China: prosperous . . . arming . . . still commies.

"What I think is disconcerting is the willingness of China to not only help but to defend rogue regimes," said Princeton Lyman, who served as ambassador to both Nigeria and South Africa in the Reagan, Georgse H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations.

"China has in effect inhibited the U.N. from imposing sanctions on Sudan, and in Zimbabwe is helping to bail out a regime that is repressive and is destroying the country," Lyman said.^[1]

Anyone who maintains that China is a benign presence in the world bears a heavy responsibility to posterity to be dead right. The above tells us a lot about China's vision of the good and the beautiful and its indifference to basic decency (intentions, morals). The one below tells us about capability to realize its malevolent dreams (means).

China . . . is building up its military for the long-term goal of projecting its power well beyond Taiwan . . . .^[2]

These points bear thinking about.

For that matter, why are we falling over ourselves to trade with and build up China? Shirley, there are other countries that have lesser determination to be a strategic competitor of the U.S. Like:

• Thailand
• Malaysia
• Philippines
• Australia
• Costa Rica
• Mexico
• Chile
• Brazil?

That said, wouldn't it be to our advantage to foster a much friendlier relationship with Russia? Don't we have interests that are more similar than not? We ought to be ecstatic about Pres. Putin's determination to sit on the Chechnyans and the Central Asian nations, as Russian resolve will ensure that Wahhabism does not spread north and east out of the Middle East. Development of Russian oil and protection of its oil pipelines will strengthen Russia and weaken the Saudis and Iranians.

Similarly, it is in the interest of the U.S. that China be prevented from discovering, as it did with Tibet, that suddenly Eastern Russia was actually Chinese all along. Remember how the Chinese suddenly remembered all that uranium of theirs that was under Tibet? (In contrast to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Chinese really did want to take over Tibet raw materials and steal them from the Tibets out-bloody-right. Now reread the second quotation above.)

The idea that American business had shipped American scrap iron to Japan prior to Pearl Harbor was seen as madness after the fact. In what important respects is our present approach unnaturally favoring China different from that pre-war policy?

Well?

Are we seeing here the same kind of amoral pursuit of profit over national interest that made the old saw about capitalists selling the communists the rope with which to hang them so precisely accurate?

Whatever "them" it is who effectively rule the United States -- and "neocon" isn't even close to being a useful term to identify them -- they doubtless have factored in very little of the long- or short-term national interest in building up China, just as they have ignored the interests of the American people in utterly failing to stop illegal immigration.

Didn't Wal Mart at one point hold itself out as peddling American-made products? Now it's a marketing arm of the Central Committe in Beijing. Anything to worry about here? Shouldn't the policy rule be, "Adopt the most efficient method of getting goods and services to Americans that is consistent with national survival"?

Only fools invite strangers to take up permanent residence in their living rooms and only fools and traitors enrich and empower obvious enemies. But this truth doesn't phase any of the resident geniuses encamped along the Potomac.

While the Colonel would rather watch cartoons than think about foreign policy and his views can sometimes lack a certain sophistication, the truth remains that a quorum of regulars down at Hooters could probably come up with a foreign policy that in its broad outlines (wow is that a good pun, or what?) rivals the excellent product emanating in polysyllabic, mellifluous and refined tones from Foggy Bottom.

Sometimes drunks at AA meetings will recount a tale of such ghastly personal destruction as to render the audience fairly helpless with laughter. And at the end of the tale, the speaker will always state, "And my best thinking got me there."

Your government's plans to protect you. Case study #856,056,821.

We are paying a lot of highly educated people who would never be caught dead at Hooters or a Super8 Motel (two staples of the Colonel's existence) to devise really, really sophisticated policies that advance the national interests of the people of the United States. Perhaps the photo nearby will serve as a modest reminder that fancy titles, degrees, and big paychecks don't necessarily amount to @#$%.

Notes
^[1] "China, Africa Dictators Link Rings Alarms." By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, Fox News, 8/15/05 (emphasis added).
"^[2] Pentagon: China Military Building Beyond Taiwan." By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, Fox News, 7/20/05 (emphasis added).