US State Dept's Crowley Resigns Over WikiLeaks Remark, But He Should Have Resigned Over #Japan's Tsunami Remark

...as far as I'm concerned.

It was reported in the Japanese media (here's one from Sankei Shinbun, in Japanese) right after the earthquake that P. J. Crowley, chief spokesman of the US State Department, tweeted about Japan's earthquake of March 11.

The particular tweet on March 11 was later removed, but from what I can figure from the Japanese translation that was reported there, Mr. Crowley seems to have called the democratic movement that's sweeping the north Africa and Middle East a tidal wave - tsunami, and equated that tsunami with what just hit Japan.

Many Japanese, shaken right after the largest earthquake they have ever known, took his tweet to mean Mr. Crowley was equating the democratic movement in the Middle East with the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and he considered both to be good, albeit implicitly.

The Japanese may be overreacting, but Crowley's tweet was insensitive to say the least. And it came right after Kevin Maher, director of the State Department's Office of Japan and American Consulate General in Naha, Okinawa, was fired for calling Okinawans "lazy" and "master extortionists". (That was on March 10, one day before the earthquake...)

Here's Crawley's tweet, as I reconstitute from the Japanese translation back into English (and therefore not exactly what Mr. Crawley may have written):

I'm looking forward to seeing (democratic) tsunami rushing to all of Middle East. Right now I'm seeing a different kind of tsunami rushing to Japan.

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