Has He Met the Secretary of State?

While the racial nature of his comments is troublesome, Aso does have a point about the suspicion many Middle Easterners have regarding the U.S. If his point is that there is a role for Japan in Middle East diplomacy, well and good, but how about some tact?

Americans are “no good” compare to Japanese?

Foreign Minister Aso of Japan has been quoted, saying that with all the problems in the Middle East, only “yellow faces” can be trusted in diplomacy.  “Blond, blue-eyed Westerners probably can’t be as successful at Middle East diplomacy as Japanese with their ‘yellow faces.’”  He is discriminating against many Americans and Europeans in this world, without giving it much thought.  He assumes that everyone who fits that description is “no good” and aren’t productive.  The Japanese claims that they can do things in the Middle East that Americans cannot.  The Japanese government is criticizing and challenging the power of the United States.  Japan feels that since they never started any wars or exploited the Middle East that they would be more successful, than the United States.  They think they can be more successful, but they haven’t tried in doing so.  FM Abe’s government had said many discriminatory things in the past, such as calling women as “birth-giving machines” or the war in Iraq as “immature”.  He believes that yellow faces would be more trustworthy, rather than the blond hair and blue eyes. 

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/03/22/japan.aso.reut/index.html

technorati tags:Japan, Middle-East