Monthly Archives: October 2020

Defense of the Republic of China

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Paul Wolfowitz had a thought on that last Tuesday. His opening paragraph laid out his thesis.

Beijing has been making a show of hostility toward Taiwan. Last week China released footage of “real combat” it conducted last month in Taiwanese airspace. A Chinese invasion would present the greatest threat to global peace in a generation. The US would confront an agonizing dilemma: risk an armed clash between two nuclear superpowers or abandon a free people to communist tyranny. But there’s an alternative—deter the threat by committing to oppose it, by force if necessary.

I’d be a bit more blunt.

It would be good to remind the PRC of who has vastly more nuclear warheads than the other, who has the better cyberwar capability, and how little the US depends on river dams—or a single dam—for its food supply.

It also would be good to stage our own demonstrations, real rather than virtual, throughout the East and South China Seas and in the Taiwan strait and to increase and accelerate arms sales to the Republic of China.

Joe Biden, however, is the epitome of an Asian nation being of little strategic value, of a commitment to use military force in [RoC] would be ill-advised and impracticable, and whose prevailing mood… [is] not to interfere—after all, the PRC, Biden insists, is not a serious competitor; the nation isn’t a “patch on our jeans.”

Censorship

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Here are a couple of New York Post items that Facebook and Twitter are so nakedly censoring. These are in their second article:

And

And

These items are in the NYP‘s second article, published 15 October, the day after the Post published its first article—which Twitter and Facebook began censoring. These two social media enterprises went so far as to lock White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany out of her personal Twitter account unless and until she deletes her own Twitter post that carried that original Post article, which broke the fact of the laptop and emails thereon.

Twitter has extended its censorship to the point that it is blocking a United States Senator—Ted Cruz (R, TX)—from tweeting about this second article.

True, false, or misunderstood, the laptop and these emails and the others on that newly exposed laptop need to be openly discussed and their provenances clearly identified.

With this censorship, Facebook and Twitter have ceased to be pipelines and created themselves publishers controlling what information they will choose to publish.

That makes it imperative to withdraw their immunity from the regulation to which any publisher of information is subject, including in particular the requirement to provide equal time under equal conditions to all sides of any discussion of information.

With their censorship, Facebook and Twitter have drastically abused their monopoly power. With that, it’s necessary, also, to break them up into smaller, independently operating enterprises with management teams and employee suites that are entirely separate each enterprise from the others.

Read both articles. The first one can be seen both here and via the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Web page.

Progress

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…on the foreign policy and national security front.

The White House is moving forward with three sales of advanced weaponry to Taiwan, sending in recent days a notification of the deals to Congress for approval, five sources said on Monday, while China threatened retaliation.

The three weapons systems—of seven in the works—have been approved by the State Department and are these:

  • High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS)
  • SLAM-ER, a long-range air-to-ground missile system
  • external sensor pods for F-16 jets that allow the real-time transmission of imagery and data from the aircraft back to ground stations.

These aren’t just feel-good devices, either; they’ll give the Republic of China an ability to strike back hard and meaningfully against People’s Republic of China invasion forces along with recon data concerning approaching/maneuvering PRC forces.

Other weapons systems in the works include these, and their approvals and deliveries need to be moved along apace.

  • large, sophisticated aerial drones
  • land-based Harpoon anti-ship missiles
  • underwater mines to meet amphibious landings and, depending on where deployed, to meet PLA Navy combatants

Still, these sales and deliveries, sound progress that they represent, need to be coupled with more frequent Naval sailings throughout the South and East China Seas and in the immediate vicinity of the RoC, including the Taiwan Strait, and port calls at RoC ports in order to maximize the sales’ potential and concrete effect.

Divisiveness

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It’s not from the Right, nor even from the extremists on the Right or the Left.

No, the Mainstream Left and it’s carried through politically by the Left’s Progressive-Democratic Party; they have a virtual monopoly on divisiveness.  Here are just a few examples, provided by Jim DeMint in a slightly different, but related context. DeMint suggests these are from the radical Left, but he’s mistaken in that. The Left and Party have moved so far left that these positions are, in fact, their mainstream.

Pro-Life? You hate women.
Religious traditionalist? Homophobe.
Dislike illegal immigration? Racist.
Support welfare reform? Racist, again, and you hate the poor.
Do you like the Senate or the Electoral College, or stand during the national anthem? Probably a white supremacist.
Believe there are two sexes, corresponding to one’s genetics? Hate speech.
Believe the United States was founded in 1776? White nationalist.
Believe, like the World Health Organization itself, that we can reopen schools, safely, while managing the risks of COVID-19? Child abuser.
Believe we can mitigate the risks of climate change through technological innovation? You might as well believe the earth is flat.
To too many on the left today, religion is hate. Superstition is science. Freedom is oppression. Lies are truth. The Rule of Law is bigotry. The Constitution is evil. And America is irredeemably racist.

There’s more. Recall the following in our very recent history.

Ex-President Barack Obama: the Cambridge police acted stupidly, which he said about a Cambridge University policeman, responding to a call, arrested a man the caller had said was behaving suspiciously, the man resisted questioning, and then turned out to be the resident of the abode at which door he was arrested. Which Obama said, mind you, right after he said he knew nothing about the matter.

Then-Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: talking about Americans who didn’t support her candidacy, they’re all irredeemable, deplorable, misogynistic, homophobic, racist.

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden: blacks not supporting him aren’t really black, and 15% of Americans are just no good.

Pettiness

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And sulking reminiscent of a tantrum-throwing two-year-old. That’s Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D, NY) position regarding the confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says Democrats will not “supply quorum” for votes on Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, effectively declaring that they’ll boycott the process in an attempt to stall her confirmation.

Never mind that he and his fellow Progressive-Democrat Senators could be working with the Republican Senators on getting Wuhan Virus situation-related aid to Americans, including his constituents, instead of refusing even to allow floor debate on the targeted aid bill he personally blocked just last month.

Never mind that he and his fellow Progressive-Democrat Senators could be working with the Republican Senators on Senator Tim Scott’s (R, SC) police reform bill instead of refusing, just a bare few months ago, even to allow floor debate on the bill—and condoning Senator Dick Durbin’s (D, IL) despicable characterization of the black Senator’s bill as a token.

Never mind that Schumer’s ducking away from consideration of this confirmation process will add only a few hours’ delay and considerable irritation for irritation’s sake to the confirmation process: there are too many ways to work around his refusal to appear for the votes, especially since there aren’t even enough Progressive-Democrats in the Senate actually to deny a quorum.

It’s like Schumer has only tantrums and sulking to offer.