quote from the law:
"the state shall employ non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to protect china's sovereignty and territorial integrity"
quote from wen jiabo, premier of china:
"this is a law to strengthen and promote cross-strait relations, for peaceful reunification, not targeted at the people of taiwan, nor is it a law of war," he said.
kekekekekeke!
war is peace!
If this conflict escalates.....it will be interesting.
Interesting in a very, very bad way.
"May you live in interesting times."
My comments: http://www.anre.org/fo/viewtopic.php?t=1175
are we reading the first chapter of the history of the sino-american war?
God almighty, I hope not. Unfortunately, due to some treaty or other, the US is obligated to help Taiwan out if/when the Chinese invade. The Chinese know this, and if that's what they're planning on doing, they're picking a prime time, what with our troops already spread a bit thin in the Middle East and possibly (God help us over here too) North Korea.
Remember when India and Pakistan were rattling nuclear sabers a few years back? I pray to God that, just like that potentially messy situation, cooler heads will prevail in the end.
Incidentally, there already was a Sino-American war of sorts; it was the Korean War.
The war in Iraq has certainly had one casualty: the belief that much of the world had that the US was unbeatable. All right, there was the Vietnam war, but that a lot more protracted. This belief was important since the US kept much of the mess in the world in check.
As it is, the US is having difficulty dealing with a rather small country in the Middle East. Financially the country is depleting itself, allies are nervous, and troop moral is low. Is it any wonder that China may be choosing this time to rattle sabers?
I hope they don't start marching the warpath, but if they do, I imagine their army will be quite effective. They don't have to worry much about public image, and they certainly don't care about human rights. Their main difficulty will probably be shipping their cannon fodtroops around.
Before anyone accuses me of taking this opportunity to bash the US: I'm not. This is merely an observation as to why China is playing this game now.
Well, remember that we're not really fighting a country anymore over in the Middle East; we're fighting non-uniformed terrorists who aren't complying to the Geneva Convention and such. Were China to go to war with anyone, I think the odds are a bit better that they would follow common rules of war. I disagree that they'd want to entirely ignore public image, though they definitely don't have as much at stake as the US does (I think fewer people would have been surprised by an Abu Ghirab-like incident if it were Chinese troops doing it).
kekekekekeke!
dire pessimists, all of you!
i've only been living in america for 19 months 2 weeks and 4 days now, but my impression is that while americans in general don't have much of a will to go to war, they also tend to hold grudges. i think if an american president wants a war with china, he should move a provocative but strategically neutral naval and aircraft detachment to taiwan, and just let them sit there. it might deter china (though it will certainly enrage them), and it will make it really easy to get the american public to see an attack on taiwan as almost as dire as they saw the attack on pearl harbor.
and to be honest, i'm inclined to think that america should confront and contain china, just like reagan did with russia. china is just as poor and corrupt as russia was, but they also have the same facility for adaptive ingenuity and indomitable will that the pre-perestroika russians did.
p.s., in my 19 months, i've only ever been to ohio, illinois, indiana, michigan, and kentucky, and the people there tend to take personal affronts very seriously. back in israel, people were more likely to have something bad happen, cry, and then say "shit happens". americans get much more upset over things. is this just the area i've been in, or are they all like that?
>>13: What types of personal affronts are you referring to? I could probably answer your question better if you gave an example.
ah, i have a hard time explaining it without sounding like i'm condescending, which i'm not. america's ways must work well for americans. but it seems to me like americans are constantly rehashing past grievances in a way that people from other countries i've lived in don't.
for instance, recently i went to kentucky; i was told that people who lived there were still upset about failing to secede, and i didn't believe it, but to my surprise i saw slogans denigrating the abolitionist side on t-shirts and bumper-stickers, and some people even had the confederate battle flag on their cars.
i also frequently hear about how jesus was crucified by my coreligionists (which is a lie), that israelis intentionally attacked the u.s.s. liberty (which seems irrational. why intentionally attack our greatest and most dependable ally? wouldn't you help us anyway? you always have...), my next door neighbor once told me that its a shame the u.s. didn't nuke viet nam, and to be honest, considering september 11th killed 1/1,000th of 1% of americans, i think all the "never forget" stickers are overly dramatic. the average suicide bombing actually kills proportionally more israelis than 9/11 killed americans, but the day after a market is bombed, it is open.
Well, the Confederate flag has kind of changed in meaning; now, it's just sort of iconic of being of southern heritage. Few people who have Confederate bumper stickers or T-shirts or such still want to secede from the Union or put blacks back in shackles. As for the rest of that stuff, it just sounds like you're coming across a few nuts who are by no means a sampling of the broad spectrum of American society. Do what the rest of us do; shrug 'em off and go about your way.
>>13
The rest of the human race has much, much longer memories and tends to remember affronts far, far longer than most of the people you seem to have known in Israel. It's not solely an American trait, either; the Irish are still livid about Oliver Cromwell, Serbs and Croats have been killing each other since the Dark Ages, Hindus and Moslems have spent most of the last 1300 years or so killing one another, Koreans and Japanese have despised one another for centuries, and the Arab world is still outraged by the Reconquista of Spain. Americans aren't nearly as good at this centuries-long-grudge-holding stuff as some other societies are.