Blogosaurus

Found this revealing little anecdote in James Mann's terrific book Rise of the Vulcans, a non-partisan account of how the Bush administration came to think the way it does on foreign policy, which would be an excellent book with which to shut up people who froth "Halliburton" or "Neocon" and think they've explained everything if, that is, they could be trusted to read something solidly researched and not merely out to score cheap points from whichever direction. Anyway, here's the story (pp. 297-8) which I, at least, have never seen mentioned anywhere:

A delegation of fourteen journalists from local Chinese television stations happened to be touring the United States as guests of the Institute of International Education. Inside a meeting room, as a large-screen television set aired the pictures of the planes hitting the World Trade Center, American onlookers saw to their astonishment that a few of the Chinese journalists were laughing or cheering.

The incident touched off a brief, intense debate inside the State Department... The separate State Department unit for educational and cultural affairs... argued that what looked like laughter might have been merely a sign of tension or embarassment; perhaps the behavior was just a reflection of cultural differences between Americans and Chinese. Moreover, these doves argued, the journalists were potentially important people... the internal wrangling made its way up the State Department bureaucracy to [#2 under Colin Powell Richard] Armitage...

The deputy secretary was in no mood for a Solomonic splitting of differences or for cultural relativism. "Send them home," Armitage ordered. "These people ought to be on the next plane out of here." ... Accounts of the dispute and of Armitage's handling of it made the rounds of the State Department. It was taken as a sign of a new era, one in which Americans would reject long-winded explanations of the inexplicable.