The Chicoms used to bombard Taiwan (Formosa to me) every other day. The break/bulk freighters I sailed delivered materials to Formosa. My pay doubled on those days the ship was inside the “war zone”.
After the disastrous meeting in Anchorage earlier this year, China is on the offensive. If not, it's certainly making moves because it easily slapped around Secretary of State Antony Blinken. It was an embarrassment. The adults are back, right? Well, they're getting the belt—by everyone.
China and the Taliban have both clinched wins over the Biden White House. And knowing how Biden seems wholly disengaged with everything, I'd take some things out for a spin. Our shambolic exit from Afghanistan showed the world that American was "rudderless." The world sees we're a nation deeply divided. Now is the time to make some moves—and China certainly is exhibiting that in the Taiwan Straits. Yet, one nation could throw a wrench in Beijing's neo-imperial plans.
Parenthetically, I would not call this an accomplishment:
One of President Jimmy Carter’s greatest accomplishments was negotiating the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, which were ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1978. These treaties gave the nation of Panama eventual control of the Panama Canal.
https://history.state.gov/milestones...0/panama-canal
In fact, it was not an accomplishment at all in light of:
Incidentally,
After Jimmy Carter surrendered control of the Panama Canal, I joked to friends that Mexicans want California. Sure enough, not long after the Panama Canal humiliation Mexican Americans, and other separatists, kicked their movement into high gear. I admit I was not entirely correct; Mexico wants the entire Southwest not just California. Emboldened by success, I asked “What is next? Alaska?” Damned if I was not ahead of the curve on that one, too.
Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces -- with Alaska reverting to Russian control.
https://www.justplainpolitics.com/sh...66#post3454766
Giving away the Panama Canal by treaty is every reason to expect Democrats will give Formosa to China by treaty.
Finally, lets dump:
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Gen. Mark Milley proves that a lot of knowledge can be a dangerous thing when accompanied by a fevered imagination and barely a glimmer of analytical ability and common sense.
James Hohmann of the Washington Post gushes that Milley “owns thousands of books in his personal library” and “attended Princeton before starting his climb up the officer’s ladder.” The general is also an “amateur historian.”
Relying on the depiction of Milley by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their book about the last days of the Trump presidency, Hohmann informs us that the general’s knowledge of history and culture caused “his mind [to] gravitate[]. . .toward chilling metaphors” during this period. In Hohmann’s telling (via Woodward and Costa), the metaphors come fast and furious.
When a pro-Trump mob overran the U.S. Capitol, it reminded Milley of the failed Russian revolution of 1905. After order was restored at the Capitol, Milley switched analogies and feared that Trump was looking, Hitler style, for a “Reichstag moment” before the inauguration of Joe Biden.
When Trump chewed out then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper for publicly opposing the invocation of the Insurrection Act amid the BLM protests, Trump reminded Milley of the vituperative drill sergeant in the movie “Full Metal Jacket.” The general viewed Stephen Miller as the American version of Rasputin.
Trump’s curiosity about the possibility of attacking Iran reminded Milley of the 1997 movie “Wag the Dog.” In addition, he thought, for some reason, about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. And also about the Cuban missile crisis.
If Milley had dropped acid, I doubt he would have had a stranger trip.
Yet, Hohmann reels off Milley’s analogies uncritically. The Post man seems to be along for the trip.
Stephen Miller as Rasputin? I guess that makes Trump a modern day Czar Nicholas II, while Melania becomes Czarina Alexandra, over whom the mystic exercised so much influence.
Come on, man.
Overall, Milley at least deserves high marks for originality. However, the “Wag the Dog” reference is hackneyed.
The Bolshevik reference isn’t original, either. John Mitchell, Nixon’s attorney general, invoked it when he saw many thousands of angry marchers parading past the Justice Department during a massive anti-war demonstration.
Neither analogy holds up, though Mitchell’s comes closer to the mark. Jake Angeli as Vladimir Lenin? Come on, man.
Hohmann writes:
Milley told associates that he had buried 242 kids at Arlington National Cemetery. “I’m not really interested in having a war with anybody,” he said, according to Woodward and Costa. Ultimately, thankfully, neither was Trump.
Of course, Trump wasn’t interested in starting a war. If Milley had any sense to go with his book learning, he would have understood this.
No American president in many decades has been more averse to war than Trump. The notion that Trump would start a war with China, of all adversaries, due to his anger over the 2020 election is laughable.
So too is Milley’s reference to the Cuban missile crisis. In that case, the Soviet Union placed missiles 90 miles from the U.S. and President Kennedy responded with a naval blockade of Cuba. What was the analogous behavior of either China or the U.S. in 2020-21?
Given Milley’s status as an amateur historian, it’s fair to ask how he seems to have missed the most apt historical analogue to recent events — the fall of Saigon, with its similarities to the fall of Kabul. Apparently, this parallel was too obvious for the general’s wild imagination.
I think it was Sir Lewis Namier, the great British historian, who said that the purpose of studying history should be to acquire “historical sense.” Milley study’s of history hasn’t yielded that happy attribute. As depicted by Woodward and Costa, the general spouts historical nonsense.
You don’t have to be an amateur historian to worry about Mark Milley being chairman of the joint chiefs.
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