A few years ago, while General Abizaid was still CENTCOM commander, I flew a C-17 into Cairo to pick him up after a meeting. While I sat on the parking ramp with my engines running, knocking out checklists for the next takeoff, I looked out the window and saw General Abizaid moving among a circle of grinning Egyptian military officers. He was shaking hands, talking, doing the kinds of things a combatant commander is supposed to do: keeping our alliances strong at a time when the situation in Iraq was critical. Because he is fluent in Arabic, I presume he was doing at least some of this in Arabic. I remember thinking, Wow. This is why language matters.
Claude Almansi on 27 Feb 09Will the Chinese people rise above cyber-vigilantism and use the Internet to build a just and fair society governed by accountable leaders? Or will the majority be be happy to wield their new-found powers of online speech in random fashion? That's really up to them. People like Liu Xiaoyuan and Yang Hengjun and a number of others have been raising such questions. It's hard to know whether people beyond the elite intelligentsia will pay attention to such concerns. This is why the suppression and censorship of Cultural Revolution history in China is so dangerous. If people could freely write and debate about what happened under Mao, history would have less chance of repeating itself.
