The Industry of Turning Tragedies into "Enormous Successes"!

[Harold F. Schiffman]

The Industry of Turning Tragedies into "Enormous Successes"!

Sunday 28 January 2007


In an indirect difference between secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and
Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese language at the University of
Pennsylvania about the meaning of the term "wei-ji", no wise person will
hesitate to trust the language professor rather than Rice especially in
the light of Rice's own confession that she does not read Chinese, but "I
am told that the Chinese character for crisis is wei-ji, which means both
danger and opportunity", she said in Riyadh. "And I think that states it
very well. We'll try to maximize the opportunity". But Victor H. Mair, a
professor of Chinese language said "a whole industry of pundits and
therapists has grown up around this one grossly inaccurate formulation".
He said the character "ji" actually means "incipient moment" or a "crucial
point". Thus, he said, wi-ji "is indeed a genuine crisis, a dangerous
moment, a time when things start to go awry".

The difference between the real meaning of "wei-ji" which is rampant with
danger and between the meaning as conveyed to Ms. Rice as presenting an
opportunity is greatly similar to the difference between what is truly
happening in the Middle East versus what is conveyed to Ms. Rice about the
Middle East and is also similar to what needs to be done in order to make
the Middle East a more peaceful and secure region versus policy papers
written to Ms. Rice concerning what needs to be done in order to achieve
stability and security in the Middle East.

As Ms. Rice volunteers to translate a Chinese idiom without any knowledge
of the Chinese language, she also volunteers to suggest a map for
"reordering" a "Middle East" she has no knowledge of its language, people,
culture or even history, committing in both cases a vital error which is
by far more dangerous in the second case. The problem is that the error
made by Secretary Rice affects the lives of millions of people in the
Middle East as the people here do not have the luxury Ms. Rice has of
viewing Baghdad from 37.000 feet from where the city seemed sparkling and
calm! Iraqis have to live there among death squads and kidnappers and
criminal gangs who have turned Iraq into an absolute state of anarchy.
A similar difference was detected by EU Foreign Policy chief Javier
Solana, who was struck during a tour Saturday of West Bank Arab towns on
Jerusalem's eastern slopes by the growth of settlements and the barrier
[apartheid wall] cutting into land that Palestinians want for a state, or
rather grapping the Palestinians land to give it to settlers. What would
it talk to shake top politicians of the world out of the five stars life
they are leading to notice the dire reality and disastrous way of life
that their decisions are causing to ordinary people of all faiths and
ethnicities who only want to live happily with their children? What would
it take to show vice president Cheney that what American policy has scored
in Iraq is not "enormous successes" but enormous chaos, and how would he
react if someone asked him to send his daughter to live in Iraq, not in
the green zone, and to face the danger and death Iraqi women are facing
everyday, would he then change his opinion about the "enormous successes"
and try to find a way to protect his daughter?

One would have hoped that decision makers in the world are able to see
that is happening away from their private jets and very comfortable
offices, because they are supposed to understand and protect the lives of
ordinary people and not to inflict unprecedented suffering on them with
every sunrise and sunset.


http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=7818

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