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Politically Uncivilized People
The leaflets distributed by U.S. forces in Parwan province, north of Kabul, on Tuesday depicted a lion, representing the U.S.-led coalition, chasing a dog with a section of the Taliban’s banner, containing a passage from the Koran in Arabic superimposed on its side.
WaPo – Sept 6 2017
The "passage from the Koran" on the Taliban banner is the Shahada, the central creed for every Muslim: "There is no god but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God." It is hard to believe that trained U.S. psychological warfare elements distribute such blasphemy out of ignorance and without specific intent.
Here is another such inflammatory statement.
Better a million dead North Koreans than a thousand dead Americans. … [I]n the real world, the greatest immorality in war is not killing the enemy. The greatest immorality would be for our country to lose.
The moral answer to North Korea… – Ralph Peters, NY Post, Sept 5, 2017
That moral mindset is, unfortunately, widely accepted in U.S. opinion writing and politics. It is independent of party affiliation.
I agree with Vladimir Vladimirovich on this:
As for the American people, America is truly a great nation if the Americans can put up with so many politically uncivilised people.
Vladimir Putin – Sept 5 2017
@34
“In 2010, it shelled a South Korean island, killing four. It was also accused of sinking a South Korean Navy ship that year, killing 46. Its nuclear deterrent, now strengthened, allows it to act even more aggressively.”
Too tired to argue, so here’s Prof. Bruce Cumings on the issue:
“But in the case of this particular incident, which happened very close to the North Korean border, we’ve had incidents like this, somewhat different ones, but with large loss of life, going back more than ten years. In 1999, a North Korean ship went down with thirty sailors lost and maybe seventy wounded. That’s a larger total of casualties than this one. And last November, a North Korean ship went down in flames. We don’t know how many people died in that. This is a no man’s land, or waters, off the west coast of Korea that both North and South claim. And the Cheonan ship was sailing in those waters when it was hit by a torpedo.
We have no idea what went on before that. In the past, these several incidents, people have not tried to inquire as to who started it. We don’t know whether the Cheonan had fired on some North Korean ship, and then a North Korean submarine hit it with a torpedo. We don’t even know if the North Koreans fired the torpedo. I imagine they probably did, but the evidence so far has been dribbled out very slowly. They claim that there’s a — there is North Korean letters, or Korean letters in North Korean orthography, on a propeller of this torpedo. But I haven’t seen photos of that, and other experts haven’t, either. So I think we have to wait to assess responsibility…
…All I’m saying is we’re only relying on an investigation that hasn’t been released by either the South Korean or the American government. They’ve released excerpts, but they haven’t given — it’s apparently a very long report, over a hundred pages. It’s been given to the Russians and the Chinese. It would be interesting to read that report and look at the evidence. The fact that a North Korean torpedo cut the ship in half doesn’t mean a whole lot, in that North Korean torpedoes are lying all over the bottom of this West Sea, which is very shallow as a result of previous North Korean ships having been sunk by the Southern side…
…I think it’s — I’m sure it’s a 95 percent case that the US and South Korea are right that North Korea fired this torpedo. Let’s say they did. The fact is, our government has not pointed out the background that I just pointed out, the sinking last November, the clashes in 1999 and 2002. This is a no man’s land, where the US and South Korea demarcated a so-called Northern limit line unilaterally. The North says that this area is under the joint jurisdiction of the North and South Korean militaries. So you have an incident waiting to happen. We’ve had many before. And American intelligence people know that in the late spring, crabs turn up by the thousands in this area, and the North Koreans and South Korean fishermen fight over the region.
I, myself, expected some sort of an incident this spring. It just came a little bit early. And it may have come in March because the US just completed Operation Full Eagle, which is an annual joint military exercise with the South Koreans, including naval exercises south of this particular region. About 26,000 soldiers were involved in this. The North Koreans hate these exercises and see them as a prelude to a possible attack. That also hasn’t been reported in our press. So there’s a context here which made this incident a very unfortunate one in the loss of life, but it’s not unprecedented in loss of life, and it should never have been blown so out of proportion that now you essentially have all the progress of the last ten years in North-South relations destroyed.”
…
https://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/27/nk
Posted by: anonymous | Sep 7 2017 3:30 utc | 42
@36 V Arnold
You are very correct about the complete lack of understanding Russian culture in the State Department and US diplomatic services. It’s staggering. Dmitry Orlov had a series on the peculiarities of the Russian national character a while back which is instructive at the present time. I believe the USA has most definitely passed into the “go to hell stage” of Russian consciousness. Mods please excuse the longer cut and paste job if this is inappropriate:
1. Taking offense
Western nations have emerged in an environment of limited resources and relentless population pressure, and this has to a large degree determined the way in which they respond when they are offended. For quite a long time, while centralized authority was weak, conflicts were settled through bloody conflict, and even a minor affront could cause former friends to become instant adversaries and draw their swords. This is because it was an environment in which standing your ground was key to survival.
In contrast, Russia emerged as a nation in an environment of almost infinite, although mostly quite diffuse, resources. It also drew from the bounty of the trade route that led from the Vikings to the Greeks, which was so active that Arab geographers believed that there was a salt-water strait linking the Black Sea with the Baltic, whereas the route consisted of rivers with a considerable amount of portage. In this environment, it was important to avoid conflict, and people who would draw their swords at a single misspoken word were unlikely to do well in it.
Thus, a very different conflict resolution strategy has emerged, which survives to this day. If you insult, aggrieve or otherwise harm a Russian, you are unlikely to get a fight (unless it happens to be a demonstrative beating held in a public setting, or a calculated settling of scores through violence). Instead, more likely than not, the Russian will simply tell you to go to hell, and then refuse to have anything further to do with you. If physical proximity makes this difficult, the Russian will consider relocating, moving in any direction that happens to be away from you. So common is this speech act in practice that it has been abbreviated to a monosyllabic utterance: “Пшёл!” (“Pshol!”) and can be referred to simply as “послать” (literally, “to send”). In an environment where there is an almost infinite amount of free land to settle, such a strategy makes perfect sense. Russians live like settled people, but when they have to move, they move like nomads, whose main method of conflict resolution is voluntary relocation.
This response to grievance as something permanent is a major facet of the Russian culture, and westerners who do not understand it are unlikely to achieve an outcome they would like, or even understand. To a westerner, an insult can be resolved by saying something like “I am sorry!” To a Russian that’s pretty much just noise, especially if it is being emitted by somebody who has already been told to go to hell. A verbal apology that is not backed up by something tangible is one of these rules of politeness, which to the Russians are something of a luxury. Until a couple of decades ago, the standard Russian apology was “извиняюсь” (“izviniáius’”), which can be translated literally as “I excuse myself.” Russia is now a much more polite country, but the basic cultural pattern remains in place.
Although purely verbal apologies are worthless, restitution is not. Setting things right may involve parting with a prized possession, or making a significant new pledge, or announcing an important change of direction. The point is, these all involve taking pivotal actions, not just words, because beyond a certain point words can only make the situation worse, taking it from the “Go to hell” stage to the even less copacetic “Let me show you the way” stage.
Posted by: Sad Canuck | Sep 7 2017 3:45 utc | 43
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