The beef war is over with no winners

Well, that ends the beef war.

Taiwan won't try to renegotiate the protocol with Uncle Sam. It would be submitted to the Legislative Yuan not for ratification, because it isn't a treaty, but to be filed for record. People are free to boycott risky American beef and offal, with supermarkets setting aside special shelves for them to warn against involuntary as well as unwitting consumption. That's a caveat emptor.

The outcome is that the administration has lost face for failure to exercise due disaster control; the opposition party did not succeed in startlingly embarrassing the government, for risky beef was first allowed to enter Taiwan while President Chen Shui-bian was in office; and Uncle Sam has unwittingly alienated the people of Taiwan who believe the Americans are their best friends abroad.

There is no need whatsoever for the Americans to estrange the people of Taiwan by helping cattle raisers to earn a few million dollars more a year by selling ground and bone-in beef as well as offal.

Perhaps, official Washington has forgotten an anti-American riot in Taipei in 1957. The riot, triggered by an innocent misunderstanding, toppled the Cabinet of Premier C.K. Yen.

　On May 23, an American army tribunal court-martialed Master Sergeant Robert G.. Reynolds on murder charges. Reynolds, accused of shooting to death Liu Tzu-jen, a contraband broker, was acquitted after a not-guilty verdict reached by an all-American jury. Mrs. Liu, the widow, started a sit-in protest against the acquittal in front of the American embassy in Taipei at about 10 a.m. on May 24. Spectators gathered around her, and began calling for retribution. They turned into a mob at about 1 p.m., smashing their way into the embassy compound. Another mob attacked the U.S. Information Service in Taipei. A few protestors were arrested and the mob besieged the Taipei city police headquarters, demanding immediate release of the arrested. When the demand was turned down, the mob attacked the police. The riot was placed under control shortly before midnight. One person was killed, while 10 others were injured, one of them seriously. Some Americans sustained different degrees of injury.

The riot arose due to a misunderstanding by Taipei district prosecutors present at the court-martial as observers. They were not familiar with the process of law in the United States, where an accused man is released on acquittal and public prosecutors cannot appeal. In Taiwan, prosecutors can. So they believed the immediate release of Sergeant Reynolds was unfair and so told that to the people gathering before the U.S. Military Advisory Assistance Group headquarters in Taipei, where the tribunal heard the Reynolds case.

For lack of understanding, Uncle Sam may easily become a target of attack in friendly Taiwan.

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