Watch Your Mouth

A scandal created around the offensive remarks of Brigadier General Neil Tolley, the head of U.S. special forces in South Korea, is rapidly increasing. Inexperienced in the international political “boiling pot,” the general proudly announced in a conference held in Florida that his people, together with South Korean colleagues, executed a secret operation in the territory of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. In the process of their investigations, they discovered no less than four tunnels in the demilitarized zone, as well as 20 aerodromes with underground constructions. Taking the number of discoveries into consideration, the landing forces had only light armaments and left the territory of a potential enemy unseen, according to Tolley.

However, the American mass media that quoted Tolley was not in a hurry to give out the sensational news. A few hours after the frankness of this high-positioned military man, American forces in South Korea commented on the news that came out in the press. Because it was impossible to blame a “language barrier”* in this situation, as the American mass media had written it, the [military’s] explanation sounded weak: “The information source was cited incorrectly.” One could only imagine the size of the tempest in the White House after Tolley’s public revelations. In telling about American parachute landing forces in North Korea, the general not only revealed secret information, but also put Washington and Seoul in awkward positions by actually accusing his employers of bombing activity against a sovereign government. The accident also gave Pyongyang a serious argument in the conference about nuclear weapons – as though the place where American action was occurring presented a real threat to the existence of North Korea.

So what did the general say, and what he did not say? According to the command of American forces, the media’s citations and references were falsely credited to him. In reality, “American forces never went on a mission to the north.”* However, it is impossible to believe that the journalists, who were far off from yellow press, that were present in that pretty respectable conference were unable to correctly record Tolley’s revelations and made such a professional error.

An additional lack of political correctness is created by the environment in Korea. The argument among Republicans in the U.S. Congress is not yet settled. Republicans recommended that Barack Obama should return nuclear weapons to South Korea, which, according to them, would “lower the threat from the North.”* As a response to this initiative, the Pentagon was forced to make an announcement to reassure that it is not going to follow through with the above proposal. And there is the new issue of addressing paratrooper forces carrying out missions in foreign territories.

These kinds of accidents again demonstrate the vulnerability of global security constructions and make any government that disagrees with American geopolitical plans look like a potential target. There is no government that can feel completely secure when these types of accidents happen, and no government can believe in the strength of international law. Tolley successfully accomplished his mission to carry out an investigation on the territory of a potential enemy, North Korea, but he was unable to master the language.

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The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs came out with an official statement regarding the presentation of U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul. In a speech given before a group of students, he claimed that an instance of “bribery” took place in Kyrgyzstan, coming from Moscow and intended for the liquidation of the American military base in Manas. As the Russian external politics department argues, whatever McFaul said crosses the boundaries of diplomatic etiquette and shows the “deliberate distortion of aspects.” The statement also calls the ambassador’s claims “unprofessional,” regarding his accusation that Russia never elaborates on edgy international topics. The Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry calls these types of claims “stunning.”

*Editor’s Note: The original quotation, while accurately translated, could not be verified in English.