WASHINGTON — They say international crises test the
true mettle of a president. Belying his
tennis-balls-under-the-armpits, Big Tex swagger,
President Bush folded like a cheap lawn chair in his
first crisis — the standoff with Beijing’s communist
hardliners.
He blinked first, and he’s still blinking — despite
yesterday’s “warning” to China about invading Taiwan.
Actions speak louder than words.
Capitulation No. 1: Bush let his panda-hugging
ambassador proclaim in a love letter that America is
“very sorry” for flying into China’s airspace, even
though China forced us to fly there after ramming our
unarmed plane.
Capitulation No. 2: In the middle of the crisis, Bush
repeated the hoary line — by now a favorite joke
inside the Politburo — that unfettered trade with
China will defang its Red tyrants, even as those
tyrants were holding our troops hostage.
Capitulation No. 3: And even though the
unreconstructed tyrants broke their promise and
refused to even talk about turning over U.S. property
that they illegally seized — the $80 million national
asset called the EP-3E — Bush caved in to pressure
from the pro-China lobby here and agreed not to sell
Taiwan badly needed destroyers equipped with
state-of-the-art Aegis radar.
Capitulation No. 4: He also canceled a 20-year
U.S. policy of making sure Taiwan has the arms it
needs each year to defend itself from mainland attack.
Yes, several days into the standoff, as Bush was
looking soft, I opined that he was ill-served by Clinton holdovers at the State Department,
such as U.S. ambassador Joseph Prueher, a major-league
cheerleader for China. I gave him the benefit of the
doubt.
But no more.
While Bill Clinton was the best president China ever
had, Bush may be a close second.
From his handling of this dust-up in the South China
Sea and the arms deal with Taiwan, I’m afraid he’s
proved that he’s a tool — perhaps an unwitting or
unwilling one, but one nonetheless — of his poppy and
his old China-hand pals, Henry Kissinger and Al Haig,
who have made millions of dollars schmoozing with
Beijing officials on behalf of U.S. corporations
looking for cheap (in this case, slave) labor abroad.
Kissinger’s mug was plastered on the TV screen during
the crisis. Discussing how the White House
successfully bargained for the release of the
hostages, he kept saying “we,” in a Freudian slip,
before finally correcting himself to credit “da
bresident.”
“I haven’t heard China’s version,” Kissinger said
before commenting on Fox News about the snatching of
American scholars in Beijing. As if Communist China’s
version, almost always a lie, matters.
Not once did Kissinger, who was in Beijing kissing up
to the commies the week before the crisis started,
reveal his financial interest in its speedy resolution
— no matter the consequence to U.S. strategic
interests in the region. (And not once, for that
matter, did any of his TV hosts, who call themselves
journalists, ask him to reveal his interests. Instead,
they portrayed him as a neutral observer who just
happens to be an expert on China.)
Poppy: Another pro-China holdover
In mid-1995, when the U.S. intelligence community
learned that Beijing had stolen secrets to our prized
mini-nuke, the W-88, as part of a massive espionage
campaign at Los Alamos and other labs, Clinton called
Kissinger and Haig to the White House to talk about
China. Kissinger had just returned from a trip to
China. Haig was a paid adviser to China’s state-owned
China Ocean Shipping Co., or Cosco, at the time.
On July 17, 1995, Clinton also met in the White House
with his predecessor, W’s father, one-time U.S. ambassador to China.
They too discussed China at some length, specifically
reviewing the current status of the U.S.-Sino
relationship, which for some reason was troubling
Clinton.
Only days earlier, Clinton’s chief of staff Leon
Panetta was briefed about the Chinese espionage at the
labs. Clinton, paragon of probity that he is, has
assured the American people that he didn’t hear a word
about the security breach until 1997, and that’s why
he didn’t act sooner to close the lab gates that he
and his energy secretary kicked open.
More likely, Clinton knew about it in July 1995, if
not sooner, and called in old China hands — all
Republicans — to get them on board his sweeping the
espionage under the rug to maintain the illusion that
China was our “strategic partner.”
If Bush Sr., as a former president, went along with the
charade, he arguably is as culpable as Clinton for not
speaking out about the Chinese threat to U.S.
security.
Unfortunately, these old Republicans — Poppy and
Uncles Henry and Al — are the top Chinese cooks in
W’s kitchen cabinet, and were no doubt behind his
tortured effort to end the stalemate in Hainan.
No matter how they spin it, we gave away more than we
should have. We gained nothing but the release of
hostages who never should have been held in the first
place. And we more than likely lost a national asset
loaded with radar and missile telemetry secrets that
are extremely valuable to China.
In the process, we boosted China’s nationalist pride
and emboldened the Chinese military, which is growing
faster than any force in the world, and is putting in
place the pieces to take Taiwan by force while holding
our Pacific fleet at bay.
It looks as if I was wrong to think that this
President Bush would be his own man. He studiously
avoided any protracted conflict with China — no
matter how right our position — primarily to protect
the assets held there by his father’s cronies, Uncle
Henry’s and Uncle Al’s clients and his own corporate
donors.
They said his father struggled with a “wimp factor.”
Must run in the family.
