Chinese Chess

This China situation is starting to get a little disturbing. It was first disturbing how many conversations about China's future contained the caveat "That's if we don't go to war with them by then", or something similar. This was only augmented by tensions over the Republic of China, which the People's Republic of China (PRC) and related entities (i.e., the American media) insist on calling "Taiwan", which is the name of the island the RoC occupies.

Let's take a minute on that. When the communists ran out the nationalists in the 40s, the nationalists fled to the island of Taiwain and established the Republic of China, never intending to be ruled by the Maoists in Beijing. Since then, PRC has been trying to convince the world that RoC is just a small internal problem that they will deal with in time. The small internal problem equates to a nation of almost 2 billion being ruled by a small minority of communist dictators seeking to spread their police state to a people who desire their independence.

Now they are building their military, in an apparent plot to invade the Republic of China and annex it to their nation. This is known as "conquering" and it is something of which the world has been accusing the United States ever since we started spending billions of dollars to free people across the world. Now that China is fairly well convinced of the American resolve, they have sent one of their crazies out to make it sound like an American involvement will set off a nuclear war. One of their loony generals:

“If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to respond,” said Gen Zhu, who is also a professor at China's National Defence University.
“We . . . will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds . . . of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”

Not only is that foolish, as we control vastly more nuclear assets than the rest of the world, it is clearly bluster intended to make us think twice about defending freedom in the Pacific. So they move their queen's bishop to put our king in check. We could move to take out the bishop, and risk prolonged war, perhaps involving WMD. Or we could move our king and try to avoid the whole unpleasant mess, allowing China to impose communist rule on an otherwise free people.

What we're forgetting is the chessboard is much larger, and their side is cluttered with panws and no real king (our king can move anywhere on the board undetected, greatly reducing the chance for being put in check), whereas we have dozens of queens (division control), each with bishops (air support), rooks (artillery), and knights (yeah, the friggin cavalry). Not to mention the thousands of infantry pawns. Not to mention the carrier battle groups we operate off the chess board, some elements of which are under the table. We also have pieces operating far over the chessboard. Our pieces are better armored, better equipped, better trained, better paid, and better fed. We also have a God to whom we can pray for wisdom and support, which is more than their communist godless society provides them.

Now, no one wants millions of Chinamen to die in a war for their evil masters, but people need to stop talking like they have some secret to victory. Yeah, if they could land their 7 billion soldiers on our soil, we'd have a problem. But we can see all their boats, and the Navy can probably destroy most of them without redelploying any assets. Not to mention that if they started to get close, they'd have to deal with our actual homeland defenses. They would be moving within range of hundreds, maybe thousands, of aircraft. They would be met on the shore by armor and artillery the likes of which they've never seen. That's assuming they even try to come here. Otherwise, we'll just have the bomb the living hell out of them until they realize it just isn't going to work out for them.

Maybe we can convince the Chinese people that there is a better way to live. Maybe not.

Either way, freedom is something for which this nation, and its brave soldiers, will fight for years to come. And China is not exempt from what I consider the real Bush Doctrine.