More powerful than the dilapidated "former" Soviet Union! Able to reach the moon once upon a time! Look, up in the sky! It's a bird, it's a plane! No, it's the bean-curd superpower looking soft and runny on its plate!
Watch the bean-curd superpower lose its consistency as its most sensitive aircraft is forced to land in China. See the president of the bean-curd superpower plead day after day with those nice Chinese communists (who are always so reasonable and fair in everything they do). Learn
up-to-date science as the Chinese pull apart the captured U.S. plane. Watch as the Chinese discuss the idea of making a show trial with the 24 captured American servicemen.
Does the president of the bean-curd superpower stand forth, like Moses from the desert, calling down plagues upon the heathen unless they let his people go? Is the awesome power of the bean unleashed?
Consider recent bean-curd superpower history. Chinese communist spies steal the secret of an highly advanced and miniaturized nuclear warhead, the W-88. They steal the secret of the neutron bomb. They interfere in our nation's political process, passing money under the table to Democratic Party operatives and candidates. Despite being caught red-handed, as it were, they
are still rewarded the status of a "favored trading partner."
Go shopping in bean-curd land and you may discover that most of the stuff in the stores has "Made in China" labels. Visit California and see the Chinese illegal aliens being smuggled in by the thousands. Watch how the Chinese military sends its best officers to visit U.S. military
installations. We smile at the Chinese. We tell ourselves that they are changing into capitalists. We ignore the enormity of the Chinese "Laogai" forced labor camps where 20 million souls are tortured and brutalized day by day. We forget the atrocity at Tiananmen Square in which thousands of unarmed students were mashed and machine-gunned by tanks and infantry.
The democracy in Taiwan is not worthy of our diplomatic recognition, but the criminals in Beijing are worthy. Such is the bean-curd logic of American foreign policy.
"All reactionaries are paper tigers," said Chairman Mao. "The atom bomb is a paper tiger," he added. Once upon a time the United States was a living tiger, an iron tiger. "Look!" said Mao, "in the end they changed into paper tigers, dead tigers, bean-curd tigers."
Could it be that President George W. Bush's foreign policy "dream team" is made up of bean-curd?
Meanwhile, at the bean-curd Capitol, Sen. Fred Thompson testifies before his colleagues that America's nuclear weapons industry is falling into decay. Eyebrows go up, but after a few drinks at lunch the senators merely laugh and shrug. At the same time, the bean-curd superpower says it is short of $3 billion in munitions.
The U.S. president is keen to put a happy face on the situation. His mantra is "tax cut, tax cut, tax cut" as the markets fall, fall, fall. It is peace in our time. It is prosperity without regard for the business cycle. The national debt has already been paid off in theory. Early in March the
administration emphasized that, thankfully, the Cold War was over.
"We are no longer divided into armed camps locked in a careful balance of terror," said President Bush. The threat today, he emphasized, is from terrorists and little countries like North Korea and Iraq.
The real threat to the bean-curd republic is from two-bit boobs. "They range from terrorists who threaten with bombs to tyrants and rogue nations intent on developing weapons of mass destruction," explained the president. "To protect our own people, our allies and friends, we must develop and ... deploy effective missile defenses."
But our bean-curd president insists that these "effective" missile defenses will not be effective against Russia. We wouldn't want to defend against the number one threat to our existence as a nation, would we? Such a course would not be very bean-curd-like. After all, National Missile Defense is only a device to nix the worrywarts whose fears are focused on Iraq and North Korea. (Those who worry about Russia are too few and far between to warrant a placebo.)
To show the fierceness of its rogue-like quality, and to gain U.S. assistance in building its nuclear power industry, North Korea recently threatened to declare war on America. In January 1999 the North Korean press predicted that the United States would soon be reduced to ash. But this will not be accomplished by the North Koreans.
One must look to China and Russia for the "final solution" of the America problem. These are the countries whose leaders smile and smile, though they are villains. Yet the bean-curd tigers of America do not notice. They have no eyes.
It was whispered in the press last month that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, long mistaken for an iron tiger, met with Chinese Vice Prime Minister Qian Qichen for 45 minutes and never once mentioned China's military buildup. Secretary of State Colin Powell also has said nothing harsh about the Beijing butchers and their new missiles aimed at Taiwan.
Bean-curd tigers seldom speak unpleasant words. They just lay there and turn runny under pressure. And how could such a thing continue under our fierce new Republican administration? Clinton appointees at the State Department and Pentagon are said to determine the consistency of our bean-curd secretaries of defense and state.
It seems the dead hand of Clinton's administration is still crawling thing-like through Washington.
On Feb. 20 Frank J. Gaffney Jr. wrote an important article in the Washington Times, titled "Defense fire sale." According to Gaffney the Clinton administration did not merely allow the U.S. military to fall into disrepair. They destroyed our ability to maintain strong defenses by putting
defense contractors out of business. In many cases, says Gaffney, Clinton eliminated "the defense industrial base that will be needed to effect the rebuilding [of the military]."
We should not be surprised if the bean-curd superpower is forced to eliminate two more army divisions, three carrier battle groups and half its nuclear forces. The infrastructure needed to keep such forces in place, says Gaffney, was dismantled in the early days of Clinton's presidency. That was when Defense Secretary Les Aspin brought the nation's defense contractors together at a meeting that became known as "the Last Supper."
Here iron was turned into bean-curd.
Some defense industries simply folded. Others were merged and shrunk. Even worse, some defense contractors were acquired by foreign powers -- technology and all. And now our bean-curd Pentagon depends on overseas suppliers for its vitals. In fact, the United States Army's black berets are "Made in China."
The EP-3E intelligence aircraft, which the Chinese grabbed a few days ago, is our country's most sensitive intelligence aircraft. Does anyone in bean-curd land imagine that they would have dared steal our plane without being certain of our softness and runniness?
Instead of letting the Chinese pull the plane apart to learn its secrets, we should have launched an airstrike to destroy it. We should have recalled our ambassador from China. We should have threatened to cut diplomatic relations and recognize Taiwan as a country.
But bean-curd tigers cannot do such things.
This incident is not just a simple question of testing President George W. Bush. China already knows that he is soft. It is a question of gradually working, bit by bit, toward de facto control over the South China Sea. It is a question of strangling Taiwan little by little.
Destroying the imperialist enemy, said Chairman Mao, is like eating a meal. "Strategically," said Mao, "we take the eating of a meal lightly -- we know we can finish it. But actually we eat it mouthful by mouthful."
As Chinese gunboats threaten foreign ships in the South China Sea, as Chinese fortifications are built in the Spratly Islands, as Taiwan's connection to the internet is cut from time to time, do we not perceive that Beijing is nibbling away at our global position?
Chinese Gen. Chi Haotian, a top official of the Communist Party Central Military Commission, said in 1999 that war between China and America was inevitable. "The issue," said Chi, "is that the Chinese armed forces must control the initiative in this war." He further added that, "We must be prepared to fight for one year, two years, or even longer."
As China formalizes its military alliance with Russia, as North Korea threatens to declare war because we do not gift them nuclear equipment, the American president finds himself without an effective option.
A bean-curd tiger is much too soft and runny.