Three Geeks, An Admiral, & A Commodore
Highlights and lowlights from a late-night sweep of the center-right blogosphere....
***Ed Morrissey notes that Uncle Hugo's brazen-as-a-streaker-at-the-Super-Bowl-halftime-show Castroite dictatorship and its accompanying regional expansionist ambitions is finally getting publicly acknowledged, and even tepidly condemned, by elements of the "international community." Evidently Chavez's closing down of the last significant opposition media outlet in Venezuela was more embarrassing to leftists who haven't mustered the audacity to just grab the total power they all seek, such as the socialist Spanish government, the socialist European Parliament, and the socialist Brazilian senate, than they could tolerate.
Or else they thought it would blow their own carefully laid plans and need plausible deniability. It's not like they'll ever actually DO anything about Chavez. That'll still be up to good ol' Uncle Sam, who, by that time, will be Aunt Hillary, and she'll be paying Uncle Hugo conjugal visits.
***Ed also buys into what is probably a parting-shot smear of former SecDef Don Rumsfeld in Congressional Quarterly from a former Colin Powell lieutenant at Foggy Bottom to the tune that the Pentagon secretly encouraged Taiwan to declare "independence," upsetting the apple-cart of long-standing US Taiwan policy that declared Taiwan part of Red China as long as Red China didn't try to make that status non-fictional.
First, it's no secret that Uncle Colin and Big Dog weren't exactly the best of friends in the Bush inner circle, and that in the first Bush term Rumsfeld tended to have the upper hand more than Powell did. I seem to recall a murmuring campaign from Powell associates the past couple of years fueling the "fire Rummy" campaign that finally hit paydirt after the '06 midterms. It's just the sort of behind-the-scenes nut-socking-by-proxie that the former JCS Chairman is known for, and this CQ story doesn't sound any different.
However, if Lawrence Wilkerson is telling the truth, I find myself hard-pressed to find fault with what Rumsfeld did. You can make the argument that with our hands full in the Middle East, it really wasn't the time to needlessly spark a major confrontation with the ChiComms on top of it. On the other hand, you can also make the case, I think, that Beijing was not yet ready for a "nuclear confrontation over Taiwan," as Powell's former chief of staff hyperventilatingly puts it. And it's never a bad idea to give them something to worry about closer to home in order to limit the meddling they can do elsewhere in the world - while we still have the long end of the balance of power with which to do it.
Besides, can we get real here for a moment? The "One China" policy has always been an untenable fiction anyway. There are two Chinas; have been for fifty-eight years. That's the reality. The ChiComms wish it wasn't reality, and they're arming themselves to the teeth for the express purpose of preventing us from preventing them from making their cherished fiction we idiotically indulge into the reality we cannot strategically afford. By continuing to idiotically indulge the fiction of "one China," we really have no logical leg to stand on when Beijing moves to bring reality into line with empty policy, because we will have already functionally recognized it.
Put another way, if we officially categorize Taiwan as an "autonomous" (or, in ChiComm terms, "renegade") province of the mainland, on what grounds do we intervene to stop Beijing from "dealing with" what is, by that very definition, an "internal matter"?
You can see why Rummy would look at that BS and call it BS. Indeed, you can see him doing it. I doubt he acted upon those sentiments as Mr. Wilkerson claims. But part of me kind of wishes he did.
More than "kind of," actually.
***Brother Meringoff, four months ago:
I think Deacon got that backwards - McCain and Giuliani are only the "front-runners" in the eyes of the Enemy Media, not the Republican nominating electorate that is raising Romney up in proportion to the degree they're paying attention to the race.
Well, the Fourth Estate/Fifth Column has noticed, and a bit too inconspicuously to escape Double-H's relentless, muckraking scrutiny.
Besides, dontcha just have to love the spectre of a "testy" Joe Kline?
***Just one more question, if I may: if we are successfully encouraging the "nationalist insurgents" to wage war against the Iranian-sponsored al Qaeda "insurgents," and the "nationalist insurgents" - who are predominantly Ba'athis dead-enders - win, what will there be to stop them from resuming their war against us in the hopes of a Saddamite restoration? Won't we have come full circle? And won't that provide another opening for the Iranians and al Qaeda to come back in and try again?
It's a clever strategy, but as the British like to say, too clever by half. I'm afraid there's still no substitute for engaging Iran militarily and fighting the mullahgarchy to the finish. Never has been, never will be.
But if we wait long enough, the mullahs will make that decision for us - and the finish will not be to our liking.
***Ed Morrissey notes that Uncle Hugo's brazen-as-a-streaker-at-the-Super-Bowl-halftime-show Castroite dictatorship and its accompanying regional expansionist ambitions is finally getting publicly acknowledged, and even tepidly condemned, by elements of the "international community." Evidently Chavez's closing down of the last significant opposition media outlet in Venezuela was more embarrassing to leftists who haven't mustered the audacity to just grab the total power they all seek, such as the socialist Spanish government, the socialist European Parliament, and the socialist Brazilian senate, than they could tolerate.
Or else they thought it would blow their own carefully laid plans and need plausible deniability. It's not like they'll ever actually DO anything about Chavez. That'll still be up to good ol' Uncle Sam, who, by that time, will be Aunt Hillary, and she'll be paying Uncle Hugo conjugal visits.
***Ed also buys into what is probably a parting-shot smear of former SecDef Don Rumsfeld in Congressional Quarterly from a former Colin Powell lieutenant at Foggy Bottom to the tune that the Pentagon secretly encouraged Taiwan to declare "independence," upsetting the apple-cart of long-standing US Taiwan policy that declared Taiwan part of Red China as long as Red China didn't try to make that status non-fictional.
First, it's no secret that Uncle Colin and Big Dog weren't exactly the best of friends in the Bush inner circle, and that in the first Bush term Rumsfeld tended to have the upper hand more than Powell did. I seem to recall a murmuring campaign from Powell associates the past couple of years fueling the "fire Rummy" campaign that finally hit paydirt after the '06 midterms. It's just the sort of behind-the-scenes nut-socking-by-proxie that the former JCS Chairman is known for, and this CQ story doesn't sound any different.
However, if Lawrence Wilkerson is telling the truth, I find myself hard-pressed to find fault with what Rumsfeld did. You can make the argument that with our hands full in the Middle East, it really wasn't the time to needlessly spark a major confrontation with the ChiComms on top of it. On the other hand, you can also make the case, I think, that Beijing was not yet ready for a "nuclear confrontation over Taiwan," as Powell's former chief of staff hyperventilatingly puts it. And it's never a bad idea to give them something to worry about closer to home in order to limit the meddling they can do elsewhere in the world - while we still have the long end of the balance of power with which to do it.
Besides, can we get real here for a moment? The "One China" policy has always been an untenable fiction anyway. There are two Chinas; have been for fifty-eight years. That's the reality. The ChiComms wish it wasn't reality, and they're arming themselves to the teeth for the express purpose of preventing us from preventing them from making their cherished fiction we idiotically indulge into the reality we cannot strategically afford. By continuing to idiotically indulge the fiction of "one China," we really have no logical leg to stand on when Beijing moves to bring reality into line with empty policy, because we will have already functionally recognized it.
Put another way, if we officially categorize Taiwan as an "autonomous" (or, in ChiComm terms, "renegade") province of the mainland, on what grounds do we intervene to stop Beijing from "dealing with" what is, by that very definition, an "internal matter"?
You can see why Rummy would look at that BS and call it BS. Indeed, you can see him doing it. I doubt he acted upon those sentiments as Mr. Wilkerson claims. But part of me kind of wishes he did.
More than "kind of," actually.
***Brother Meringoff, four months ago:
The MSM has been trying to nominate a progressive/liberal/centrist/moderate/or maverick Republican presidential candidate since the days of Nelson Rockefeller - in other words, ever since the Republicans stopped doing it to themselves. The MSM hasn't had much luck, though it made a decent run at it in 2000.
But 2008 (including 2007) may well be the MSM's year. That's because the two leading Republican contenders, McCain and Rudy Giuliani, arguably fit somewhere in the progressive/liberal/centrist/moderate/maverick continuum. At a minimum, both take liberal positions on several issues that many conservatives deem vital.
Right now, the MSM faces only one obvious obstacle - Mitt Romney.
I think Deacon got that backwards - McCain and Giuliani are only the "front-runners" in the eyes of the Enemy Media, not the Republican nominating electorate that is raising Romney up in proportion to the degree they're paying attention to the race.
Well, the Fourth Estate/Fifth Column has noticed, and a bit too inconspicuously to escape Double-H's relentless, muckraking scrutiny.
Besides, dontcha just have to love the spectre of a "testy" Joe Kline?
***Just one more question, if I may: if we are successfully encouraging the "nationalist insurgents" to wage war against the Iranian-sponsored al Qaeda "insurgents," and the "nationalist insurgents" - who are predominantly Ba'athis dead-enders - win, what will there be to stop them from resuming their war against us in the hopes of a Saddamite restoration? Won't we have come full circle? And won't that provide another opening for the Iranians and al Qaeda to come back in and try again?
It's a clever strategy, but as the British like to say, too clever by half. I'm afraid there's still no substitute for engaging Iran militarily and fighting the mullahgarchy to the finish. Never has been, never will be.
But if we wait long enough, the mullahs will make that decision for us - and the finish will not be to our liking.
posted by JASmius at 12:41 AM
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