1 post from May 2008

You can't have your cake and eat it too

Apparently, that appears to be the case.  The United States government takes its daily lumps for actions it has taken in the past and in the interim present.  We're taking part in an illegal war in Iraq.  A war that ended with the fall of Saddam Hueissen's Baa'thist government, followed by an occupation that was more difficult than anticipated.  If anyone believes that military blunders are the patented copyright of the Bush administration, then over 200 years of US military mistakes never existed in the first place.

Here's a couple to keep in mind: Bull's Run (I and II), Sharpsburg (Antietam), Chancellorsville, Fredricksburg and Seven Pines.  All occured under the auspices of the revered Abraham Lincoln.

Ironically, for a war that was fought, in the popular version, to end slavery, the Federal government allowed states such as Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri to maintain slaves during the war.  Also, the Emancipation Proclamation even states this explicity that only states that were not part of the United States were not to have slaves.  It was an aim, but not the sole reason why the United States went to war with the Confederate States; it was that the Federal government felt that secession by the southern states was viewed as Rebellion. 

But I'm not blogging about the American Civil War, which I have at best, a passing knowledge other than the general incompetence or timidity of the generals of the Army of the Potomac.  Instead it is the "I want my cake and to eat it too" mentality of China and Russia.

While a good part of the anti-Chinese government media is a bit overblown and at times unfair; how do Europeans and Americans who took part in the illegal occupation and manipulation of Chinese society in the late 19th and early 20th century under a series of unequal treaties back by military might get off on playing the morality game with China?  While it is true that the current Chinese government has done some things that the "enlightened" Western world considers inhumane and barbaric, the West (Europe and the United States) have not been very enlightened in their past and on the whole have not made concessions for many of thier actions in the past.  Particularly, the actions of the west in the case of China in the 19th century. 

The Chinese have not forgotten the injustices visited upon them by the west since the mid 19th century, and they have a right to be incensed by constant bombardment by the popular press that China is a "bad guy" nation.  Case in point, the current situation in Tibet.  Western press will be quick to point out that Tibet is only currently under Chinese control because the PLA (People's Liberation Army) rolled into Tibet in 1951 to establish the current communist rule.  What they don't point out was that China after the 1911 cultural revolution which turned thier world upside down; think of it like this--invaders attack the United States and thier very existence and thinking negates the nearly 2000 years of the foundation of the Judeo-Christian civizilation, in which they faced a national crisis of reunification, consolidation of the 1920s that was inherited by Kai-shek; and with those issues still unresolved, with a split in China between the Nationalists of Kai-shek and the Communists of Mao, they were invaded by the Japanese in full force in the late 1930s; after the war, and after the completion of thier own civil war, there was finally one united government that then worked to consolidate thier holdings and reunite the territories of "China." 

What is also not mentioned is that Tibet has been part of China since the Golden Horde of Kublai Khan, dating to the 13th century, when he incorporated Tibet into the Yuan dynasty. 

But, one may ask, what right did the Chinese government have in occupying Tibet in 1951 when Tibet has claimed its own independence in 1913?  If that is the case, then what right did the US Federal government have in identifying the secessionist states as in "rebellion" giving rise to the eventual outbreak of the American Civil War?  The secessionist states, using the Declaration of Independence as a guide (using the term of tryanny of an unjust government) felt that the Federal government was unjust and using the same argument that the colonials had against the British Empire, they felt that secession was a legitimate right since there was past precedent.  Is it a sound proof argument?  To them, it was.  What I think is mere conjecture, but using the history of the United States itself, the Chinese did have a right to reclaim what was "soveregin" Chinese territory for nearly 700 years.

And yet, we have the enlightened mind of Sharon Stone pouring out nonsensities about China had it coming to it because of what it did in Tibet; indeed, all of those innocent people who had nothing to do with the Chinese government's actions in Tibet deserved to die.  Yet, it is okay for those who are in the movement to establish freedom to Tibet from Chinese rule create a public disturbance and impede the movement of the Olympic Torch, a symbol for the world to unite despite our own differences.  They want peace, but they impede liberty, the basic liberties of the western world, impeding the right of one person to run down the street with a torch.

So, why is anyone confused as to why the Chinese are insulted?