quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Because he would know what it's like to vote in favour of wars on completely trumped-up pretexes?
The pretexts in question having been trumped up to secure his vote in their favor.
There's a thing about politics: you don't always have to be right, but you do always have to be wrong for the right reasons.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Because he would know what it's like to vote in favour of wars on completely trumped-up pretexes?
I think if you go back and check Kerry's record, you might find that's not fair. Congress was lied to, outright, to secure their votes. And many Democrats, perhaps most vocally Kerry, voted with the understanding that the use of force he was approving was to be used as a stick to get Saddam into line, not a blank check for immediate invasion. We're forgetting or ignoring some of the facts from 10 years ago.
Furthermore, the man ran on an anti-war platform at a time when it wasn't really popular nationally.
You're talking as if he was at his computer falsifying documents and signing invasion orders as a willing participant in immediate invasion. That's not at all what happened, and he and a lot of others felt incredibly burned by what went down and how it went down.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: To be fair, I do believe that many representatives Republican and Democrat were lied to so as to secure their votes. I don't believe many of them would have voted to invade Iraq if it was clear there were no WMDs and it was all a pretext the Bush administration was using to go to war.
Of course it should also be noted that the pretext was fairly transparent, offered by an administration that was widely known to be incompetent, and that disbelief in the US pretext was common across the entire world.
For example:
quote:Perhaps even worse than the strain of “nobody-could-have-known” excuse-making invoked by Burns is the claim that “nobody could have known” that Iraq did not really have WMDs. Contrary to the pervasive self-justifying myth that “everyone” believed that Saddam possessed these weapons — and thus nobody can be blamed for failing to realize the truth — the evidence to the contrary was both public and overwhelming. Consider the March 17, 2003, Der Spiegel Editorial warning that “for months now, Bush and Blair have been busy blowing up, exaggerating and deliberately over-interpreting intelligence information and rumours to justify war on Iraq,” or a September 30, 2002 McClatchy article — headlined: “War talk fogged by lingering questions; Threat Hussein poses is unclear to experts” — which detailed the reasons for serious skepticism about the pro-war case.
Or simply recall the various pre-war statements by the ex-Marine and U.N. weapons inspector for Iraq, Scott Ritter (“The truth of the matter is that Iraq has not been shown to possess weapons of mass destruction, either in terms of having retained prohibited capability from the past, or by seeking to re-acquire such capability today”), or Howard Dean in his Drake speech (“Secretary Powell’s recent presentation at the UN showed the extent to which we have Iraq under an audio and visual microscope. Given that, I was impressed not by the vastness of evidence presented by the Secretary, but rather by its sketchiness“). All of that, too, was brushed aside by government officials and suppressed and even mocked by most of the American media, all of whom were determined to allow nothing to impede the march to war. Rather than take responsibility for their failings, they instead insist — as Burns did today — that they could not have known.
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The other seven nations of the G8 have, for the moment, canceled the upcoming summit in Sochi. And the West seems to be coalescing around a program to come up with major funding for Ukraine's new government.
Talk is turning now to sanctions.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: To be fair, I do believe that many representatives Republican and Democrat were lied to so as to secure their votes. I don't believe many of them would have voted to invade Iraq if it was clear there were no WMDs and it was all a pretext the Bush administration was using to go to war.
Of course it should also be noted that the pretext was fairly transparent, offered by an administration that was widely known to be incompetent, and that disbelief in the US pretext was common across the entire world.
For example:
quote:Perhaps even worse than the strain of “nobody-could-have-known” excuse-making invoked by Burns is the claim that “nobody could have known” that Iraq did not really have WMDs. Contrary to the pervasive self-justifying myth that “everyone” believed that Saddam possessed these weapons — and thus nobody can be blamed for failing to realize the truth — the evidence to the contrary was both public and overwhelming. Consider the March 17, 2003, Der Spiegel Editorial warning that “for months now, Bush and Blair have been busy blowing up, exaggerating and deliberately over-interpreting intelligence information and rumours to justify war on Iraq,” or a September 30, 2002 McClatchy article — headlined: “War talk fogged by lingering questions; Threat Hussein poses is unclear to experts” — which detailed the reasons for serious skepticism about the pro-war case.
Or simply recall the various pre-war statements by the ex-Marine and U.N. weapons inspector for Iraq, Scott Ritter (“The truth of the matter is that Iraq has not been shown to possess weapons of mass destruction, either in terms of having retained prohibited capability from the past, or by seeking to re-acquire such capability today”), or Howard Dean in his Drake speech (“Secretary Powell’s recent presentation at the UN showed the extent to which we have Iraq under an audio and visual microscope. Given that, I was impressed not by the vastness of evidence presented by the Secretary, but rather by its sketchiness“). All of that, too, was brushed aside by government officials and suppressed and even mocked by most of the American media, all of whom were determined to allow nothing to impede the march to war. Rather than take responsibility for their failings, they instead insist — as Burns did today — that they could not have known.
I will admit this period of history is a blind spot for me, I was serving a mission in Taiwan at the time and did not read the news at all.
So I can't really refute what the state of the evidence was at the time these decisions were made. I do know I came back home and was incredibly shocked that we could engage in a war, with absolutely nothing concrete to justify that action. I really thought my country was incapable of doing that.
In my regional business environment Asia my reading discussed how in China nationalism is often drummed up as a way to defuse tensions towards the government, but can lead to the opposite result, as people use nationalism as a cloak for their actual frustrations. More importantly, this excess nationalism leads to the government having to find a way to not appear weak when dealing with other nations when they cross swords. So for example when the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade it ignited a powerful mix of undercurrential (yes I made that word up) problems. The government response to save face was overwrought in part because they had to deal with these problems.
All I could think of when I read those chapters was that's almost exactly what happened in the US in 2001-2003 (from what I can tell), we drummed up patriotism and nationalism to a fever pitch thinking there's no such thing as excess, and then promptly found ourselves rushing headlong into a pointless armed conflict with Iraq because to call Hussein an ally of the men who attacked us as well as a WMD armed menace to America and then admit that we'd said that absent real evidence would have caused the government to lose face in exactly the same way.
I'm still pretty angry about it.
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I think Mucus is editing what was actually happening in 2003 a bit. Even the Resolution that passed contained within it the idea that the use of force was being authorized not as a blank check with the expectation that we'd invade within days, it was not an invasion resolution, but rather the idea that the Resolution gave Bush the power to compel Saddam to resolve the issue with a threat of arms, or that some form of military action would compel his compliance.
Kerry and others who were wary of what was happening didn't vote for it thinking "I voted for an invasion." They thought they were voting for what the Resolution actually said, that Bush would use the authorization he had in compliance with Security Council resolutions to enforce them and to compel Saddam to adhere to SC resolutions through continued diplomacy.
That's how the White House sold it to Congress, that's what Democrats thought they were signing. Looking back now, knowing all that we know about the Bush Administration, it's pretty clear to see they were lying through their teeth and never had any intention of following the letter of the Resolution itself, but rather saw all that as a minor stumbling block to get a blank check to do what he planned to do from the start.
But that wasn't clear when they voted for it. That's certainly my recollection of how things went, that Bush basically gave up on diplomacy five minutes after it started, and never really followed the directions laid out in the Resolution.
So yeah, I think it's pretty unfair to say everyone who voted for the Resolution was in favor of invasion. Given what happened and how it went down, and the wording many insisted on including in the Resolution, it's pretty clear many of them were NOT supportive of what happened as it was happening.
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Kerry specifically backed the attack both before and after it.
quote:By the time of the March invasion, after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s United Nations presentation on Iraq’s alleged weapons, Kerry backed the attack, according to articles that appeared in the Boston Globe (and which were written by one of his current aides at the State Department).
quote:“It appears that with the deadline for exile come and gone, Saddam Hussein has chosen to make military force the ultimate weapons inspections enforcement mechanism,” Kerry said. “If so, the only exit strategy is victory. This is our common mission and the world’s cause. We’re in this together. We want to complete the mission while safeguarding our troops, avoiding innocent civilian casualties, disarming Saddam Hussein, and engaging the community of nations to rebuild Iraq,” he said.
Kerry criticized what he called “a failure of diplomacy of a massive order” but told the Globe that if he were president, he may not have been able to avoid war.
In fact, during a Democratic presidential debate on May 3, two days after Bush prematurely declared “mission accomplished,” Kerry said: “I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein, and when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him.”
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And in the line before your emphasis, he stressed the point that Bush totally failed to do what he promised to avoid a war by abandoning the diplomatic effort.
Kerry voted on the Resolution five months before the invasion began.
What happened later happened later, you can't just roll the whole timeline together and average it out.
I never said he never claimed to have supported the war - though personally I think his support was a political sham because being against the war in 2003 and 2004 was a political death sentence - but I think his comments regarding his intentions when he supported the Resolution, that he did it expecting a diplomatic, UN-sanctioned effort, are genuine.
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I was more responding to this "it's pretty clear many of them were NOT supportive of what happened as it was happening." It's pretty clear from what he said that he was supportive of what happened as it was happening, but maybe it was a sham? Ok sure.
So in the 21st century, he clearly supported the invasion of the another country on a trumped up pretext. But he didn't just support it, he supported it as a sham for political gain. He got people killed so he could get a few more votes. That's a real improvement. (I think I preferred it when Orincoro explained it as him just being an idiot.)
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There's a lot of fair, valid criticism in there.
I think Kerry hated the idea from the start, but recognized that any good diplomatic exchange required a hefty stick to go with a hearty carrot, despite the fact that most of the negotiations were stick rather than carrot. So he voted for the use of force thinking it would help bring Saddam to the table. I also think that because his natural inclination is anti-war, a stance that's well-documented going back to Vietnam.
I think he changed his tune around February when it was clear that being against the War was political suicide. Public support was too strong, political retribution was too powerful. So he caved for political reasons. Perhaps his support was genuine because he believed that Bush had a better plan for the War and its aftermath, but if that's true, he didn't ask enough questions.
When the War started to go south after the insurgency flared up in earnest, I think he realized there was now a space for anti-war voices, so he dropped the facade and went back to his roots. He still took a ton of flak for it. Hell, probably lost the election based in large part on that. Ever since then he's been a vocal opponent of it and critic of Bush's handling of it.
I'm not saying Kerry is perfect, I'm not defending every thing he's said or every position he's taking. But I think his initial vote for authorizing force wasn't what it's usually characterized as. I think he decided to go with the flow after he saw where things were going because he didn't want to get crushed and he knew opposing the War wouldn't do a thing. So he fails on having the courage of his convictions, but other than bragging rights, I don't know what it would have gotten him.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: So in the 21st century, he clearly supported the invasion of the another country on a trumped up pretext. But he didn't just support it, he supported it as a sham for political gain. He got people killed so he could get a few more votes. That's a real improvement. (I think I preferred it when Orincoro explained it as him just being an idiot.)
In looking back, I think there's a fair case to be made that a lot of senators and congresspeople were motivated by political gain, but were also clearly stupid enough to believe that the pretext, no matter how thin, would shield them from blame for their actions. Something that has turned out to be *mostly* true after all. Kerry later became Sec State, so who's the idiot really?
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I think he changed his tune around February when it was clear that being against the War was political suicide. Public support was too strong, political retribution was too powerful. So he caved for political reasons. Perhaps his support was genuine because he believed that Bush had a better plan for the War and its aftermath, but if that's true, he didn't ask enough questions.
The majority of blame for the Iraq war goes to the totally unchecked spending on intelligence growth that started just after 9/11. Something congress rubber-stamped with very little conception of the long-term consequences, and something Bush used as essentially a form of all-spice for every remaining policy initiative in his 8 years in office.
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Also apparently it's a thing where conservative bloggers are lauding Romney for his prescience in saying Russia was our greatest geo-political threat during the presidential debates.
Because, you know, Ukraine is totally where we get all our stuff from.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I think he decided to go with the flow after he saw where things were going because he didn't want to get crushed and he knew opposing the War wouldn't do a thing. So he fails on having the courage of his convictions, but other than bragging rights, I don't know what it would have gotten him.
Two things: first it's like what they say to drivers "you aren't stuck in traffic, you are traffic." In this case, he's wasn't just going with the flow, he was flow. By failing to stick his neck out, he could have influenced others that were in a similar position and also failed to do so, while implicitly helping to marginalise those that did.
Second, I think it's part of his job both as a representative in a representative democracy and especially as a senator (house of sober second thought and all that) to not always go with the flow. Its why he gets paid the big bucks
In any case, I think we've taken the quote as far as it should go. Its clear that this isn't just 19th century behaviour and its clear that trumped-up pretexts get used in the 21st century although we can disagree on whether there are mitigating circumstances that make him a particularly inappropriate (or not) candidate to deliver his message.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Also apparently it's a thing where conservative bloggers are lauding Romney for his prescience in saying Russia was our greatest geo-political threat during the presidential debates.
Because, you know, Ukraine is totally where we get all our stuff from.
He... Didn't say that. And I don't think any conservative blogs are claiming he did. You didn't quote him, which tells me either you know he didn't actually say that or you just didn't care enough about being precise to look up the quote before making claims about it. Guessing the latter.
Also I'm just gonna say: it's trippy to see a big argument about whether or not Kerry was antiwar enough. I just. Wow.
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Considering most people who identity as left leaning don't feel the Democrats are left enough I'm sure its reasonable to criticism Kerry for being flippity floppity on the Iraq War. The *worst* foreign policy decision made by the United States in its entire history.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Also apparently it's a thing where conservative bloggers are lauding Romney for his prescience in saying Russia was our greatest geo-political threat during the presidential debates.
Because, you know, Ukraine is totally where we get all our stuff from.
He... Didn't say that. And I don't think any conservative blogs are claiming he did. You didn't quote him, which tells me either you know he didn't actually say that or you just didn't care enough about being precise to look up the quote before making claims about it. Guessing the latter.
Also I'm just gonna say: it's trippy to see a big argument about whether or not Kerry was antiwar enough. I just. Wow.
I'm pretty emotionally drained right now, so forgive my brevity. Romney didn't say Russia was our greatest geo-political foe? That's what I've been getting thrown at me the last few days by several people
And from a person on Facebook,
"Remember when Romney and Obama debated about foreign policy and Romney talked about importance of keeping eyes on Russia as one of the geopolitical forces America should be concerned about? To which President Obama somewhat scoffed. Good times."
All I said was it's a thing. That's what I've seen being claimed. I wasn't trying to comment on Mr. Romney's prescience or lack thereof in what he actually said, or dissect the substance of what he said, in fact, I'd largely say he was laughed at unfairly whatever he actually said.
I was commenting on conservatives thinking events happening now speak to Romney being right and Obama being an idiot for saying what he did in the debates.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Also apparently it's a thing where conservative bloggers are lauding Romney for his prescience in saying Russia was our greatest geo-political threat during the presidential debates.
Because, you know, Ukraine is totally where we get all our stuff from.
He... Didn't say that. And I don't think any conservative blogs are claiming he did. You didn't quote him, which tells me either you know he didn't actually say that or you just didn't care enough about being precise to look up the quote before making claims about it. Guessing the latter.
Also I'm just gonna say: it's trippy to see a big argument about whether or not Kerry was antiwar enough. I just. Wow.
I'm pretty emotionally drained right now, so forgive my brevity. Romney didn't say Russia was our greatest geo-political foe? That's what I've been getting thrown at me the last few days by several people
And from a person on Facebook,
"Remember when Romney and Obama debated about foreign policy and Romney talked about importance of keeping eyes on Russia as one of the geopolitical forces America should be concerned about? To which President Obama somewhat scoffed. Good times."
All I said was it's a thing. That's what I've seen being claimed. I wasn't trying to comment on Mr. Romney's prescience or lack thereof in what he actually said, or dissect the substance of what he said, in fact, I'd largely say he was laughed at unfairly whatever he actually said.
I was commenting on conservatives thinking events happening now speak to Romney being right and Obama being an idiot for saying what he did in the debates.
So, there's an important difference between the way you phrase it and the way your quote from FB phrases it. In the quote, there's one important word missing. That changes the claim from being very dubious into being straightforwardly true. The FB quote is closer to what Romney actually said. Do you see the difference?
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When that sort of commentary and reporting appears frequently on major American television outlets, American celebration of its own “free press” can be taken seriously. Or, put another way, until hosts of major U.S. television programs do what Abby Martin just did on RT in connection with a major American military intervention, American commentators’ self-justifying mockery of Russian media outlets will continue to be as persuasive as the condemnation of Russian imperialism and aggression from the David Frums of the world.
UPDATE: The official RT account on Twitter seems perfectly proud of Martin’s statements, as they re-tweeted my commentary about her monologue condemning Russia’s actions:
UPDATE II: In response to my question about whether any U.S. television hosts issued denunciations of the attack on Iraq similar to what Martin just did on RT, Washington lawyer Bradley Moss replied: “Phil Donahue (MSNBC) and Peter Arnett (NBC).”
Leaving aside that Arnett wasn’t a host, this perfectly proves the point I made, since both Donahue and Arnett were fired because of their opposition to the U.S. war. Arnett was fired instantly by NBC after he made critical comments about the war effort on Iraqi television, while a memo from MSNBC executives made clear they were firing Donahue despite his show being the network’s highest-rated program because he would be “a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war”.
During that same time, MSNBC’s rising star Ashleigh Banfield was demoted and then fired after she delivered a stinging rebuke of misleading pro-war TV coverage by U.S. outlets, while Jessica Yellin, at MSNBC during the time of the war, admitted in 2008 that “the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings” and that executives would change stories to make them more pro-war.
All of that stands in rather stark contrast to the clear denunciation of the Russian intervention by Martin which RT broadcast and this morning is promoting. We’ll see if she suffers any recriminations, but if she does, U.S. media behavior during the attack on Iraq was hardly any better. [/quote]
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Romney on Russia: This is to Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe.
I'm not sure what the substantive difference is between "number one" and "greatest."
I'll say this though, I think Romney's truncated quote isn't really a fair one. He wasn't just saying that Russia is our biggest direct threat, he was saying that Russia was the one propping up all our direct threats and our biggest problems. I'm still not sure that actually makes or made them our number one geopolitical threat, but I think he had a point worth making that often got ignore during Obama's "reset" with Russia. He went on to further clarify that point in subsequent interviews where he said they weren't a security threat, but a geopolitical threat, which I thought was actually a great use of nuance. Kerry would have been proud.
So I think BlackBlade's original comment on Romney's statement was truer to what he actually said. I think the word "threat" is where Dan Frank might have been getting tripped up, but "threat" wasn't the word Romney was focused on in his explanation, "geopolitical" was.
And what he said was perfectly defensible.
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Thanks for the input Lyr. You interpreted me right, and I'll concede that your reading of it is better than mine.
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quote:Niu Jun, a professor of international affairs at Peking University, said China wanted to maintain its relationship with Russia yet had strong concerns about foreign intervention. “It’s all very inconvenient,” he said. “That’s why they came out with a statement nobody can understand.
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Ha! That was awesome. I welcome a China that is increasingly looked to for its opinions regarding world events.
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Is that kind of circumspection kind of built into the language for Chinese and Japanese? I know it is for Thai.
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Culture makes the language, language makes the culture. That's a circular process in some respects.
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generally in business dealings with Japanese businesspeople you have to be trained specifically to confront their obfuscation
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quote:Originally posted by Jake: Is that kind of circumspection kind of built into the language for Chinese and Japanese? I know it is for Thai.
Hard to say, as Orincoro said maybe it's a chicken egg argument?
One interesting change I've seen happen in my lifetime was that Mandarin does not really have an analog for "no". They have a character you could render as "not" but everything is "not able" "is not" "can not", or "not correct" you never just flat out say "no" though. At least until fairly recently because of how much exposure the Chinese have gotten with English and our concept of "yes" and "no" I've seen people without hesitation say "not" but mean no. As in, "no, no, no, that's not correct", while using the same worth for "not" and "no".
The Mainland Chinese seem to have become more comfortable with direct communication, but largely diplomacy and government speak is still an exercise is obfuscation and double speak.
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That exact thing--a lack of a word for "no", but a negating word that effectively means "not" is exactly what I was talking about with Thai.
Tangentally related--the phrase which means "excuse me" in Thai literally translates as "punish me". I've always found that interesting.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: generally in business dealings with Japanese businesspeople you have to be trained specifically to confront their obfuscation
May not be the exact spelling but in Japanese culture this is because of the honne and tatame or "inner face" vs "outer face" and is actually the most worrying cultural concept for someone like me. Or "What they say" vs "What they mean"; I forget which is which so don't take the order exactly, but essentially you're supposed to have a facade that hides what you really think or feel (this is why the Japanese by Westerners seem so polite) and other Japanese people are supposed to know and understand this so they can read between the lines.
So someone asking you "Would you like to stay for dinner?" Is actually counter intuitively an invitation to leave and this concept is of paramount importance.
It sounds similar to the concept of "Social que's/context" so I imagine its that times eleven.
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Yes, but it's also true that Japanese businessmen will often say no in that roundabout way, and then think that's the end of the discussion. They also resist your efforts to find out why they have declined your request even if you understand that they *are* declining.
I just had a wonderful project with one of my Japanese friends this week where we discussed whether to single space or double space a document. He asked and I said let's single space it. He came to me the next day with two copies of the assignment one single spaced, one double spaced. Reading the message loud and clear I asked him, "I see you printed a double spaced copy as well. Would you like me to present the assignments to the instructor and see if she is OK with double spacing?"
He paused and stuttered just a little bit (I could tell he was struggling with being direct) and said, "Yes, would you be willing to do that?" So I did. I could have gotten hung up on him ignoring what I thought was a done deal, or just taken the single spaced copy, but I recognized that I'd failed to pick up on his not being committed to what I thought was a joint decision. But I still expected him to give me a straight yes or no to my question.
Cross cultural work really does require both sides to lean a little, and that does mean Japanese people being more direct, while Americans being more circumspect.
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When I was growing up, my mom was involved with an organization called Small World that was put together to help give a community, along with the skills necessary to get by in the US, to the wives of men who had come to the University of Kansas from overseas to study or teach(it was the early 70s, so virtually all of the foreign students and professors were male). She taught ESL, took groups on field trips that introduced them to various aspects of day to day life in the US in a non-threatening manner, and was eventually chairwoman of the program for a while. A friend she made there was a Japanese woman who had an incredibly difficult time letting go of the indirect approach, and missed out on a lot of food and drink that she genuinely wanted because she stuck with her cultural programming and didn't feel like she could accept the offer until the third time it was being extended. My mom got her over that hump, but as I recall it took a fair bit of role playing and practice.
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It's actually been supremely frustrating to a family member who has been working on some manner of medical/epidemiological work in Japan. The stratified levels of heirarchical social dogma, the high cultural power distance, and the implacable 'saving face' is antithetical to actually being able to get good research results, which is one of the reasons they were brought in to reform them.
He's had to deal with people who are unable to say what results accomplished what and to just give clear status reports on anything and he was for a long time unable to stop senior executives from simply placing family members into research management positions they were not qualified for and expecting that to be the end of it. it was like dismantling the lost decade all over again.
it was like how the niceties and absurdly hierarchical social protocols of the south koreans were causing them to crash airplanes constantly
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: it was like how the niceties and absurdly hierarchical social protocols of the south koreans were causing them to crash airplanes constantly
I'm not familiar with that one. What are the details?
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quote:Delta report on Korean Air that was posted anonymously on the Internet, one of the auditors tells a story of sitting in on a Korean Air flight where the first officer got confused while listening to Air Traffic Control and mistakenly put the plane on a course intended for another plane. "The Flight Engineer picked up something was wrong but said nothing. First Officer was also not happy but said nothing. Despite [good] visual conditions, crew did not look out and see that current heading would not bring them to the airfield." Finally the plane's radar picks up the mistake, and then comes the key sentence: "Captain hit First Officer with the back of his hand for making the error."
Hit him with the back of his hand?
When the three pilots all met that evening at Kimpo for their preflight preparation, the first officer and the engineer would have bowed to the captain. They would all have then shaken hands. "Cheo eom hoeh seom ni da," the copilot might have said, respectfully. "It is first time to meet you." The Korean language has no fewer than six different levels of conversational address, depending on the relationship between the addressee and the addresser: formal deference, informal deference, blunt, familiar, intimate, and plain. The first officer would not have dared to use one of the more intimate or familiar forms when he addressed the captain. This is a culture in which enormous attention is paid to the relative standing of any two people in a conversation.
The Korean linguist Ho-min Sohn writes:
At a dinner table, a lower-ranking person must wait until a higher-ranking person sits down and starts eating, while the reverse does not hold true; one does not smoke in the presence of a social superior; when drinking with a social superior, the subordinate hides his glass and turns away from the superior;… in greeting a social superior (though not an inferior) a Korean must bow; a Korean must rise when an obvious social superior appears on the scene, and he cannot pass in front of an obvious social superior. All social behavior and actions are conducted in the order of seniority or ranking; as the saying goes, chanmul to wi alay ka issta, there is order even to drinking cold water.
So, when the first officer says, "Don't you think it rains more? In this area, here?" we know what he means by that:
Captain. You have committed us to visual approach, with no backup plan, and the weather outside is terrible. You think that we will break out of the clouds in time to see the runway. But what if we don't? It's pitch-black outside and pouring rain and the glide scope is down.
But he can't say that. He hints, and in his mind he's said as much as he can to a superior. The first officer will not mention the weather again.
It is just after that moment that the plane, briefly, breaks out of the clouds, and off in the distance the pilots see lights.
"Is it Guam?" the flight engineer asks. Then, after a pause, he says, "It's Guam, Guam."
The captain chuckles. "Good!"
But it isn't good. It's an illusion. They've come out of the clouds for a moment. But they are still twenty miles from the airport, and there is an enormous amount of bad weather still ahead of them. The flight engineer knows this, because it is his responsibility to track the weather, so now he decides to speak up.
"Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot," he says.
The weather radar has helped us a lot? A second hint from the flight deck. What the engineer means is just what the first officer meant. This isn't a night where you can rely on just your eyes to land the plane. Look at what the weather radar is telling us: there's trouble ahead.
To Western ears, it seems strange that the flight engineer would bring up this subject just once. Western communication has what linguists call a "transmitter orientation".that is, it is considered the responsibility of the speaker to communicate ideas clearly and unambiguously. Even in the tragic case of the Air Florida crash, where the first officer never does more than hint about the danger posed by the ice, he still hints four times, phrasing his comments four different ways, in an attempt to make his meaning clear. He may have been constrained by the power distance between himself and the captain, but he was still operating within a Western cultural context, which holds that if there is confusion, it is the fault of the speaker.
But Korea, like many Asian countries, is receiver oriented. It is up to the listener to make sense of what is being said. In the engineer's mind, he has said a lot.
Sohn gives the following conversation as an illustration, an exchange between an employee (Mr. Kim) and his boss, a division chief (Kwacang).
KWACANG:
It's cold and I'm kind of hungry.
[MEANING: Why don't you buy a drink or something to eat?]
MR. KIM:
How about having a glass of liquor?
[MEANING: I will buy liquor for you.]
KWACANG:
It's okay. Don't bother.
[MEANING: I will accept your offer if you repeat it.]
MR. KIM:
You must be hungry. How about going out?
[MEANING: I insist upon treating you.]
KWACANG:
Shall I do so?
[MEANING: I accept.]
There is something beautiful in the subtlety of that exchange, in the attention that each party must pay to the motivations and desires of the other. It is civilized, in the truest sense of that word: it does not permit insensitivity or indifference.
But high-power distance communication works only when the listener is capable of paying close attention, and it works only if the two parties in a conversation have the luxury of time, in order to unwind each other's meanings. It doesn't work in an airplane cockpit on a stormy night with an exhausted pilot trying to land at an airport with a broken glide scope.
posted
I almost feel like Japan would've been improved greatly had it actually became the 49th State.
Posts: 12931 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
It might have been, in some ways. But the losses would have far, far outweighed the gains for both of us, IMO.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Also if by some miracle they had voted them in, I would expect them to be out again by now. Japan is a very independently minded country.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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