Backtalk! Reap the Whirlwind

Backtalk! Reap the Whirlwind
September 26, 2001

From Albert C., regarding The Strait Scoop
January 23, 2003

I usually enjoy your columns which are insightful and witty. But I have to admit I was disappointed with the one you wrote after 9/11. I do believe America may have made mistakes in dealing with Yugoslavia, North Korea, Iraq, and Palestine as you have said. But the way you wrote about the issues was so one sided and biased against the US You seem to be forgetting the huge roles that Slobodan Milosevic, Kim Il Jung, Saddam Hussein, and Yasser Arafat played in each of these trouble spots. I thought this was unfair. But the real reason I wanted to write to you was that do you agree with China's newfound position on world issues that line up with America's. The Chinese seem to be backing the US hard-line opinion on Iraq and is helping to resolve the crisis on the Korean peninsula by pressuring the North Koreans to stop misbehaving (It is alleged that both Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao loathe Kim IL Jung almost as much as George W. Bush does). Do you agree with China's new pragmatic foreign policy which has replaced its original foreign policy that supported Third World revolutionary movements and governments by aligning itself more closely to the United States?

Bevin Chu replies:

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. Although we disagree, I am happy to see that we can disagree without being disagreeable.

You wrote: "You seem to be forgetting the huge roles that Slobodan Milosevic, Kim IL Jung, Saddam Hussein, and Yasser Arafat played in each of these trouble spots. I thought this was unfair."

Antiwar.com's many other contributors have covered the Balkans and the Middle East in far greater detail than I have. In any given week, one need only browse through the dozens of articles posted under Viewpoints to get the real story "Behind the Headlines". I don't think I really need to get into this one.

Beijing's "new" foreign policy is anything but new. It is old. It is only "new" to the western media establishment, which has clung to long obsolete impressions formed during the early days of the Cold War. Western analysts agree in retrospect that Beijing's alleged Cold War era "aggression" was never all that energetic, that Moscow was the real offender when it came to fomenting global Marxist Leninist insurgency. Besides Beijing's foreign and domestic economic policies were completely overhauled when Deng Xiaoping took over. This is old news. Very old news.

Beijing is not really endorsing Bush's unwarranted aggression against Iraq, it is merely not actively opposing it. The Bush administration knows this. The reason should be obvious. Prior to 9-11 China was being set up by Washington as the the greatest threat to America's future in the post Cold War world. Now that the muzzle of Dubya's gun is pointed at somebody else's head, Beijing is understandably not eager to attract attention back to itself. That hardly constitutes endorsement of Bush's megalomaniacal policies.

Reap the Whirlwind

Reap the Whirlwind
Bevin Chu
September 25, 2001

"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."
-- Hosea 8:7

Executive Summary: When our Washington elites funded and trained Afghanistan's Mujahadeen "freedom fighters" to harass the Soviet Union, America sowed the wind. On September 11, 2001, if our talking heads are to be believed, Osama bin Laden, one of numerous Dogs of War unleashed upon the world by our CIA, took a bite out of his former master. Like the ancient Israelites who ignored their prophet Hosea, Americans ignored our prophets George Washington and John Quincy Adams, and are now reaping the whirlwind.

Divine Wind

"For Israel has forgotten his Maker, and built palaces; and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; but I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour his strongholds."
-- Hosea 8:14


The World Trade Center on Fire

The terrorists struck on Tuesday September 11, on a clear Manhattan morning. Two hijacked civilian airliners, one plane for each of the twin 110 story towers, were aimed directly at New York's World Trade Center towers, and flown into them head on, "kamikaze" style.

An hour or so later, the two burning towers crumbled and disintegrated, one after the other, in agonizing slow motion, collapsing into roiling clouds of dust and debris before our very eyes.

The date the terrorists chose to launch their highly-coordinated surprise attack was no accident. It was not the result of tossing a dart at a calendar while blindfolded. September 11 is 9/11 or 911, the number the terrorists knew their shocked and disoriented victims would be dialing, begging emergency personnel to "Please, help me!"

Like criminal masterminds depicted in Hollywood thrillers like "Se7en" (1995, directed by David Fincher, written by Andrew Kevin Walker) or "The Bone Collector," (1999, directed by Phillip Noyce, written by Jeffery Deaver and Jeremy Iacone) the terrorists were taunting us, anticipating each of our reactions in advance like an evil chessmaster. Even the names of the airlines targeted, "American" and "United," were likely intended as cruel irony.

Fortified Cities

When the World Trade Center towers were first topped off in the early 70s, I was an apprentice at I.M. Pei and Partners uptown at Fifth and Madison. Even then, from a purely aesthetic perspective, I never cared for the WTC. They were featureless, scaleless white prisms with closely spaced thin vertical lines on all four elevations, and little else. Mies van der Rohe's masterpiece Seagram's Building is simple, elegant. The WTC towers were merely plain, boring. Nevertheless like millions of others, architects and laymen alike, I had gotten used to seeing them, and could no longer imagine "Noo Yawk Ciddy" without them.

Part of me said the images I was watching live on CNN weren't real. What I was watching was CGI. Computer generated images. Special effects. Trailers from the latest big budget Hollywood blockbuster. "Independence Day," "Armageddon," "Deep Impact."

Part of me however, knew better.

"So it finally happened," I muttered to myself.

"Now do you get it? Finally? Now do you understand why libertarians have insisted the World's Only Remaining Superpower could not get away with dispatching carrier task forces and stealth bombers all over the world, casually inflicting "collateral damage" from 15,000 ft. on anyone we labeled "evil," blithely assuming the American public would remain safe and snug, immune from deadly retaliation?"

Our Founding Fathers' Foreign Policy, A Strange Thing

"The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible."
-- George Washington's Farewell Address, September 19, 1796

"[America] does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."
-- John Quincy Adams
Secretary of State to James Monroe and author of the Monroe Doctrine, 1821

"I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing."
-- Hosea 8:12

Anti-interventionists get no satisfaction out of saying "We told you so!" The disaster is too horrific to permit gloating. But the fact is we did tell you so. We at antiwar.com, lewrockwell.com, fff.org, among others, warned there would be hell to pay for our uninvited, unwelcome global meddling, but neither wing of our One Party political establishment paid us the slightest attention.

Instead Benevolent Global Hegemonists on the right and Humanitarian Interventionists on the left portrayed themselves as sophisticated practioners of realpolitik, and dismissed libertarian anti-interventionists who quoted George Washington and John Quincy Adams chapter and verse as quaintly irrelevant ivory tower utopians.

Until a "nameless, faceless enemy" struck a crippling blow against America's financial and political nerve centers.

Plant Melons, Get Melons

"You have plowed iniquity, you have reaped injustice, you have eaten the fruit of lies."
-- Hosea 10:13

"Plant melons, get melons. Plant beans, get beans."
-- Chinese Folk Expression

Why did terrorists hijack Boeing 757s and 767s belonging to American Airlines and United Airlines and conspire to crash them into the White House, the Capitol Building and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.?

Why didn't they hijack airliners belonging to Air Canada and crash them into Canada's Parliament buildings overlooking the Ottawa River? Why didn't they hijack airliners belonging to Aero Mexico and crash them into the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City's Zocalo?

Why didn't they attack Bern and Stockholm, European capitols geographically far more accessible from terrorist bases in the Middle East?

Plant Beans, Get Beans

"Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of steadfast love..."
-- Hosea 10:12

The terrorists attacked America and not America's neighbors Canada and Mexico, because Canada and Mexico, whatever their other faults, mind their own damned business. Canada and Mexico don't hold guns to the heads of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other Muslim states, demanding that they obey Washington's high handed dictates, "or else."

The terrorists attacked America, not Switzerland and Sweden because Switzerland and Sweden are politically neutral nations which have wisely rejected foreign military adventurism.

This is not rocket science. Even Bubbya ought to be able to understand this without "Diplomacy for Dummies" Cliff's Notes thoughtfully provided by Condoleeza Rice.

Political neutrality, by the way, is not "isolationism." As anyone who has ever heard of Credit Suisse and Ericsson knows, Switzerland and Sweden couldn't be any more thoroughly integrated into the European and world communities.

The economic success of these highly civilized European powerhouses demonstrates there is nothing "unrealistic" or "utopian" about advanced nations maintaining scrupulously anti-interventionist foreign policies.

The political viability of these neutral nation states puts the lie to preposterous Blue Team assertions that "America has no alternative but to be an imperialist hegemon, because it's still a dangerous world out there."

Know the Enemy and Know Yourself

"Because you have trusted in your chariots and in the multitude of your warriors, therefore the tumult of war shall arise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be destroyed..."
-- Hosea 10:13-14

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
-- Sun Tzu on the Art of War

The Bush administration never saw it coming. Golden Girl Sovietologist Condoleeza Rice, "veteran" Cold Warriors Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Armitage, Paul Wolfowitz, even bonafide Desert Storm hero Colin Powell, failed utterly to anticipate the terrorists' "asymmetrical response."

Chalmers Johnson, Charley Reese, Joseph Sobran saw it coming, a mile away. So did we at antiwar.com and numerous other libertarian and anti-interventionist websites.

Why didn't they?

Bubbya's "expert team of seasoned foreign policy veterans" never saw it coming because they didn't know the enemy. They didn't know the enemy because they refused to understand the enemy. They refused to understand the enemy because they were attached to their own narcissistic, self-serving, sophomoric answer to the rhetorical question "Why do they hate us?"

Their answer, in case you went to the refrigerator during Bubbya's speech before Congress is, "They hate our freedoms."

Right.

The real answer, as libertarians know, is the Islamic world hates us because our government has been waging undeclared war against them, directly or indirectly, ever since the end of WWII and the establishment of the Israeli state.

The Bush administration never saw it coming because they reduced the enemy to a "nameless, faceless evil," to "Nintendo villains" to be dealt with from 15,000 feet using F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters and B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, or Donald "Darth" Rumsfeld's trillion dollar TMD/NMD "Star Wars" Death Star.

Bubbya's "expert team of seasoned foreign policy veterans" never saw it coming because as much as they might despise the enemy, he was nevertheless an intelligent human being, eminently capable of highly creative "lateral thinking" in his relentless search for ways around the American Empire's overwhelming superiority in military hardware.

Bubbya, Meet Osama. You Have a Lot in Common

"We have met the enemy, and he is us."
-- Pogo the Possum, by Walt Kelly

With the World Trade Center tragedy Americans can no longer evade the knowledge that Osama bin Laden is America. Today's America, that is. Not the vital American republic of our visionary Founding Father George Washington, but the decadent American Empire of George W. Bush, the latest in a tiresome secession of myopic buffoons to occupy the Oval Office.

Osama bin Laden is none other than Tyler Durden, the dangerously unpredictable, violence prone anarchist so deftly portrayed by Brad Pitt in the slyly subversive, mind-bending black comedy "Fight Club." (1999, directed by David Fincher and written by Chuck Palahniuk and Jim Uhls)

See:
A Film Review by James Berardinelli

We Americans are none other than "Ikea Boy," the materialistic, conformist Nerd without a Name played to perfection by Edward Norton, who belatedly awakens to the fact that he suffers from schizophrenia or "multiple personality disorder," and that Tyler Durden, the charismatic terrorist blowing up office towers in the city's financial district is in fact himself.

Osama bin Laden is us, in every conceivable sense. We supplied him with training, we supplied him with weapons, we supplied him with funds, we supplied him with media coverage, we even supplied him with an enemy to hate -- ourselves. And on one fateful Tuesday in September, we supplied our Victor Frankenstein monster with everything he needed, from jet airliners to towering skyscrapers, to wreak vengeance upon his creator.

The Lesson of History is... Nobody Ever Learns a Damned Thing from History

"In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels... I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression... or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations... that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism"
-- George Washington's Farewell Address, September 19, 1796

Our self-appointed World Policemen now have two choices.

They can insist that "We" have a Manifest Destiny to rid the world of "Them." They can denounce fellow Americans who reject war hysteria as "unpatriotic." They can bomb the "camel jockeys" and "ragheads" back into the stone age -- as if they weren't there already. They can replicate the Russians' mistakes in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and make new ones in the Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea.

Or, they can admit that the post Cold War world contains exactly zero strategic threats to the World's Only Remaining Superpower. They can admit their "bipartisan" policy of making endless enemies abroad has now cost thousands of fellow Americans their precious lives. And they can "Come home, America."

Do Good Ol' Boys George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Armitage and Paul Wolfowitz, Good Ol' Boy wannabe Condoleeza Rice and Odd Man Out Colin Powell understand the only way we can destroy the Osama bin Ladens of the world, is to stop creating them in the first place?

Libertarians desperately hope so.

But like George Washington, can libertarians, the intellectual heirs of our Founding Fathers, be blamed for entertaining grave doubts?

Appendix: Letter to the Arab American Institute

The following is a letter sent to the Arab American Institute following the WTC attack, slightly edited for style and emphasis.

To: Arab American Institute
From: Bevin Chu

Dear Sir/Madam,

As a first generation naturalized Chinese American, permit me to express my heartfelt sympathy for the plight of Arab Americans at this moment in time. I hope you believe me when I declare "I feel your pain."

For decades Hollywood thrillers such as "True Lies" lazily and callously stereotyped Arabs as terrorists and nothing else. More recently the collapse of the former Soviet Union has prompted a search for a new Evil Empire. The leading candidates for this unwelcome typecasting have been the Arab world and mainland China. Neo-Cold War thrillers such as Tom Clancy's "The Bear and the Dragon" now depict China and the Chinese as an implacable "Yellow Peril."

The powerful Taiwan Lobby, parenthetically, wields the same degree of influence over our media opinion makers and government policy makers as the powerful Israeli Lobby.

The recent EP-3 spyplane crisis in the South China Sea prompted numerous radio talk show hosts and a notorious National Review columnist, who is not even a American citizen, but an Englishman, to demand the herding of American citizens of Chinese descent into WWII Manzanar style concentration camps, without prior evidence of criminal wrongdoing, purely on the basis of their ethnic origin.

Demands that Arab Americans be subjected to similar treatment were chillingly depicted in the controversial Ed Zwick political thriller, "The Siege."

If America stands for anything at all, it stands for respect for the individual, for individual rights, individual freedom, individual liberty. America's philosophy of individualism means that assignment of both merit and blame must be made on an individual, not collective basis. A person is guilty only if he commits an evil act. A person is not guilty merely because he resembles another person who committed an evil act. Truck driver Reginald Denny was not guilty of what four white LAPD officers did to black motorist Rodney King merely because he was white.

Americans of all ethnic backgrounds must flatly reject the indiscriminate lumping of human beings, both fellow Americans and foreigners into crude categories, and tarring them with the same broad brush of unearned collective guilt. To do so is the diametric opposite of everything that made America a great nation.

Americans must not in our rush to "Defend American values!" trample roughshod over the most hallowed American value of all -- a deep and abiding respect for the Rights of the Sovereign Individual.

Sincerely,

Bevin Chu
Taipei, Taiwan, China

Backtalk! The Real China Threat

Backtalk! The Real China Threat
May 22, 2001

From Brian, regarding "The Real China Threat"
May 22, 2001

Brian: I agreed with Mr. Chu's point that the U.S. should avoid entangling itself in an Asian war over Taiwan.

Bevin Chu: Since Brian agrees with me on this crucial point, I am frankly delighted and could simply stop right here, as I have little more to say to him. Antiwar.com is an anti-interventionist website. Anti-intervention is its reason for being, its be all and end all. Antiwar.com is not Amnesty International. Antiwar.com is not Human Rights Watch.

Brian: Mr. Chu does rather adroitly avoid acknowledging that a majority of Taiwanese have no desire to reunify with mainland China as it currently exists.

Bevin Chu: "As it currently exists." The overwhelming majority demands eventual reunification when the time and conditions are ripe, and furthermore they are dead set against independence. I have been living here in Taipei since 1992, and I know exactly how people here feel. See my earlier pieces on Taiwan independence.

Brian: I also think he whitewashes the P.R.C.'s atrocious human rights record, an odd thing for a libertarian to do. China still routinely imprisons dissidents, religious leaders, scholars, and accused "spies".

Bevin Chu: I have aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews on the mainland. I dare say I care more about their well-being than William Kristol and Robert Kagan. With Cheney, Rumsfeld, Armitage and Wolfowitz in power I'm a damned sight more concerned about 17,000 to 21,000 US nukes raining down on their heads if Dubya does "whatever it takes" than I am about any of them getting arrested for political or religious dissent.

Brian: I congratulate China on its economic reforms which many of us would not have believed possible. It's great that the tax rate is so low but it doesn't do you much good if you're sitting in jail for daring to read something from the Internet that the authorities deem "anti-state". Political reform is not something to be sneered at. China may never be a western style democracy but its abuse of human freedom should be acknowledged and condemned.

Bevin Chu: China is China. America is America. Americans should condemn the American government's abuses. Chinese should condemn the Chinese government's abuses. Each nation's citizens are responsible for their own government's wrongdoing, not for foreign governments' wrongdoing.

Brian: I'm all for avoiding war and passionately opposed to covering up obvious truths. It seems to me that a true libertarian who opposes violations of freedom on American soil would hold other nations to the same standard. No war, no intervention, but tell the damn truth!

Bevin Chu: I typically refuse to discuss China's internal affairs with other Americans. To even broach the subject implies in principle that distant foreigners are somehow obligated to conform to arrogant and presumptuous Beltway interventionist expectations of what is "acceptable behavior." Chinese don't need or want Americans to "bear the white man's burden." They know from historical experience that to do so amounts to an invitation to foreign political elites posturing as altruist do-gooders to abuse the rights of Chinese in their own land. As long as China doesn't commit aggression against American sovereignty and territory, e.g., launch an invasion of Pearl Harbor, what happens inside China is none of America's business. China is 5,000 years old. The Chinese overthrew dozens of "unacceptable" regimes long before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, long before Columbus even landed in the Caribbean. If the Chinese don't like the government they have in Beijing, they will do something about it when and if they see fit.

Falungong blasts the Author of The China Desk

Falungong blasts the Author of The China Desk
Bevin Chu
May 12, 2001


Epoch Times: Why do the Sons of High Ranking KMT Officials run to the US and argue on behalf of the Chinese Communists?

Comment: The Epoch Times is the official mouthpiece of Falungong. Falungong meanwhile, is almost certainly a CIA front, pretending to represent domestic Chinese dissent against the Beijing authorities.

As a free market anarchist who opposes all monopolistic governments, I have no desire to champion any political regime.

But as an anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist, I have a powerful desire to expose neocolonialism and neoimperialism against the Chinese people, and for that matter, any people.

The Chinese people must not be equated with any political authority, either the KMT or the CCP, just as the American people must not be equated with the Republican or Democratic Parties. A political authority is not a country. A country is not a political authority. As I noted in an article years ago: "China is not Beijing. America is not Washington."

The Epoch Times probably understands these distinctions. But the Epoch Times being what it is, a mouthpiece for neocolonialism and neoimperialism, pretends that it believes individuals such as myself and George Koo are "Running Dogs for Beijing."

I consider the Epoch Times' character attacks against me a form of unintentional praise. In fact, I consider them a badge of honor.

-- Bevin Chu

为什么国民党的高干子弟跑到美国为中共粉饰、辩护？
(http://www.epochtimes.com)

【大纪元5月12日讯】 一个有趣的现象是：一方面，在中国大陆，专政机器正在严密监视、无情打击那些同台湾有著“说不清”关系的海外华人，这些人或多或少出身干部家庭，知道共产党一些秘密，在干部队伍中有人脉，一旦访问台湾，容易被特务机关吸收。高瞻、李少民、覃光广、徐泽荣、吴建民等被捕的海外人士，都撇不清这方面的嫌疑。问题是：他们怎么会轻易干这个呢？发人深思。

另一方面，台湾背景的一些国民党高干子弟，自七十年代台湾被踢出联合国以来，移民来到美国之后，却在为中共粉饰、辩护。他们所作所爲比大陆移民还左，比如纽约有个花俊雄，台湾人，简直就是共产党原教旨主义发言人，用各种场合为共产党张目，乐此不疲。加州有个George Koo，经常在网上爲中共罪大恶极的罪行(比如六四屠杀)进行辩护。“百人会”中也有一些亲共商人，吃完台湾，吃中国，还念念不忘打入美国政界，谋个一官半职。

老一辈的如杨振宁，拿著中华民国的钱出来留学，自己的岳父是共产党的战犯，却在美国为毛泽东的文革和邓小平的六四屠杀进行辩护。

下面的文章，信口雌黄地说“中国不是共产党国家，美国跟本没有受到任何威胁”，根据的是不知什么僞学者炮制的报告，说咱中国人只把收入的11%拿来缴税，而美国人缴30%多，北欧国家缴40-50%多，由此断言，中国比欧美更资本主义。读到此，差点把俺乐死。这位老兄跟本不懂共产党垄断政治资源的经济利益是多大。文章作者是一个台湾前外交官(由此推测是国民党的高官)的儿子，在Texas的建筑师，叫Bevin Chu.

CHINA IS NOT COMMUNIST. THERE IS NO "CHINA THREAT
"http://www.antiwar.com/chu/c050901.html

The Real China Threat is China Threat Theorists

The Real China Threat is China Threat Theorists
Bevin Chu
May 08, 2001

"There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it ever come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence."
-- Daniel Webster

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
-- Abraham Lincoln

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
-- James Madison

Executive Summary: Our American way of life is under threat. Not from PLA F-8 interceptors in the South China Sea, but from China Threat Theorists on Capitol Hill. These Blue Team Sinophobes demand the domestic adoption of right wing socialism, better known as fascism, in order to combat a nonexistent foreign threat of left wing socialism, better known as communism. Unless Real Patriots expose these China Threat Theorists' "impostures of pretended patriotism," the great republic bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers is at serious risk of being transformed into a Warfare State waging "perpetual war for perpetual peace." Ordinary Americans' lives, liberty and property will be sacrificed on the Altar of the Almighty State, long before any foreign threat appears on the horizon.

Collision Course

"Moral judgments must be "universalizable." This notion owed something to the ancient Golden Rule... anyone who uses such terms as right and ought is logically committed to universalizability. To say that a moral judgment must be universalizable means... if I judge a particular action... to be wrong, I must also judge any relevantly similar action to be wrong. The same judgment must be made in all conceivable cases... the same prescription has to be made in all hypothetically, as well as actually, similar cases."
-- Britannica.com
Ethics / 20th-century Western ethics / Metaethics / Universal prescriptivism

On April Fools Day, 2001, a US Navy EP-3 Aries engaged in "routine" spying on highly sensitive military installations on China's Hainan Island, collided with a Chinese F-8 interceptor. A Chinese "surveillance aircraft" did not collide with a US Navy F-14 while "routinely" spying on southern California's San Diego Naval Base.

China, in marked contrast with the World's Self-appointed Policeman, does not routinely dispatch Chinese warplanes 8,000 miles across the Pacific to spy, or in Pentagon spinmeister Craig Quigley's coy formulation, conduct "overt, routine surveillance and reconnaissance" of US military bases in Washington, Oregon, and California.

Amid the claims and counterclaims over "who swerved into whom," and who was "flying straight and level," this fact is undisputed. It is undisputed by President George W. Bush, by Vice President Dick Cheney, by Secretary of State Colin Powell, by National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

And this fact represents everything wrong with our post Cold War China policy.

See:
Media Beat, U.S.-China Dispute: From Other Side of Media Window

The Cold War is over. There is no "Communist Threat"

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
-- Thomas Paine

"Without a Golden Rule at the heart of our relationship, we are left with what our hawks define as the Moral Equivalence doctrine. We are more "moral" than the People's Republic of China... we are able to hold the PRC to higher standards... we must be permitted to fly along their coastline, giving them only a 12-mile cushion, but if they come within 200 miles of our coastline, we won't simply harass them, we will shoot them down. Our hawks carry this Moral Equivalence doctrine into every corner of our relationship with China... "
-- Jude Wanniski

See:
Moral Equivalance or Golden Rule?

The only moral use of force is in self defense. Any non-defensive use of force is initiation of force, i.e., aggression, and untenable by any code of morality one cares to invoke.

Marxism-Leninism was a messianic revolutionary movement with no regard for national sovereignty, dedicated to the violent overthrow of capitalism the world over. Marxism-Leninism respected no borders, therefore the Cold War against international communism could logically be considered defensive. I myself subscribed to this reasoning during the Cold War. I myself was among the coldest of Cold Warriors, and considered Richard Nixon "soft on communism."

But the Cold War is Over

The Cold War with the Soviet Union ended in 1989, when Mikhail Gorbachev in effect acceded to Ronald Reagan's ringing demand, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

The Cold War with "Red" China ended even earlier, in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping, whom Mao Zedong denounced as "Number Two Capitalist Roader," turned his back on Marxism-Leninism, declared that "To get rich is glorious!" and led China down the path to free market capitalism.

With the ideological demise of doctrinaire communism, Taiwan's capitalism was no longer under threat from mainland communism, and the conflict between Beijing and Taipei reverted to the status of a non-ideological Chinese Civil War within the confines of China's borders.

With the end of the Cold War the issue of America's self defense had been removed from the Chinese equation. America no longer had any dog in China's fight.

China is not Communist. There is no "China Threat"

"According to OECD Survey figures published in Economic Outlook (June 1998), the "Marxist" Chinese government collects under 11 percent of Chinese GDP, unlike most Western democracies that swallow up between 30 and 51 percent of the yearly wealth generated in their countries."
-- Paul Gottfried

See:
Buckleyite Warmongers

Mainland China has not been communist for 23 years, the "anti-communist" New Republic and Weekly Standard to the contrary notwithstanding. Unfortunately millions of ordinary Americans aren't aware of this fact.

How many Americans know for example that mainland Chinese pay less in taxes than Americans? Not just slightly less than Americans, but up to two-thirds less than Americans? Mainland Chinese pay less than 11% in taxes, 6% less than the 17% China demonizer Steve Forbes proposed Americans pay under his highly touted flat tax scheme.

China's public sector today comprises a mere 30% of China's GDP. It is smaller even than the public sectors of France and Germany, and smaller still than those of Denmark and Sweden.

If this is what the Blue Team insists on referring to as "Communism," then I say let's have more of it! It probably never occurred to Forbes that one reason he couldn't reduce taxes on Americans any lower than 17% was that he and other alleged "fiscal conservatives" refuse to stop buying all those $36 million EP-3s they keep sending across the Pacific to spy on China.

Mainland China's phenomenal transformation from a totalitarian collectivist dictatorship under Mao Zedong during the 50s, 60s and 70s, to economically liberal free market capitalism under Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin during the 80s and 90s, is the best kept secret in the world.

See:
Asian of the Century, Asiaweek magazine
China is Communist in Name Only -- How come the Americans can't see the country is changing?, Asiaweek magazine

China's Quiet Revolution, the Establishment Media's Open Secret

Why doesn't the American public know this?

They don't know this because Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin's post-Cold War transformation of mainland China, in contrast with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin's post-Cold War transformation of Russia, emphasized economic substance rather than political appearance.

They don't know this because even though mainland China radically restructured her economic system, and substantially liberalized her political system as well, she never underwent the high profile, media-genic "official makeover" of the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries.

Mainland China never altered her official name from the "Peoples' Republic of China," never redesigned her national flag, never commissioned a new national anthem, and perhaps most important of all symbolically speaking, never ripped down the portrait of Mao Zedong above Tiananmen Square.

The bitter irony is that mainland China's gradualist, dare I say "conservative" reform strategy has worked against China's reformers image-wise. Because mainland China's post Cold War transformation stressed economics rather than politics, our own Political Class, which considers Politics their reason for living and Democracy their secular religion, demeaned China's quiet revolution, unprecedented in human history, as "mere economics," and heaped adulation on Russia's political reforms instead.

Hundreds of thousands of American expatriates living on the Chinese mainland however know better. These adventurous Yankee traders in Beijing and Shanghai know China is a free market capitalist economy which has neither any intention nor any desire to commit aggression against America.

The China Threat Theorists' Big Lie

The Blue Team of course also knows this. The Blue Team only pretends not to know. The Blue Team maintains its pretense of ignorance because it is determined to exploit "anti-communism" as a pretext for initiating force against China.

And if China refuses to wear the black hat, declines to be cast in the role of heavy in the Blue Team's smug "America Good, China Evil" morality play? No problem. The Blue Team will simply aid and abet Taiwan's separatist elite until China lashes out in frustration. At which point the Blue Team will triumphantly proclaim, "See, we told you the Chinese were belligerent! We told you the Chinese were a threat!"

The Blue Team reminds me of the wolf in the Aesop's Fable who petulantly accuses a lamb of muddying his drinking water. When the lamb protests "But I'm drinking downstream from you." the wolf promptly devours him. The wolf was never the slightest bit concerned with facts, logic, fair play, or "rights." The wolf merely needed the flimsiest of pretexts to do what he fully intended to do all along, prey on the weak.

This is the pseudo-logic behind the patently absurd "China is a bully, America is the champion of the underdog" drivel anti-interventionists have had to endure since the Straits Crisis of 1996, when Taiwan independence Quisling Lee Teng-hui attempted to incite a "Gulf of Tonkin" incident to justify US superpower intervention.

Has anyone ever met a weak bully? I haven't, and I've met my share. Bullies are invariably strong. Our Pentagon, as the Colonel Blimps at the Weekly Standard never tire of reminding the world, is unchallenged in its military might. China's PLA is, relatively speaking, a 98 lb. weakling next to America's Charles Atlas. No other nation on the planet besides America meets the objective requirements required to be a bully. Only the Teddy Roosevelt Roughrider wannabes in Dubya's White House and a GOP Congress have both the means and the motive to be bullies. And "nobody does it better."

The Taiwan Relations Act, Pretext for Neocolonialist, Neo-imperialist Intervention

Congressional Blue Team members ritually invoke the Taiwan Relations Act as justification for US superpower meddling. They mindlessly parrot the catechism,

"The Taiwan Relations Act means America has a legal and moral obligation to defend Taiwan."

This is unmitigated, undiluted, unadulterated nonsense.

The Taiwan Relations Act, United States Code Title 22 Chapter 48, enacted 10 April 1979, was an Act of Congress. It was domestic US law. It was not an international treaty. In case you're wondering how the hell domestic US legislation, passed without the participation or consent of an independent foreign nation, can possibly overrule a foreign nation's political sovereignty and territorial integrity, the answer is, it can't and it doesn't.

Could China have unilaterally issued a "Confederate Relations Act" in 1861 and cited it as authority to dispatch Chinese warships to Charleston to prevent Lincoln from suppressing southern secession?

Of course not.

In fact the Taiwan Relations Act does not even authorize active US military assistance to Taipei, merely the sale of weapons, and only defensive weapons at that.

The merits or demerits of southern secession are not at issue here. The issue is who gets to make such decisions. The issue of resurgent southern secession must be decided by "The Several States" to the north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line, not by China, a foreign nation. Whether there is to be a future Confederate States of America, or for that matter, a Republic of Alaska, a Republic of Hawaii and a Republic of Texas, is up to Americans to decide, either through negotiation or armed conflict. Foreign political struggles which don't violate China's sovereignty are none of Beijing's concern.

By the exact same token the issue of Taiwan secession must be decided by the mainland and offshore regions of China to the east and west of the Taiwan Straits, not by America. Whether there is to be a "Republic of Taiwan" is up to the Chinese to decide, either through negotiation or armed conflict. Foreign political struggles which don't violate America's sovereignty are none of Washington's concern.

With the end of the Cold War the Taiwan Relations Act and the "Taiwan Security Enhancement Act" (Don't you just love Blue Team Orwellian Newspeak?) are nothing more than the flimsiest of pretexts for neocolonialist, neo-imperialist meddling in China's internal affairs.

The Taiwan Relations Act was passed unilaterally by Congress. It can be repealed unilaterally by Congress. It's high time Americans demanded its swift elimination as an obsolete relic of the Cold War.

What Lies Beneath

The Twilight Zone
"Four O'Clock" Episode 94, April 6, 1962
by Rod Serling, story by Price Day

Summary: Moralist zealot Oliver Crangle (Theodore Bikel) has single-mindedly dedicated himself to the punishment of ubiquitous evil in the world. He devises an elaborate scheme to shrink all those whom he has meticulously catalogued as evil down to two feet tall at four o'clock. His perfect plan backfires however when to his horror and bewilderment he finds himself shrunken down to size when the fateful hour rolls around.

U.S. Is Voted Off Rights Panel of the U.N. for the First Time
Washington Angry Over Losing Rights Seat
By Barbara Crossette, The New York Times

UNITED NATIONS, May 3, 2001 -- In a move that reflected a growing frustration with America's attitude toward international organizations and treaties, the United States was voted off the United Nations Human Rights Commission today for the first time since the panel's founding under American leadership in 1947. The ouster of the United States from the commission... was apparently supported even by some friends of the United States. "It couldn't be worse, all the conservatives in the administration will see this as proof that we are in an organization full of enemies."

Have you ever wondered just exactly what motivates our Benevolent Global Hegemonists' China policy?

I'm not talking about what they claim motivates their China policy. I'm not talking about their manifestly phony, thoroughly repugnant expressions of "heartfelt concern for human rights victims in China" splashed across the editorial pages of the National Review, the Washington Times, FreeRepublic.com, Townhall.com, and WorldNetDaily. I'm talking about what actually motivates their China policy.

As the deadly sieges of Ruby Ridge and Waco by federal storm troopers demonstrated, neither Slick Willy's Humanitarian Interventionists nor George Dubya's Benevolent Global Hegemonists gave a damn about the First, Second and Fourth Amendment rights of white European Americans Randy Weaver and David Koresh in the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.

As the racially motivated Donorgate spy hunt and Lee Wenho witch trial demonstrated, the "bipartisan leadership" of the Democratic and Republican parties didn't give a damn about presumption of innocence, Habeas Corpus, and due process for American citizens of Chinese descent in Los Angeles and Los Alamos.

So why would they give a damn about the individual rights of espionage suspect Gao Zhan, detained Falungong members, Chinese Catholics, expectant Chinese mothers, or millions of other nameless, faceless "gooks," none of whom are even American citizens?

They wouldn't, and they don't. Anyone who imagines otherwise is a Wei Jingshen, Harry Wu style dupe and political naif, pathetically clueless about the dark side of the human psyche.

A handful of rabble-rousing radio talk show hosts and a rabidly Sinophobic editor for the National Review have openly urged herding Americans of Chinese descent into WWII style concentration camps, without prior evidence of individual criminal culpability, purely on the basis of ethnic origin. And these self-styled "patriots" have the chutzpah, the colossal effrontery, to equate free market capitalist China with Nazi Germany?

The clearest evidence of the Malevolent Global Hegemonists' primitive bigotry, and the Inhumanitarian Interventionists' hollow sanctimony is their "bipartisan" eagerness to declare war on China, so they can get on with the fun part -- dropping next generation smart munitions on the very same Chinese civilians they made such a conspicuous show of empathizing with as human rights victims, right along with the Chinese officials they denounced as human rights violators.

See:
Globocops with Guillotines

What actually motivates Benevolent Global Hegemonists and Humanitarian Interventionists is what motivated Tomas de Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor for Ferdinand and Isabella's Spanish Inquisition, and what motivated Oliver Crangle in Rod Serling's classic Twilight Zone episode, "Four O'Clock," a neurotic, nay, psycho pathological obsession with "being right" and with "punishing evil-doers."

The Real China Threat, or Lew Rockwell is Right

"Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another, cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real Patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favourite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the confidence of the people, to surrender their interests."
-- George Washington

"The main problem with the Blue Team is that its efforts will promote the very threat it warns against. More that one analyst has written that treating a country as an enemy guarantees that the country will become an enemy. Threats beget threats. Hostile words elicit hostile words. In effect, the Blue Team is taking Taiwan's side and has become a lobby for Taipei."
-- Nicholas Berry, Senior Analyst, Center for Defense Information

See:
We Don't Need a Blue Team, Or a Red Team, Taking Sides on China-Taiwan Relations

When we examine a Donald Rumsfeld or a Richard Armitage under the evolutionary microscope, what we are in fact looking at is the catastrophic consequence of human technological progress running far ahead of human moral and spiritual development. Blue Team Holy Warriors such as Republican congressman Chris Cox are unevolved primitives who have had space age weaponry dropped in their laps by their intellectual betters, ironically by men such as scapegoated American weapons scientist Lee Wenho.

The China Threat Theorists' fingers might be poised over the consoles of high tech smart weapons, but their Neanderthal craniums can barely contain their reptilian consciousness. The last time such an anomalous state of affairs prevailed in a technogically advanced nation was in Germany circa 1933 and in Japan circa 1931.

Unrelenting demonization of China by Blue Team zealots, followed by precipitous, escalating military confrontation, constitutes a Sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of ordinary Americans who want merely to mind their own business and live their own lives. This constant threat to ordinary Americans' lives, liberty and property emanates not from China, but from China Threat Theorists.

When George Washington referred to "Real Patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favourite, are liable to become suspected and odious" he was talking about scrupulously consistent libertarians such as Lew Rockwell, Karen de Coster, Justin Raimondo and others who refuse to betray their deeply held ethical and political principles selectively on the basis of race.

See:
China is Right
Dance of the Warmongers
Are the Chinese Nazis?

When George Washington referred to "tools and dupes [who] usurp the applause and confidence of the people," he was talking about Lew Rockwell's critics on the Warfare Statist right. As Rockwell noted in his unflinching op ed piece "China is Right":

"There is only one evil empire alive in the world today, and it is not China."

The Blue Team's naked gunboat diplomacy not only will not hasten the introduction, or rather, reintroduction of pre-communist political liberty in China, it is certain to further obliterate what scant traces of individual liberty remain in America. Anyone who doubts this proposition need only answer the following questions.

Which government poses the greatest threat to American lives?

Is it more likely you will lose your life because Jiang Zemin orders wave upon wave of PLA Marines 8,000 miles east across the Pacific to stage an amphibious landing on Venice Beach, California? Or because our foreign policy geniuses in Washington order you 8,000 miles west across the Pacific to fight in yet another Asian civil war, on the side of god knows who and for god knows what?

Which government poses the greatest threat to American liberty?

Is it more likely you will lose your liberty because China invades and conquers the World's Only Remaining Superpower? Or because "National Greatness Conservatives" who demand "energetic government" impose draconian legal constraints on their fellow Americans in the name of "National Security" and "A Clear and Present Danger?"

Which government poses the greatest threat to American property?

Is more likely you will lose your hard earned wealth because "Red" or "Communist" China overruns the World's Only Remaining Superpower and nationalizes the assets of the Fortune 500 companies? Or because homegrown Warfare Statists tax you into the poorhouse footing the bill for Tomahawk cruise missiles at US $1,500,000 a pop? "Peace Dividend," anyone?

If you know the answers to these questions, you already know which government poses the greatest threat to American lives, liberty and property, and therefore which government represents the real "China Threat." As Daniel Webster noted, "There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it ever come at all, will be from another quarter."

Absolute Power

"Abuse of power isn't limited to bad guys in other nations. It happens in our own country if we're not vigilant... Waco... Ruby Ridge... What kind of mentality does that? Those in power get jaded, deluded, and seduced by power itself. The hunger for absolute power and, more to the point, the abuse of power, are part of human nature."
-- Clint Eastwood

See:
Eastwood on Government, Parade Magazine, January 12, 1997

Power Corrupts

"A person who wants to exercise political power over his fellow man...asks himself: "How can I 'do good' for the people if I just leave them alone?" [non-intervention]

... he does not want to pass into history as a "do nothing" leader who ends up as a footnote somewhere. So he begins to... force all other persons to conform to his ideas of what is good for them. If there is opposition, an emergency is declared or created to justify these actions. [The "China Threat"]

If the benevolent ruler stays in power long enough, he eventually concludes that power and wisdom are the same thing. And as he possesses power, he must also possess wisdom. ["The World's Only Remaining Superpower," hence "The World's Champion of Human Rights," by default]

He becomes converted to the seductive thesis that election to public office endows the official with both power and wisdom. ["The Leader of the Free World" or "The World's Greatest Deliberative Body"]

At this point, he begins to lose his ability to distinguish between what is morally right and what is politically expedient." [Insert name of any modern era American "leader" one cares to mention.]
-- Admiral Ben Moreell
Chief of US Navy Seabees during WWII

See:
Power Corrupts

Corrupted Absolutely

"If we have to use force it is because we are America! We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall, and we see further into the future."
-- Madeleine Albright
NBC TV's Today, February 19, 1998

Lesley Stahl: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And - and you know, is the price worth it?"
Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it."
-- Punishing Saddam
60 Minutes, May 12, 1996

It never ceases to amaze me how little genuine wisdom our seemingly intelligent political leaders in fact possess. Anyone with a shred of common sense knows that in interpersonal relationships the only truly effective way to influence another human being is through the power of example, not coercion. Yet the Rhodes Scholars and MacArthur Fellows inside our Beltway can't seem to absorb this elementary lesson of human psychology, let alone apply it to their foreign policy decision-making processes.

The lesson is clear, our federal Leviathan in Washington is no friend of human rights, either at home or abroad. Big Government is a Victor Frankenstein creation which, unless a nation's citizens remain eternally vigilant, will turn even on those who "democratically" voted it in.

The solution?

The citizens of each nation must reduce the size of their own governments, and relate to each other more as private individuals, as trading partners, as fellow human beings, not as uncritical, chauvinistic subjects of mutually hostile political collectives. If ordinary citizens within the nearly 300 nations on the planet were simply to engage in peaceful commerce with each other, and ignore the xenophobic exhortations of their "leaders'" to wage Holy Wars against their neighbors, mankind would be halfway there. Ordinary human beings already do this with fellow human beings living across town. There is no intrinsic reason why they can't do this with fellow human beings living across oceans.

The challenge for human beings living in an economically (not politically) globalized world, is to draw on the best that each culture has to offer in order to build a better common future for mankind. Most people want at some level to be constructive participants in such an endeavor, which paradoxically does not call for "heroic sacrifices to a greater cause," but merely for each individual to live as ethical a life as possible, and to refuse to condone their own government's abuse of power, both at home and abroad.

The Destiny of Nations

"In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me."
-- the Rev. Martin Niemoeller
German Lutheran pastor imprisoned in Dachau by the Gestapo in 1938

In my very first op ed piece for Antiwar.com, "American Values in Dire Straits," I wrote:

"As a first generation naturalized American I am all too aware that my patriotism is presumed suspect by many China-haters in Congress simply by virtue of my race and my national origin... I know by advocating policies which may appear "soft on communism" red flags will go up in the fevered minds of China Threat theorists... I could keep my mouth shut and my head down. But genuine patriotism demands that Americans defend the ideals of our Founding Fathers, and speak up for what is authentically American, and not meekly acquiesce, like "good Germans" or "good Japanese" in the 1930's, to the mainstream consensus while our nation continues its downward slide into imperial decadence."

My concerns back then are even more warranted today. Manzanar style concentration camps, this time for Americans of Chinese rather than Japanese descent are no longer "unthinkable." It can happen here. The sight of nonconformist political dissidents such as myself behind barbed wire ought to do wonders convincing the rest of the world they should emulate our political system.

Real Patriots must "moderate the fury of party spirit... warn against the mischiefs of foreign Intrigue... guard against the Impostures of pretended patriotism." Real Patriots must do so to "prevent our Nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the Destiny of Nations," namely the exhilarating, intoxicating, meteoric rise to Charles Krauthammer's vainglorious "Unipolar Moment," followed by the inevitable, sickening descent into oblivion, from which precious few nations in history have ever recovered.

Many Americans ignorant of history naively see our own American experiment as a permanent success story immune to historical cycles. They are looking but not seeing. America has undergone a major transformation in her brief history, and not for the better. In a relatively short span of time, far shorter than merely one many of China's many dynasties, America has degenerated from a vital republic into a decadent empire. America, as neocon triumphalist Krauthammer boasts, is now at its zenith. What Krauthammer doesn't seem to grasp is that this means America has nowhere to go but down.

China has demonstrated an uncanny ability to survive these long cycles, and to survive them repeatedly. Few other civilizations have been able to do so. India is another. Most other civilizations rise and fall, but never rise again. They far outnumber China and India.

America has yet to demonstrate this ability. Will America be a Periclean Golden Age comet which burns ever so brightly, ever so briefly, before winking out for eternity? The jury is still out. It is currently 2001. For the answer, check back in 3001, then again in 4001.

The prospect of eventual American decline resulting from imperial overreach is deeply discouraging. If America's modern "leadership" had the slightest vestige of reverence for the wisdom of our anti-imperialist Founding Fathers, this depressing scenario would not be unfolding. Objectively speaking it is totally unnecessary, a tragic waste.

China Threat Theorists need to get a grip. International free trade is not roulette or blackjack. Global commerce is not a zero sum game. Just as it is not necessary for China to lose for America to win, it is not necessary for America to lose for China to win. As Guy Kawasaki, Apple's old evangelist and CEO of Garage.com put it:

"Never think of the world as a zero-sum game. Don't think that someone else's good luck will take luck away from you. There is infinite good luck in the world."

Brute force by the World's Only Remaining Superpower may inspire fear and loathing, but not respect, much less friendship. The Blue Team loves climbing on its high horse about "America's solemn commitments to her friends and allies in Asia." That's a laugh. As the humiliating United Nations Human Rights Commission vote makes clear, Uncle Sammy has no friends, in Asia or anywhere else. Only resentful populations under US military occupation such as the Okinawans, or obsequious clients under US military "protection" such as Taiwan's Quisling elite.

What America needs but desperately lacks is visionary leaders who would transform America into a giant version of neutral Switzerland, a nation modestly minding her own business, aggressing against no one. What America needs today is the reincarnation of George Washington or John Quincy Adams. Unfortunately it is the last thing America is likely to get.

For the record, if Republicans had their heads screwed on properly, another Texan, libertarian GOP congressman Ron Paul, and not Dim Bulb Dubya with his room temperature IQ, would be America's president.

Indeed, if the venom spewed at Lew Rockwell recently is any indication, even self-styled "libertarians" are testing positive for War Fever and Acute Sinophobia. Dissuading our interventionist nomenklatura from ordering the US Navy across the Pacific in a replay of Apocalypse Now in today's political climate may be hopeless. As hopeless as dissuading Bruce Ismay of the White Star Line from ordering Captain Edward Smith to set a transatlantic speed record amid drifting icebergs.

But then what is our alternative?

Appendix A: The Founding Fathers' Foreign Policy

"The Great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign Nations is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns... Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humour or Caprice? Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances, with any portion of the foreign World..."
-- George Washington
Washington's Farewell Address, 1796

"Indulging no passions which trespass on the rights or the repose of other nations, it has been the true glory of the United States... to entitle themselves to the respect of the nations at war by fulfilling their neutral obligations with the most scrupulous impartiality... peace and friendly intercourse with all nations having correspondent dispositions... sincere neutrality toward belligerent nations... to exclude foreign intrigues and foreign partialities... to foster a spirit of independence too just to invade the rights of others, too proud to surrender our own... "
-- James Madison
First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1809

"Independence... made us a nation, this sets our compass and points the course which we are to steer through the ocean of time opening on us. Our first and fundamental maxim should be, never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe. America, North and South, has a set of interests distinct from those of Europe, and peculiarly her own. She should therefore have a system of her own, separate and apart from that of Europe.
-- Thomas Jefferson
to President James Monroe, October 24, 1823

"Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will be America's heart, her benedictions, and her prayers. But she does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assumed the colors and usurped the standards of freedom... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit."
-- John Quincy Adams
Secretary of State to James Monroe and author of the Monroe Doctrine, July 4, 1821

"By the policy to which we have adhered since the days of Washington... we have done more for the cause of liberty in the world than arms could effect; we have shown to other nations the way to greatness and happiness... Far better is it for ourselves, for Hungary, and the cause of liberty, that, adhering to our pacific system and avoiding the distant wars of Europe, we should keep our lamp burning on this western shore amid the ruins of a fallen and falling republics in Europe.
-- Henry Clay
to Hungarian patriot Louis Kossuth, explaining America's "ancient policy of amity and nonintervention" and why America refused to rescue Hungary

"The American people must be content to recommend the cause of human progress by the wisdom with which they should exercise the powers of government, forbearing at all times and in every way, from foreign alliances, intervention, and interference."
-- William Seward
Secretary of State to Abraham Lincoln, explaining to the French Emperor America's "policy of nonintervention - straight, absolute, and peculiar as it may seem to other nations," and why America refused to aid France,1863

Appendix B: Of EP-3s and SOP

The April 1 collision rekindled memories of mid-air interceptions of US Navy spy planes by ROC Air Force pilots in the skies over Taiwan. According to an April 8 article in the Chinese language United Daily News (Lianhe Ribao), US Navy EP-3 spyplanes routinely violated Chinese airspace controlled by Taipei as well as by Beijing.

The ROC Air Force initially dispatched single-seat fighters to chase away the EP-3s, but was later forced to send twin-seat fighters instead, according to one retired military pilot. The EP-3s would play cat and mouse games with the pilots of single-seat fighters, whose attention would be concentrated on photographing the intruders. They would slow suddenly by shutting off two of their four turboprop engines. Jet fighters tailing the EP-3s risked stalling their engines if they abruptly reduced their speed in response.

Another EP-3 trick was to suddenly execute a sharp turn. "Perhaps the American pilots thought the [ROC] interceptors would immediately fly away when the EP-3s made a sharp turn, so time and again they played these tricks." He said the ill-fated PRC F-8 pilot who died on April 1 might have failed to notice a sharp turn by the EP-3, collided with the US aircraft, and crashed into the sea.

Is It Really Any Wonder That the Chinese Are Sore Over Spy Plane?

Is It Really Any Wonder That the Chinese Are Sore Over Spy Plane?
Bevin Chu
April 03, 2001

TIME Letters Editor

Dear Sir/Madam,

Tony Karon's excellent article "Is It Really Any Wonder That the Chinese Are Sore Over Spy Plane?" was so unexpected, so fair-minded, and unfortunately so exceptional, it qualified as news itself, a rare case of "man bites dog."

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,104718,00.html

When was the last time our mainstream American media applied the Golden Rule to US-China relations? When was the last time our Beltway elites asked themselves "What if the shoe were on the other foot, and China was doing to America what America is doing to China?"

Karon and TIME are to be applauded for upholding standards of fairness and objectivity the profession of journalism constantly preaches but seldom practices. If journalistic integrity were the rule rather than the exception, readers at home and abroad might have to revise their current low opinion of the Fourth Estate.

Now wouldn't that be newsworthy?

Sincerely,

Bevin Chu
Taipei, Taiwan, ROC

Now You See It, Now You Don't

Now You See It, Now You Don't
Originally posted at Chinese Community Forum (CCF)
Bevin Chu
March 14, 2001

The PRC government's claim that "Nobody died in Tiananmen Square" is probably true. The PRC government was being exact when they issued that statement. They were not denying that deaths occurred. They were merely being precise about where they died.

Re: the famous "lone pedestrian blocking the tank" incident. Psychologists often use something known as a "Rorschach Inkblot Test." As a long time student of psychology, let me assure you the test works.

The way it works is by presenting the test subject with an ambiguous looking inkblot, and asking the subject to discern what he sees. The subject invariably winds up projecting his own subconscious biases and prejudices onto the image, utterly unaware he's doing it. The images are merely catalysts to get to the subject's unconscious.


Famous yet anonymous Tiananmen protestor who blocked the path of a PLA tank column

What did almost everyone, including myself see, when the footage of a lone pedestrian holding two shopping bags blocking a PLA tank was initially broadcast over the world by CNN?

We saw "a heroic democracy protestor daring to defy an impersonal ruthless authoritarian juggernaut which had no regard for human life."

Right?

Who can dispute what millions of us all saw with our own eyes? We saw "the protestor's courage stopping the juggernaut in its tracks by the sheer force of his will."

Right?

Wrong. That is not what we saw.

That is half of what we saw. The other half, which we blanked out of our conscious awareness, was a PLA tank driver deliberately avoiding running over the lone pedestrian. A PLA tank driver refusing to run over him. A PLA tank driver who did have regard for human life.

In fact that particular PLA tank driver probably had more regard for human life than ATF and FBI agents at Waco. The FBI actually broadcast Nancy Sinatra's pop tune "These Boots are made for Walking" over loudspeakers before they went in and "walked all over" the Branch Davidians.

So why didn't we see that at the time?

Simple. The problem was we were so focused on what we wanted to see, what we expected to see, we failed to see what was. Because of the way our minds processed the visual data before our eyes, we saw only part of the picture.

Taiwan Independence, R.I.P.

Taiwan Independence, R.I.P.
Bevin Chu
January 21, 2001

Executive Summary: Taiwan independence is dead. It died, stillborn. Taiwan independence was the triumph of politics over economics. That is, until the iron laws of The Marketplace turned Taiwan independence zealots' pipe dream to dust. In retrospect, no other result was possible, or should have been expected.

Taiwan Independence is Dead

A funny thing happened to Taiwan independence. It died stillborn, and never saw the light of day.

On May 20, 2000, oriental despot Lee Teng-hui, in a brazenly fixed "democratic" election, "peacefully transferred" his imperial presidency to longtime Taiwan independence demagogue Chen Shui-bian.

By October 2000, five short months after Chen's "historic" victory at the polls, Taiwan independence had been utterly discredited. A-Bian's administration was adrift and rudderless. The public was dumbfounded and disillusioned. Anyone not wearing ideological blinders could see Taiwan independence was a bankrupt ideology and a spent political force.

The TAIEX had plummeted to 5000 from a 52 week high of 11,000, for an entirely different set of reasons than the NASDAQ, leaving Taiwan's shareholders, mostly small, individual investors, poorer by half. A quarter of all manufacturing facilities on Taiwan had closed their doors forever, or were in the process of doing so. Laid off factory workers were committing suicide by running hoses from their exhaust pipes into their cars. Those too poor even to own cars were hanging themselves from the rafters. A-Bian's approval rating had plunged from a high of 80% upon his inauguration to a low of 35%. Voters who had cast their ballots for Chen were calling in to local TV talk shows to confess they regretted their choice.

Billionaire industrialist Wang Yung-ching, CEO of Formosa Plastics, a "native" Taiwanese Horatio Alger revered by millions as "The God of Enterprise," was demanding that A-Bian immediately acknowledge the "One China Principle" and open "Three Links" to the Chinese mainland ASAP, or else Taiwan's economy would be done for within three years. "We're all Chinese on both sides of the Strait after all," Wang affirmed, "what's the problem?" "The Lee Period was not as good as the Chiang Ching-kuo Era," Wang added for good measure, "and the Chen Period is even worse than the Lee Period."

Academia Sinica Chairman and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Lee Yuan-tseh, head of A-Bian's own hand-picked Brain Trust, was sternly admonishing Chen, "Time is not on our side," echoing the New Party's long-held cross Straits policy stance, and sounding remarkably like a pro reunification opposition spokesman.

A surprisingly cohesive alliance consisting of the ROC's three major opposition parties, the Kuomintang (without Lee Teng-hui at the helm, naturally), the New Party, and the People First Party, all solidly pro reunification and representing 61% of the voting public, was loudly demanding Chen Shui-bian's recall.

Former DPP chairman Shih Ming-teh wryly noted that "It took Lee Teng-hui twelve years to divide the KMT into three [rival parties, the KMT, NP, and PFP], but Chen Shui-bian only five months to unite them back into one." Shih, along with former DPP Chairman Hsu Hsing-liang and former DPP PR chief Sissy Chen, three of the DPP's brightest lights, had resigned from the party in disgust, repudiated Taiwan independence ideology and become the movement's harshest and most effective critics.

Even the Dalai Lama had gotten in the act, and was cautioning Chen that in light of Taiwan's close cultural and economic affinity with mainland China, it was unimaginable that the island could be separated from mainland China and become fully independent. Say what you will about His Holiness, he's a lot quicker on the uptake than his counterparts on Taiwan.

Who could have imagined the tide would turn so quickly?

What happened?

See:
Taiwan's Fraudulent Election

The Triumph of Politics over Economics

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
-- George Santayana

What happened was the great American historian George Santayana was vindicated, again, for the umpteenth time. The lesson of history it would seem, is nobody ever learns a damned thing from history. The underlying cause of the Taiwan independence movement's astonishingly swift collapse, at its apparent moment of triumph, was in fact glaringly obvious, at least to anyone not blinded by his own political zealotry.

"It was the economy, stupid!"

The trump card for Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo in their Cold War era struggle against Mao Tse-tung, just as it was for West Germany and South Korea, was the ROC's capitalist economy. It was the free market ROC's reward for putting economics ahead of politics. As Deng Xiaoping, "Capitalist Roader No. Two" would later put it, "White cat, black cat. As long as it catches rats it's a good cat." The mainland's grinding poverty was Maoist hard-liners' bitter harvest for putting politics ahead of economics. As the late Chairman Mao himself put it, "Better Red than Expert."

Putting politics ahead of economics would also be the reason for Taiwan's alarmingly swift economic decline under petty tribalists Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian.

Lee Teng-hui, Chen Shui-bian and the Taiwan separatist nomenklatura have never really understood how the vast wealth that fell into their laps was created in the first place. To nomenklatura everywhere, immense public wealth is like the air around them. "It's free. It's ours. And hey, there's plenty more where that came from!" The late Senator Dirksen satirized the nomenklatura mindset with his immortal quip, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're getting into real money."

Stupifyingly naive Newsweek correspondents' assertions to the contrary, "Mr. Democracy's" most enduring "legacy" was to squander in a single decade what ROC taxpayers had diligently amassed over the previous four. Lee cavalierly frittered away the ROC's economic advantage greasing the palms of tin pot dictators, foreign arms merchants, and rabid anti-China hawks in The World's Greatest Deliberative Body. All in a extravagant and quixotic effort to lay the groundwork for a "Republic of Taiwan." Lee Teng-hui's "checkbook diplomacy," in tandem with his "Avoid Haste, Be Patient" cross straits policy eventually hollowed out the ROC economy.

Does Lee, who does not consider himself Chinese but rather Japanese, give a damn? Hardly. If nullifying the ROC's hard won economic miracle was the price of manipulating Taiwan Chinese into hating mainland Chinese, to the strategic advantage of unrepentant Japanese expansionists, so be it. The only people Lee has ever identified with are the Japanese. Not peace loving Japanese individuals of conscience, such as Professor Saburo Ienaga, candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, but war criminal Hirohito and neofascist Shintaro Ishihara.

As New Party legislator Fung Hu-hsiang astutely observed, to understand Lee Teng-hui's perspective on any issue, simply imagine how a right wing Japanese militarist would see the same issue, and you will have your answer. The irony of course is that Lee's "Taiwan independence now, Taiwan independence forever, to hell with the cost" policy left his own hand-picked successor without the means to carry on his holy crusade. Lee's Taiwan independence chickens have come home to roost in Chen's coop.

Chen's dilemma can be stated quite simply.

If on the one hand, 23 million living, breathing human beings on Taiwan are to survive, let alone prosper, A-Bian must boldly sweep aside his predecessor's artifical barriers standing in the way of economic, social, and yes, political reintegration with the Chinese mainland.

If on the other hand, the constipated, small-minded, petty insular ideology of Taiwan independence is to survive, A-Bian must not only keep Lee Teng-hui's barriers in place, he must erect even higher ones, committing economic suicide. Taiwan will then devolve into an impoverished island backwater unable to afford the cost of political independence.

A-Bian has arrived at a fork in the road. Both roads lead to One China. Take one and arrive before dusk, warm, dry and refreshed. Take the other and arrive at the same destination after midnight, cold, wet and exhausted. The route is optional; the destination is not.

One almost feels sorry for A-Bian. Almost.

See:
A Brush-Off for Business, Chen needs to rebuild confidence -- fast

The Racist Roots of Taiwan Independence

Taiwan independence ideologues neglected the ROC economy, because its devotees among the left of center DPP and TAIP have never really believed their own high-minded rhetoric about why they were demanding independence. As A-Bian's post-election behavior makes clear, "freedom and democracy" were expendable. And if you expect a party named the "Democratic Progressive Party" to rush to defend sovereign individuals' right to own private property and engage in free trade, think again.

Instead Taiwan independence was animated at its core by anti-Chinese race hatred and the Stockholm Syndrome. Many Taiwan independence extremists within the DPP and TAIP are in fact ethnic Japanese. Like exiled White Russian aristocrats following the Bolshevik Revolution, these Japanese colonial overlords deeply resented the loss of their privileged, exalted status. They never came to terms with Japan's humiliating surrender to the Chinese, whom they held in contempt as racially inferior. Rather than be repatriated to Japan, they remained on Taiwan as fifth columnists and struggled to sabotage Taiwan's restoration to China.

Together with "Japan-ized," "Stockholm Syndrome-ized" Taiwan independence Quislings, they provoked the infamous 2-28 Incident of 1947, massacring thousands of defenseless Chinese, including women and children. Some even donned their mothballed Imperial Japanese Army uniforms and samurai swords. The Taiwan independence zealots' primary targets were "mainland" Chinese, but "native" Taiwanese caught sheltering the zealots' intended victims were hacked to death with samurai swords as casually as the rest.

Other Taiwan independence extremists are the illegitimate offspring of unfortunate Taiwan Chinese women sexually molested by Japanese soldiers during Japan's brutal 50 year colonial occupation. Like Adolph Hitler, who suspected he was part Jewish, but despised that aspect of his background, some have attempted to cope with their painful inner conflict by identifying exclusively with their Japanese component and utterly disowning their Chinese component. They loath anything and everything Chinese, because being Chinese is associated in their tortured psyches with contemptible weakness and impotence. They strive desperately to be "more Japanese than the Japanese" because being Japanese is associated with a comforting sense of efficacy and power.

Lee Teng-hui is widely believed to be just such an individual. A family portrait of the Lee family reveals an adolescent Lee Teng-hui who bears no resemblance whatsoever to his nominal father, Lee Ching-lung, but an uncanny resemblance to the Japanese police officer standing in the background, the elder Lee's superior officer and "friend of the Lee family."

I have refrained in the past from discussing these skeletons in the Taiwan independence closet because merely mentioning them could easily be mischaracterized as racist provocation. In fact the racism is not mine, but theirs.

Just north of Korea's China border, a visitor to the region will encounter 2 million Chinese citizens of ethnic Korean descent. They fled to China during the chaos of the Korean War. They are considered every bit as "Chinese" as so-called "Han" Chinese.

In Japan on the other hand, even ethnic Koreans who have lived in Japan for four generations are still considered "sangokujin" or "dangerous aliens" by Japanese demagogues such as neofascist Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, a close friend of Taiwan independence Quislings Lee Teng-hui and Annette Lu.

Dr. Wendy Abraham of the Sino-Judaic Institute of Menlo Park, California recounts a fascinating but obscure tale of Jewish traders who traveled to ancient China on the Silk Road, as early as the Tang dynasty. China was the only nation in the world, Dr. Abraham avers, which never singled out the Jewish people for scapegoating on the basis of their heritage. Descendants of Kaifeng Jews in China today still identify themselves as "Yutai," i.e., "Judaic," on government census forms.

See:
Taiwan Independence and the Stockholm Syndrome
Rabble Rouser
Lost Jews of Kaifeng. Click on History

There is only One Race

"There is only one race, the human race."
-- Pearl Bailey

China is a political entity with a venerable unifying cultural heritage, but the Chinese are not a race. The Chinese couldn't be racists demanding "racial purity," even if they wanted to be. The Chinese have been mutts or mongrels of mixed, indeterminate origin since time immemorial. Both Beijing and Taipei agree that China is comprised of roughly 56 "official" ethnic groups. Both are also aware the lines between these "official" categories are so blurred as to be virtually meaningless. .

Even so-called "Hans" are not a homogeneous ethnic group. What was once referred to as "Han China" has been invaded so many times over so many centuries, quite frankly nobody knows who's who anymore, or cares. Confront any modern Chinese with this aspect of China's history and their puzzled reaction will invariably be, "That's interesting isn't it? Why do you mention it?"

This incidentally, is among the "reasons" pre WWII Japanese strategic thinkers considered Chinese to be genetically inferior. Chinese were sheep whom nature intended to be sheared, therefore undeserving of mercy. Such reasoning culminated in the Rape of Nanking and Japanese Imperial Army Unit 731's Joseph Mengele style "medical experiments" performed on live victims.

See:
The Other Holocaust: Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731, Unit 100, Unit 516

Human beings are simply human beings. Leading edge research on human DNA has confirmed what most unprejudiced individuals already knew. Inheritable differences attributed to "race," are of insufficient magnitude to constitute distinct subspecies. As far as geneticists and molecular biologists are concerned, race is a non-category, a fiction.

"Today, many anthropologists speak of clines, or gradations, to distinguish between degrees of genetic closeness that include differences in skin color, propensity toward diseases, and all the other factors-visible and hidden-that make us what we are. Geneticists speak of lineages, or haplotypes, when they describe the different subgroups that have descended from our common ancestors. The old distinctions between what were once called races persist in everyday speech, but they are becoming linguistically and ideologically obsolete and as far removed from science as the once exalted study of alchemy."
-- Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles and Marilyn Nissenson

A History Lesson

Taiwan independence Quislings routinely assert that Taiwan's economic miracle was "built on a foundation of efficient Japanese colonial rule" and owes little or nothing to mainland China, or even "mainlanders" on Taiwan. Those familiar with China's history know this to be a textbook example of The Big Lie. While smugly proclaiming total independence from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan separatist spinmeisters have consistently evaded at least three inconvenient realities.

One, Chinese Sweat. A mainland Chinese administration masterminded the Taiwan region's post war economic miracle.

Two, Chinese Money. Taiwan's gold reserves came straight out of the vaults of China's Central Bank in Nanking.

Three, Chinese Blood. The Taiwan region was spared an eternity of Japanese colonial over lordship, as well as Mao's collectivist excesses by pro capitalist mainland Chinese who refused to yield to either.

Chinese Sweat

A mainland Chinese administration masterminded the Taiwan region's post war economic miracle.

The vaunted "Japanese infrastructure" Taiwan independence zealots invoke so routinely and wistfully, including manufacturing plants and the rail system, was leveled to the ground during the final years of WWII by USAF B-29s. Reduced to rubble. Blown to smithereens. Gone. No longer existed.

So how could it have contributed anything whatsoever to Taiwan's subsequent prosperity?

It couldn't. It didn't.

In fact Taiwan's modern infrastructure and heavy industrial facilities were constructed from the ground up on the rubble of WWII, during the administrations of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo.

Chiang Kai-shek's administration parceled out public land administered by the ousted Japanese colonial government to impoverished Taiwan Chinese peasants, to be used for agriculture, or to Taiwan Chinese entrepreneurs, to be used as factory sites for basic industries. Even occupation era landlords, who if truth be told were Japanese collaborators, were generously compensated with shares in the newly established companies. Both peasants and former landlords prospered. Lee Teng-hui crony Ku Chen-fu's family was compensated with shares in Taiwan Cement. Ku today is a billionaire.

Chinese Money

Taiwan's gold reserves came straight out of the vaults of China's Central Bank in Nanking.

When the Japanese were defeated and forced to retreat to Japan's main islands, the Bank of Taiwan was bankrupt. Japan's samurai fascists had squandered all of Japan's wealth on their megalomaniac campaign of hemispheric conquest, and had emptied Taiwan's coffers in the process. The Taiwan dollar in 1945 was worth roughly as much as Confederate money in 1865. In other words, it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. No one in his right mind would accept Taiwan dollars, because they were fiat currency backed by nothing, nada.

Taiwan as a result had no way to rebuild.

In 1949, when Mao's CCP defeated the KMT, Chiang Kai-shek emptied out the vaults of China's Central Bank in Nanking, and shipped her entire gold reserves, 920,000 liangs worth, to Taipei. This gold was deposited in the vaults of the Bank of Taiwan and used to back the New Taiwan Dollar, making possible Taiwan's economic recovery and subsequent economic miracle. In the process vast expanses of China's mainland provinces and regions were impoverished for the benefit of one tiny offshore province, Taiwan.

Does the province of Taiwan really have no connection with rest of China?

Chinese Blood

The Taiwan region was spared an eternity of Japanese colonial over lordship, as well as Mao's collectivist excesses by mainland Chinese who refused to yield to either.

During the early years of Japanese occupation, valiant Taiwan Chinese engaged in armed resistance against Japan's army of occupation. Tragically, their undermanned, ill equipped ranks were annihilated by Japan's vastly superior forces. This patriotic Chinese resistance movement is sometimes referred to as "Taiwan independence." Their heroic late 19th century anti-colonialist movement must not be confused with Lee Teng-hui and Annette Lu's post WWII nostalgia for Japanese colonial rule, for reasons which should be obvious.

Instead Taiwan was emancipated from an eternity of demeaning Japanese colonial rule in 1945 only through the sacrifices of millions of fellow Chinese on the mainland. The price they paid was staggering. An estimated 1.3 to 2.2 million Chinese military dead. An estimated 13 to 22 million Chinese civilian dead. Taiwan today is out from under the Japanese yoke only because millions of mainland Chinese sacrificed their lives resisting Japan's infernal war machine for eight hellish years.

The vast majority of ordinary Taiwan Chinese who kept a low profile, obeyed the Japanese occupation forces under duress, at the points of Japanese bayonets, are innocent and blameless. Most Taiwan Chinese were for all intents and purposes kidnap victims rescued from their Japanese abductors by their mainland Chinese relatives.

Taiwan's "comfort women" in particular, like the 300,000 victims of the Rape of Nanking, were fellow victims of brutal Japanese aggression. Mainland Chinese and "mainlanders" on Taiwan feel enormous sympathy and a deep sense of solidarity with them.

Taiwan's Quisling elite on the other hand, not only made it more difficult for mainland Chinese to defeat Japan and liberate Taiwan, they made it more difficult for any Taiwan Chinese who dared contemplate overthrowing their Japanese overlords from within Taiwan.

Similarly, the Taiwan region of China was spared Mao's crackpot Marxist Leninist misrule only because Chiang Kai-shek transferred China's national capital from Nanking and carried on his anti communist resistance from Taipei. Had Chiang and his Nationalist Party leadership lost heart and sought political asylum abroad, as they could easily have done, Mao would have overrun Taiwan in a matter of weeks, perhaps days.

The sacrifices of Nationalist Chinese troops spared all Chinese on Taiwan, "native" and "mainlander" alike from Mao's Three Antis, Five Antis "struggle campaigns" chillingly depicted in "Farewell, My Concubine." From Mao's People's Communes, which tore infants from their mothers, from Mao's Great Leap Forward, which reduced millions to eating grass and tree bark before dying of starvation. From Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which deprived an entire generation of Chinese youth of sound educations and promising careers.

Craven cowardice and rank ingratitude have a name. That name is Taiwan Independence.

What A-Bian Should Do

Chen Shui-bian should immediately agree to the "One China Principle." He should not acquiesce to it as if it amounted to an admission of defeat, but insist on it as a matter of principle. He should seize the initiative by calling for a truly historic summit with Jiang Zemin, to discuss in earnest and in detail how and when China should be reunified.

Chen should then exploit to the hilt his authority as president of the Republic of China, to demand even greater liberalization on the Chinese mainland, just as Kim Dae Jung, whom A-Bian claims to admire, has used his authority as president of the Republic of Korea to promote the liberalization of northern Korea.

In what has to be the ultimate irony, Chen Shu-bian is the sole political leader on the entire planet who has every right to lecture Jiang Zemin about "human rights, democracy, freedom of the press and freedom of religion" in China, whereas Leaders of the Free World William Jefferson Clinton and George Dubya Bush have no right whatsoever.

Here is why.

The ROC government in Taipei, according to the ROC Constitution Chen Shui-bian has solemnly sworn to uphold, is the sole legitimate government of China, including the Chinese mainland. This means ironically, that the separatist DPP, by succeeding the KMT as the ruling party of the ROC, also assumed a legal obligation to contest the CCP's rule in Beijing.

The Republic of China government was founded in 1911. The Peoples' Republic of China government was founded in 1949. The ROC government has seniority. The PRC government from the ROC perspective is a Johnny Come Lately, a pretender to the throne.

The ROC government, as arguably the more legitimate government of China, has the moral and legal obligation to promote the General Welfare of her citizens, not merely 23 million on Taiwan, but 1.3 billion on the mainland and 6 million in Hongkong to boot. Any criticisms A-Bian might direct against Beijing, providing he acknowledges the "One China Principle," would fall under the category of domestic policy debate between rival Chinese political leaders.

To demand Chinese reunification is not only NOT "surrendering to tyranny," it is an act of moral courage. It is seizing the moral high ground. To demand Taiwan independence on the other hand, is an abdication of moral responsibility. A Nobel Peace Prize and a place in history as a visionary peacemaker, alongside Willy Brandt and Kim Dae Jung await Chen. But only if he has the guts to defy separatist hate-mongers within his own party, and to seize this "dangerous opportunity."

Taiwan independence fundamentalists' attitude alas, can be summed up as, "We don't give a damn about 1.3 billion fellow citizens on the mainland. They're nothing to us. We'd rather go back to being a nominally independent puppet of an abusive former colonial oppressor, and pretend to be Japanese." Not even bona fide, first class Japanese, but ersatz, second class Japanese."

Now that is moral cowardice. That is surrender to tyranny.

Taiwan Independence, R.I.P.

Taiwan independence, in retrospect, was doomed from the moment of its conception. Only the timing of the Taiwan independence movement's sudden demise was unexpected, and caught everyone from Taiwan independence zealots to Chinese patriots off guard. Its collapse was as unexpected as the fall of the Berlin Wall and dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1989. Yet given the larger geo-economic forces arrayed against both, it was every bit as inevitable.

Taiwan independence is dead. It simply doesn't know it yet. Like the Bruce Willis character in M. Night Shyamalan's metaphysical thriller, "The Sixth Sense," the specter of Taiwan independence walks the earth, unaware it is no longer among the living. When comprehension finally dawns, the wedding ring will fall to the floor, and Taiwan independence True Believers will awaken to the shocking truth.

Taiwan Independence, Rest in Peace.

It will not be missed.

See:
International Trade and National Security