Oh, so TIBETANS were to blame for India-China brawl getting out of hand!

From The New York Times, today:

Details of the [June 15] incident remain sketchy and impossible to verify independently, but according to some accounts in the Indian news media, a tense, but manageable situation spiraled out of control because inexperienced replacements from other parts of Tibet did not observe the usual protocols for defusing confrontations.

The NYT report, headlined China’s Military Provokes Its Neighbors, but the Message Is for the United States
 is typed by the paper's Bureau Chief in Beijing, Steven Lee Meyers. As you might imagine, Mr Meyers is in a delicate position, and as you can see from the headline he was focused on painting with a broad brush; he had little to say about the brawl. But I would appreciate it if he had named even one of those Indian news media -- as he does in the next paragraph while discussing estimates of the number of Chinese troops killed in the brawl. 

Absent accreditation, we don't know from the Times report whether any of the sources used by "Indian media" were official Indian ones. I would find that unlikely, unless the officials were carrying water for China or pandering to Indians who don't want the conflict with China to escalate.

It is possible that China's military uses several native Tibetans for border patrol in that region because the natives are fully acclimated to long periods of exertion at high altitude. But we know from photographs of the weapon China's troops used against Indian ones that these weren't devised on the spot, although they were fashioned to look homemade. And it would have taken training for troops to wield such weapons -- iron bars studded with nails and wrapped in barbed wire -- at such close quarters  

So it would be preposterous to claim or even insinuate that "inexperienced" troops were responsible for the deadly assault.

It was a premeditated sneak attack on Indian troops. The tactic was to use the weapons to force as many Indian troops as possible over a cliff before the Indians could rally.     

Finally, for Mr Meyers' benefit, the assault had nothing to do with China sending messages to the USA.

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