To those advocating wholesale "integration" by those undertaking exchange tours: in days gone by, when very short hairstyles were considered un-officerlike, would you have expected an incoming "high and tight"-styled US exchange officer to grow his hair out to a more respectable length? Of course not. It would have been very rude to have asked, and it would have removed some of the cultural "texture" that exchanges are meant to foster. The linked story is directly analogous: the only discourtesy was on the part of the American general, who should have established that he was on firm disciplinary ground before broaching such a subject.