As part of his Peace-Through-Powerlessness policy, President Ma Ying-jeou on Thursday reduced the frequency of Taiwan's military live-fire exercises, so they'll now be held biannually biennially instead of annually.
Give the government points for creativity, however. They're not reducing Taiwan's military readiness to ingratiate themselves with the Butchers of Beijing. Why heavens, no. They're doing it because all that analysis stuff is just too darn hard:
The military will stage its major war games every other year instead of holding them annually, Minister of National Defense Chen Chao-min (陳肇敏) said yesterday morning.
“Because the cycle of the live-fire Han Kuang Exercises is too short, making it difficult for the military to have adequate time to correct and adjust shortcomings found in each drill, we have decided to hold the series of drills every other year instead of annually,” Chen told a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee. [emphasis added]
Fortunately for Western civilization, the planners of Operation Overlord weren't quite so dilatory after live-fire exercises in anticipation of the Normandy landings were conducted at the end of April '44.
Had Eisenhower and Montgomery followed the KMT's standard, D-Day might still have happened -- sometime in 1946.
As it was, the military planners of D-Day instead put their noses to the grindstone, figured out what went wrong during Exercise Tiger, and launched the invasion. And they did all that not in two year's time, but in ONE MONTH'S.
It's an unfair comparison, really. Because the allies in 1944 were serious about their nations' defense, while the KMT of 2008 is most assuredly not.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
POSTSCRIPT: The runner-up for this week's award would have to be the reason floated for not renaming a couple of Chinese pandas, which will soon arrive in Taiwan. (Their names, when spoken together, sound like the Chinese word for "Unification"). From Tuesday's Taipei Times:
[...]
In this political burlesque, government officials harp on the rights of pandas and request a police motorcade to ensure a smooth drive from the airport to Taipei Zoo. Limbs of Taiwanese can be broken, blood of Taiwanese can be spilled, Tibetans can be spirited to the hills of Neihu (內湖) in the dead of night, but the pandas must be comfortable. Men can be jailed, beaten, drugged or executed without a word of condemnation, but we should respect the names the pandas have grown accustomed to in order not to confuse them.
A more likely explanation is that Beijing has communicated that VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN if the pandas are ever given new names. But instead hearing the truth, Taiwanese are treated to cock and bull excuses that these animals have some sort of "right" to the names Beijing's propagandists cynically attached to them.
Which reminds me of my mother's dog. The one I've dubbed, over my mother's objections, "Stinky".
A cruel animal abuser I must be. But it's a funny thing: Whenever I call him that, he never gets QUITE SO CONFUSED OR OFFENDED as to turn down the the dog biscuits I give him . . .
Sorry--just a quick note: biannually is twice a year; biennially is once every two years. (You don't need to post this/can delete it.) -J.
Posted by: Jeff | December 22, 2008 at 08:59 AM
*
*
D'oh. That would kind of screw up the whole point of the post, wouldn't it?
Anyways, thanks. I'll fix that right away. And if it's all right with you, I'll leave your comment up. 'Cause I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who makes that goofy mistake.
(BTW, I have no idea what's wrong with Typepad's comment counter. It seems to be inflating the number of comments to an absurd degree.)
Posted by: The Foreigner | December 22, 2008 at 06:51 PM