There were some at the time who suggested the delay was to avoid embarrassing the folks in Beijing during the run-up to their Olympic games. That indeed seems (to me) to have been the case because the sale was announced a few days ago.
Now, as expected, the Peoples' Republic is in a snit over the whole thing. To retaliate, they have officially complained to our State Department and have canceled "senior level visits and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief exchanges" scheduled to occur by the end of November.
Wait a minute. They're backing out of disaster relief talks and our admirals can't talk to their admirals for a month? I don't know about Bush, but I'm sure quaking in my boots. This seems to be another case where they pretend to be upset and we pretend to care. Life goes on.
Anyway, I've always believed that the people of Taiwan should choose their own destiny. Whether they choose to remain independent or be absorbed by the PROC is a choice that only they should be allowed to make. But they'll have no choice at all if they can't continue to defend themselves against a neighbor who still considers them a "renegade province."
It took us a while, but we finally did the right thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment