What I Didn't Know
I didn’t know the history of conflict between mainland China and neighboring Taiwan: a 1949 revolution - Mao vs. Chaing Kai-Shek, an ensuing flood of nationalist refugees retreating to Taiwan and absorbing the island as a safe haven, U.S. Cold War strategies that prompted political interventions, calls for Taiwanese independence, shows of force with missile firings and military exercises (1995), and now renewed gestures toward declared independence. I’d known bits and pieces, but I couldn’t have told the story. It seems not everyone agrees there is only ONE China, and I didn’t know the United States was making yet another “civil war” its business to engage.
I didn’t know that President Bush had pledged military support for Taiwan in the event that China deployed its military to prevent formal separation and the subsequent recognition of Taiwan as an independent nation. “President Bush has made it clear that the United States would defend Taiwan.”
Major General Zhu Chenghu, a senior Chinese military official, spoke boldly in response to the issue: "If the Americans are determined to interfere, then we will be determined to respond," he said. "We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."
Posturing? Political positioning? Moves in a game beyond my ability to yet understand? Ok. I know that I don’t really know, but I hear an underlying message in the rhetoric of this exchange: China will not be another Iraq. If the United States makes one single move of intervention in the direction of Taiwan, China’s first move in response will be to bring everything it’s got straight into retaliation against mainland U.S. The general is talking about a willingness to launch atomic warfare, deploying from an arsenal easily able to hit multiple targets on U.S. soil.
Do you wanna bet they won’t?
If the people of this nation would not be willing to risk Los Angeles for the sake of “Operation Freedom” in Taiwan, why do we continue to put the lives of American men and women on the line for “Operation Freedom” in Iraq? Evidence for proving that we are making the world a safer place to be is frightfully thin right now. How far are we willing to go in our efforts to "parent" all the other nations states of the world, and just exactly when and how will we know we’ve gone to far?
posted by Mary Godwin @ Friday, July 15, 2005
3 comments
3 Comments:
This is tremendously scary, especially when we consider the unthinking child-like sabre rattling that our fearless "leader" often engages in. I knew the basic history of the China-Taiwan standoff, but not any of the recent activities. Of course, before we engage China, W will have us tuned up to a fine edge by unilateral invasions of Iran and N. Korea in order to liberate those poor souls. Me thinks I smell draft cards burning...
>
>I did not write this. I copied it off an email to me but it says it well.
A must read historical account of Terrorism against the US ~
>
>This is not very long, but very informative. You have to read the catalogue
>of events in this brief piece. Then, ask yourself how anyone can take the
>position that all we have to do is bring our troops home from Iraq, sit
>back, reset the snooze alarm, go back to sleep, and no one will ever bother
>us again. In case you missed it, World War III began in November 1979...
>That alarm has been ringing for years.
>
>US Navy Captain Ouimette is the Executive Officer at Naval Air Station,
>Pensacola, Florida. Here is a copy of the speech he gave last month. It is
>an accurate account of why we are in so much trouble today and why this
>action is so necessary.
>
>AMERICA NEEDS TO WAKE UP!
>
>That's what we think we heard on the 11th of September 2001 (When more than
>3,000 Americans were killed -AD) and maybe it was, but I think it should
>have been "Get Out of Bed!" In fact, I think the alarm clock has been
>buzzing since 1979 and we have continued to hit the snooze button and roll
>over for a few more minutes of peaceful sleep since then.
>
>It was a cool fall day in November 1979 in a country going through a
>religious and political upheaval when a group of Iranian students attacked
>and seized the American Embassy in Tehran. This seizure was an outright
>attack on American soil; it was an attack that held the world's most
>powerful country hostage and paralyzed a Presidency. The attack on this
>sovereign U. S. embassy set the stage for events to follow for the next 25
>years.
>
>America was still reeling from the aftermath of the Vietnam experience and
>had a serious threat from the Soviet Union when then, President Carter, had
>to do something. He chose to conduct a clandestine raid in the desert. The
>ill-fated mission ended in ruin, but stood as a symbol of America's
>inability to deal with terrorism.
>
>America's military had been decimated and down sized/right sized since the
>end of the Vietnam War. A poorly trained, poorly equipped and poorly
>organized military was called on to execute a complex mission that was
>doomed from the start.
>
>Shortly after the Tehran experience, Americans began to be kidnapped and
>killed throughout the Middle East. America could do little to protect her
>citizens living and working abroad. The attacks against US soil continued.
>
>In April of 1983 a large vehicle packed with high explosives was driven into
>the US Embassy compound in Beirut When it explodes, it kills 63 people. The
>alarm went off again and America hit the Snooze Button once more.
>
>Then just six short months later in 1983 a large truck heavily laden down
>with over 2500 pounds of TNT smashed through the main gate of the US Marine
>Corps headquarters in Beirut and 241 US servicemen are killed. America
>mourns her dead and hit the Snooze Button once more.
>
>Two months later in December 1983, another truck loaded with explosives is
>driven into the US Embassy in Kuwait, and America continues her slumber.
>
>The following year, in September 1984, another van was driven into the gate
>of the US Embassy in Beirut and America slept.
>
>Soon the terrorism spreads to Europe. In April 1985 a bomb explodes in a
>restaurant frequented by US soldiers in Madrid.
>
>Then in August 1985 a Volkswagen loaded with explosives is driven into the
>main gate of the US Air Force Base at Rhein-Main, 22 are killed and the
>snooze alarm is buzzing louder and louder as US interests are continually
>attacked.
>
>Fifty-nine days later in 1985 a cruise ship, the Achille Lauro is hijacked
>and we watched as an American in a wheelchair is singled out of the
>passenger list and executed.
>
>The terrorists then shift their tactics to bombing civilian airliners when
>they bomb TWA Flight 840 in April of
>
>
>1986 that killed 4 and the most tragic bombing, Pan Am Flight 103 over
>Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 259.
>
>Clinton treated these terrorist acts as crimes; in fact we are still trying
>to bring these people to trial. These are acts of war.
>
>The wake up alarm is getting louder and louder.
>
>The terrorists decide to bring the fight to America. In January 1993, two
>CIA agents are shot and killed as they enter CIA headquarters in Langley,
>Virginia.
>
>The following month, February 1993, a group of terrorists are arrested after
>a rented van packed with explosives is driven into the underground parking
>garage of the World Trade Center in New York City. Six people are killed and
>over 1000 are injured. Still this is a crime and not an act of war? The
>Snooze alarm is depressed again.
>
>Then in November 1995 a car bomb explodes at a US military complex in
>Riyadh, Saudi Arabia killing seven service men and women.
>
>A few months later in June of 1996, another truck bomb explodes only 35
>yards from the US military compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. It destroys
>the Khobar Towers, a US Air Force barracks, killing 19 and injuring over
>500. The terrorists are getting braver and smarter as they see that America
>does not respond decisively.
>
>They move to coordinate their attacks in a simultaneous attack on two US
>embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.. These attacks were planned with precision.
>They kill 224. America responds with cruise missile attacks and goes back to
>sleep.
>
>The USS Cole was docked in the port of Aden, Yemen for refueling on 12
>October 2000, when a small craft pulled along side the ship and exploded
>killing 17 US Navy Sailors. Attacking a US War Ship is an act of war, but we
>sent the FBI to investigate the crime and went back to sleep.
>
>And of course you know the events of 11 September 2001. Most Americans think
>this was the first attack against US soil or in America. How wrong they are.
>America has been under a constant attack since 1979 and we chose to hit the
>snooze alarm and roll over and go back to sleep.
>
>In the news lately we have seen lots of finger pointing from every high
>official in government over what they knew and what they didn't know. But if
>you've read the papers and paid a little attention I think you can see
>exactly what they knew. You don't have to be in the FBI or CIA or on the
>National Security Council to see the pattern that has been developing since
>1979.
>
>The President is right on when he says we are engaged in a war. I think we
>have been in a war for the past 25 years and it will continue until we as a
>people decide enough is enough. America needs to "Get out of Bed" and act
>decisively now. America has been changed forever. We have to be ready to pay
>the price and make the sacrifice to ensure our way of life continues. We
>cannot afford to keep hitting the snooze button again and again and roll
>over and go back to sleep.
>
>After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Yamamoto said "... it seems all we
>have done is awakened a sleeping giant." This is the message we need to
>disseminate to terrorists around the world.
>
>Support Our Troops and support President Bush for having the courage,
>political or militarily, to address what so many who preceded him didn't
>have the backbone to do, both Democrat and Republican. This is not a
>political thing to be hashed over in an election year this is an AMERICAN
>thing. This is about our Freedom and the Freedom of our children in years to
>come.
>>
my thoughts:
Freedom is not free!
Freedom is something that must be earned over and over due to the fallen nature of man.
It is odd that those that exercise their freedom the most understand this the least and expect someone else to pay the price for them. A term for this escapes me.
Randy, this is a passionate and convincing address, but it raises (again) for me issues that remain fundamentally troubling. Though I do not mean to argue for an immediate troop withdrawal - a topic I've discussed in earlier posts here - and I am all about supporting the troops, I fail to find the sense of Captain Ouimette's rationale in believing our nation to have been at war now for 26 years. Certainly, this litany of terrorist attacks chronicle terrible and bloody events, but years pass between them, and the listing tells only one nation's story of loss. It is a huge leep of rhetoric to move from this chronicle to a declaration of war, and do we want to believe that every nation that experiences a bloody, violent, and passionately motivated attack against "its soil" is justified in declaring war against "the terrorists"? If so, do we not ALL, from one point of view or another, become "the enemy"?
Captain Ouimette writes, "The Terrorists are getting braver and smarter as they see that America does not respond decisively ... to insure our way of life continues." The difficulty comes, it seems to me, in defining just exactly who "the terrorists" are. Time has demonstrated that we launched a "Shock and Awe" bombing campaign against a country that had no weapons of mass destruction, had not participated in the attack on the World Trade Centers, and posed no threat to the United States. WE fired first - against a people who, until then, were NOT an enemy to the United States. How do you define "the terrorists" in this case? See how the concept can become difficult to handle? And that is the problem with declaring a war on an IDEA ... it changes depending on which side of the idea you're on. Same thing goes for the notion of "our way of life." Under a constitution that protects amazing diversity, just exactly whose way of life are we going to protect? During WWII we thought we had to protect "our way of life" from Japanese American citizens just because they were Japanese. ...same thing happened in other ways with my own German grandparents. I remember stories about name changes and accent suppressions. If an IDEA becomes an enemy against which we can declare war, we risk the mistake of situating it in a personification, a people, or, as in the case of Iraq, mistaking situating it on a nation that, before "Shock and Awe," had no capacity for posing a threat to the United States. They do now, and we started it!
I am so moved by the passion Captain Ouimette writes into his appeal, but the foundation of his thinking doesn't stand up to the test of "universals" ... A rule that will prosper the well-being of all the people on the planet will be a rule that can be applied equally to all and by all. If America justifies a war just because it can (right now), what do we do when the rest of the world gets together and says, "Oh, yeah?!!"
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