break down a small balcony aloe Vera, wash the epidermis, tear of cool and refreshing green transparent evenly coated on her face.

[Impotence causes]

Is a complete pleasure to have the opportunity to express my opinion in an article as interesting as this, I think this is a small beginning for future generations have a very good example of what is the correct way to publish an article, many Thank you for sharing this information, congratulations!

[Cheap viagra]

A very warm greeting to all readers, thank you very much for allowing us to express ourselves in her blog, I am a complete pleasure to have the opportunity to have such a fabulous read an article like this, I think the world should do more awareness about what our children read on the Internet, issues like in this article are those who can create in the young a better neurological performance.