Stephen Hadley is the National Security Advisor to the President of the United States. By all accounts he’s an intelligent man who should know the difference between Nepal and Tibet. So why did he, while talking to Stephanopoulos last Sunday about whether Bush would attend the Olympic opening ceremony, say Nepal every single time he meant to say Tibet? [via Saja]
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That’s seven times that he gets the basic geographic issue at hand completely wrong. Here are just a few examples from a transcript:
“The way to deal with the issue of Nepal is not by some — a statement that you’re not going to the opening ceremonies and say, therefore, I checked the Nepal box… What he’s doing on Nepal is what we think the international community ought to be doing, which is approaching the Chinese privately through diplomatic channels and sending a very firm message of concern for human rights, a concern for what’s happening in Nepal, urging the Chinese government to understand that it is in their interest to reach out to representatives of the Dalai Lama, and to show, while the whole world is watching China, that they are determined to treat their citizens with dignity and respect. There is an opportunity here.” [Link]
Meanwhile, Stephanopoulos, who showed himself so adept at playing gotcha politics on Wednesday night didn’t correct even Hadley once.
Yes, Hadley is clearly referring to Tibet in context, and the two countries are in the same region. But if the national security advisor was to confuse Saudi Arabia with Iran, that would be news worthy, wouldn’t it? How about China and North Korea?
However, when he confuses Nepal (an independent country emerging from a dictatorship by a Hindu ruler) with Tibet (a conquered country under a communist dictatorship), the NYT buries the mistake at the very end of their article, mentioning in passing that the White House has confirmed that Hadley “misspoke”.
Bess, AK – the reason I raised this was not because I would expect the ordinary American citizen to know how to say Iraq, I feel happy if they just know where it is. For that matter I don’t expect even Bush or someone on Fox news to know, all these folks are beyond that. However, when someone like Terry Gross on Fresh Air says it incorrectly on NPR – a station catering to the educated and mostly liberal crowd, and worse while interviewing a journo from the UK who says it correctly, and she is an interviewer I quite respect – or journalists from the Post or the NY Times on an interview or on some liberal show or other on TV, then I really get bugged since these are all supposed to be open minded and intelligent folks.
Or for that matter, often we hear that Americans are not liked in the middle east or some other parts but how often have we seen a frank discussion in the media here on why that is so and whether American foreign policy is arrogant or not. Because not many people even realize that it is. Or for that matter, a few days back the ambassador from Zimbabwe says on NPR that he does not care what Bush says since in his diplomatic interactions, Bush behaves arrogantly and treats diplomats from other countries inappropriately.
In the end it does not matter because being the most powerful nation in the world one can do all this without consequences. However, if it bothers someone, then there is a start to seeing what the problem is. I am not a hater, but these things do bother me sometimes.
i’m sorry, but i have to disagree here – i think we should hold our leaders and top media/analysts to a higher standard than this.
i also think discussion of the population at large is relevant because many politicians and others who influence or present politics are unable to get over this basic arrogance/ignorance, despite their professional capacities. i agree, it is one thing to do it as a layperson, but when you are in a position where you expect people to listen to your words and/or be influenced by them, you better bloody well make sure you don’t make such gaffes – because if you expect people to listen to what you have to say, it’s rational for them to question your credibility in light of such errors.
Well, saying I don’t expect this from Bush is hardly the same as saying I don’t expect this from any other leaders. Bush is an exception. And yes, my point is exactly what you say, I expect a lot more from the leaders and the media in the context of our discussion and instead I see none of it from a majority. Of all the Presidential candidates, none except Ron Paul was willing to criticize the overall strategy of US foreign policy (not just Iraq) and look where he got. But then, politicians have a lot more constraints, but what about the arrogance in the media. What explains that? Maybe they are catering to the masses, and the masses wont know more till the media tells them more and thus we have a deadlock. But that is exactly counter to the duties of the media, and thus what we have is a spineless and intellectually incurious media that tells us trifle little. As for the masses, they only know what the politicians and the media feeds them. Thus for now, we will continue hearing Nepal for Tibet and whatever the heck eye-rack is! At least Obama knows how to say Pakistan – small mercies.
Hey Anna, Sandhya, What happened to “poetry friday”.
I can get all this political b.s. on any other blog site too.
C’mon ladies, dole out your weekly doses of intellectual upliftment.
Chachaji, Are you afraid you will be deported if you criticize Hadley?
I don’t know how intelligent he is, but back in the day, Stephen Hadley was an excellent swing bowler.
Hey hey – yellow card! Disagree, but don’t be disagreeable. Argue the position, not the person. You know this, Neale.
Wow, chachaji, you are real learned-like. Mine just say “Fruit of the Loom”.
Right. That’s why I wear boxers.
54 · Blog_Prowler said
why is that directed only to the ladies?
’cause .. the whole goddam whitehouse is filled with shitheads!
24 · Ennis said
It is not a matter of what he is to you. Dictatorship and Monarchy are two completely different systems of governance.
You seem to be familiar with the term “absolute monarch”, and that would have been the right term to use.
Are they? I’ve never seen that distinction honored. A dictator with a crown on his head is an absolute monarch.
44 · MD said
The Obama reference was a poor joke on my part, nothing serious.
Being an absolute monarch today when almost the entire world has democracy in some form or the other is not the same as in Ashoka’s time when that was pretty much the only system around. I guess that’s what Ennis is talking about?
I don’t know that this bigotry is particularly soft. I mean, it bears out the “can’t tell them apart” thing in a dangerous manner, like John McCain easily confusing Shia with Sunni. On a scale of ethnic evaluation, maybe like if Pranab Mukherjee kept calling Sweden Finland.
49 · bess said
Huh. How about that. I always thought it was “burMINGum,” like, you know, land of the mingers. Learn something new every day, tell you hwut.
Ennis,
I am from Nepal, and am baffled and disturbed about the “Hindu dictator” bit.
80% of my country’s population is Hindu; anybody coming to power (including Prachanda) will most likely be Hindu. Are you going to start using the sobriquet “Hindu” on everyone who has ruled Nepal previously and henceforth, Prachanda, the “Hindu Maoist”, Koirala, the “Hindu democrat”, anyone. The religion seems pretty redundant to mention.
On your rebuttal, let me point out that the Shahs ruled Nepal for 400 years and over time they created this halo around being descended from Vishnu. They had come to power by winning over 50-odd kingdoms. Their descent from Vishnu was not the basis for their rise to power. The myth was never very strong in the country except among a few royalists, and was never strong enough to sustain them.
The word “dictator”, I would think you agree, has negative (brutal, repressive et al) connotations. Using it on all absolute monarchs across history would therefore necessitate the corollary that human civilization has been seriously sad almost throughout.
In my view, anybody in Gyanendra’s shoes would have mostly taken the same action steps as he did. Did he have a choice? He came to throne facing an insurgency threatening to split the nation, a group of politicians who were diabolical and opportunistic (at some point I had lost count the number of PMs we had). For him, the only way out was to assume power and try to get the country out of this mess. That he failed, and popular opinion (tarnished by alleged involvement in Birendra’s death) having turned against him, we are now free to cast him as a villain.
To put it briefly, he was thrust on to a mess of a situation with nobody ready to help him, he tried to do something about it, and failed, and quietly bowed out. It might currently be fashionable to castigate him, but would request you to desist from doing so quickly.
I use it in a descriptive sense – a ruler unconstrained by a constitution. You can be a benign dictator or a malign one, but the point is that such a ruler is (a) non-democratic and (b) non-constitutional.
I was trying to draw attention to the fact that neither country (Tibet nor Nepal) is governed democratically, nor do its citizens have civil-rights protected by a constitution.
I agree that it was never the only basis of their rule, and that at the end it was insufficient to keep him as an absolute monarch, but Nepal is widely known as being the world’s only remaining Hindu monarchy.
Not really. A king is chosen/loved by the people, a dictator is a self-appointed/usually hated ruler. I have friends from Nepal and they have no doubt monarchy worked well in Nepal and the people loved the king. According to them maoists are a bunch of hooligans using the democratic platform for personal gains and not for equality.
brain hiccough most likely. Ever see that Ali G interview with Pat Buchanan, whom I dislike but accept as very bright, where he uses a Jedi mind trick to get him to replace WMD with BLT ?
This is probably sampling error. The Maoists are thugs but just like Indian Naxals they required extremely corrupt/malignant rule in order to gain sympathy. If the King is “loved” it is because the bar is set low (i.e. he doesn’t commit matricide/patricide/fratricide and speed around Kathmandu running people over). The Maoists are no good but it was desperation that brought the Nepalese to this point. I’m happy that the Bhutanese king will spare his people this fate by introducing elements of democracy.
57 · Ennis said
Sorry, got carried away.
“The only way I can get sleep at night is by imagining a secret cabal of highly competent pupprtmasters who are handing the important decisions while our elected politicians debate flag burning and the definition of marriage…” -Scott Adams
Erdd! More proof that Stephanopoulos is an incompetent, smug, dum arse!
What we really need is the opinion of a knowledgeable clinical psychiatrist. Are repeated verbal slips like this a well known phenomenon, like deja-vu and Freudian slips and my wife saying, for a period of a year or so, Hong Kong every time she meant Tokyo …And she has lived in both cities!
And I contend that my lousy punctuation is some mental phenomenon of great scientific interest too.
66 · Amrita said
John McCain was lying on purpose. He repeated the same lie three or four times before it was reported by the press. Neoconservatives at the Pentagon are preparing the ground for an attack on Iran. Bush spokesholes lied about the smoking gun being a mushroom cloud before the attack on Iraq. Until recently many Americans thought Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks. That’s democracy. You can fool most of the people most of the time.