John Pomfret in the China blog faces an unenviable task. Writing on China-Taiwan issues is not easy, because they are so controversial. But that is no excuse for the completely erroneous screed that appeared on WaPo this week in Pomfret's China, the Post blog feature. I answered a couple of main points and repost below, in case they get removed, as I have noticed the Post is wont to do when I point out how far from the facts some of their blog writing strays.... leave a comment yourself, there's plenty'o'badness to choose from....++++++
Pomfret: The reason that bigwigs like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley have put the brakes on the sale is this: With the election of Ma Ying-jeou as Taiwan’s president, Taiwan and China have their first real chance in eight years to improve ties. The United States is worried that a big arms sales package is going to throw a spanner in the works and give China an excuse to sulk – something the mandarins in Beijing so love to do.
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This interpretation is completely wrong. The Bush Administration is using this as an excuse.
The "arms freeze" long predates Ma's election, dating back to 2006 when the F-16s were first requested and probably even earlier, given the way the US was helping to exacerbate the weapons purchase problems Taiwan was having domestically. The US Navy set the purchase price for the submarines at 4 times the going world rate, making them unpalatably expensive, and refused to give Taiwan and co-manufacturing on the projects, resulting in a bipartisan missive signed by over 130 Taiwan legislators asking for local co-production. The US also refused to sell Taiwan the license for the plans for the subs it was paying for! The result was that the KMT-controlled legislature had plenty of ammo to sound reasonable in preventing Taiwan from acquiring the arms package via special budget.
The Bush administration has conveniently seized upon the election as a cover story for what is actually a de facto freeze dating back several years.
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Pomfret: Under the previous president, Chen Shui-bian, the Pentagon was confronted with the worst of both worlds: a Taiwanese president determined to irritate Beijing who at the same time did nothing to improve Taiwan’s military. Everyone hopes that Ma will do exactly the opposite: improve ties with China while building Taiwan’s military. Peace with strength.
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This comment is even more ridiculous. There is not a whit of support for the claim that "Chen did nothing to improve Taiwan's military." The exact opposite is the case.
Let's see:
administratively, the DPP re-organized the military, made it politically nuetral (it had been a state-within-a-state and the procurement system was enormously corrupt). A civilian was put in charge of the ministry of defense, and the military was put under a civilian chain of command.
weapons-wise, the DPP acquired billions in military hardware. As a CRS report noted:
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"From worldwide sources, including the United States, Taiwan received $13.9 billion in arms deliveries in the eight-year period from 1998 to 2005. Taiwan ranked 3rd (behind Saudi Arabia and China) among leading recipients that are developing countries. Of that total, Taiwan received $9.8 billion in arms in 1998-2001 and $4.1 billion in 2002-2005. In 2005 alone, Taiwan ranked 6th and received $1.3 billion in arms deliveries, while the PRC ranked 5th and received arms valued at $1.4 billion. As an indication of future arms acquisitions, Taiwan’s arms agreements in 2002- 2005 totaled $4.9 billion. The value of Taiwan’s arms agreements in 2005 alone did not place it among the top ten recipients that are developing countries."
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So in the three years between 2002 and 2005 Taiwan did nothing to improve its military although it received 4.1 billion dollars in arms deliveries! Despite the hoopla over the special arms purchases, the regular budget continues to be spent and the military continues to modernize. The highly publicized weapons purchases are in a separate budget and thus deliberately controversial, as I expect the Defense Minister intended when he packaged them this way.
In research, the DPP initiated a number of new weapons programs, and further enriched its intel links with Japan (that's all I am saying about that). The Hsiung Feng cruise missile came into development and the legislature has finally restored the budget for it. A number of other programs also were brought to fruition or continued.
Speaking for myself, it is absolutely infuriating that people who are supposed to know things can't take the time to Google before writing. Again and again I find people spouting this nonsense that a five minute internet search could dispel. Anyone could have found extensive material on the DPP's reform and modernization programs, as well as on its military purchases from abroad.
Finally, it should be noted that Chen "irritated" China for the same reason Benes irritated Hitler -- because he wanted to live in a free and independent state. "Being provoked" is a policy choice for China, not a visceral reaction, one it uses to paint the former corporate lawyer Chen Shui-bian as a "radical" while manipulating the international media. The true irritants and radicals are the Chinese who constantly threaten to plunge the region into war to annex an island that no ethnic Chinese emperor ever controlled, and which the PRC has never owned.
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Also on tap there are the Quakers in the comments, who seem to have confused capitulation with peace, and still view Taiwan through Cold War lenses -- while buying KMT propaganda on many different aspects. Someday progressives will get a clue about Taiwan.....someday.....
UPDATE: Nope. They just can't get it. Check out this load of crap from Robert Scheer at SFGATE. The Only Redhead talks about it here, in an informed and insightful way. You know, it is not difficult to avoid writing crap about China and Taiwan. So why is the flow of crap so unending? Scheer's post is up in several places, including Huffington Post and his own Truthdig. I tried to leave a long comment there, but the limit is a ridiculous 250 words. One reason bad stuff can't get corrected is because of those limits.
UPDATE II: I decided to blog on the Scheer mess at DailyKos, the big progressive site.
UPDATE III: I have left three different comments at HufPost in the last 12 hours. None accepted. IIIa: finally one got accepted.
UPDATE IV: The Nation now has the Scheer piece. Gresham's Law of Commentary: Bad commentary drives out good commentary.
[Taiwan]
9 comments:
Yep, I read that yesterday and also commented right away about how wrong a lot of his statements were and again a clear bias towards Ma. It's sad that there is no journalistic integrity these days. I'm sure he just pulls the information from the same crap that western media puts out.
For the most part, I'm glad there's a lot of pro-Taiwan leaving comments on his blog, I hope he re-submits his article with more accurate statements. But, as always there's the pro-China people who just spout off about how China will kill everyone who opposes them and that we will regret blah blah blah. As much as they are annoying, I still find it entertaining to see what they say every time.
Hey...Everybody knows... and it is confirmed by the Three Communiques, that Taiwan has been an inseparable part of the Chinese nation since Pangea.
That Robert Scheer article is surprisingly uninformed, or maybe not so surprisingly. His email is included at the bottom of the article.
oh my goodness. Scheer seems to believe that it's all over bar the shouting. I particularly love the 'shopping til they drop' assumption but then his whole article is one supposition followed by an assumption layered with dollops of speculation and topped with downright untruths. Thanks Mike for highlighting this charlatan's verbal 'la do'.
Great rebuttal, Michael. A lot of people seem to assume that the DPP did nothing on defense. Anyone who reads Bernard D. Cole's Taiwan's Security (which I reviewed in the Taipei Times on Jan. 13) would soon reach an altogether different conclusion. Much of what the DPP did was on the subtle side and was achieved with little fanfare. But any US military official who was involved in the process would attest to the fundamental changes that occurred during those eight years. This is what happens when the uninformed rely on the quantifiable to assess achievement.
The Quaker article led me to research the Quaker position regarding communism.
I found a Time article from 1949, referring to a Friends report sent to the US government on Russian communism.
At one point, the article stated:
"The Quakers feel that by making a reality of good will among men, they can overcome even the most brutally "realistic" aspects of Communist doctrine. They concede that "a final violent conflict between the Soviet and the capitalist worlds is a basic article of faith of Russian Communism." Even so, the Quakers fondly hope that "the flexible nature of Russian Communism and the existence of certain precedents make even a fundamental change in attitude toward the non-Communist world not entirely beyond the range of possibility."
It's a shame that only a few people have recommended the post at kos. With the amount of people reading this site, your daily kos diaries should automatically make the recommend list. But that requires your readers here who feel strongly about this issue and about getting the truth out about Taiwan, to first of all, register at daily kos, and then recommend your diary, and frankly any decent diaries about Taiwan. That is the way to generate discussion about Taiwan and spread awareness in the progressive blogosphere. For those more conservatively inclined, do the same on conservative sites. It sort of takes community action to push discussion on group blogs like daily kos.
Wulingren, Rmaguir at the Only Redhead and I were just discussing this progressive blind spot. Both of us think some sort of community campaign is necessary. STOP_MA posts over there as STOP_GEORGE on Taiwan sometimes too.
Maybe we can form a Taiwan Interest Group there and push the island at DKOS.
Michael
That's a good idea, Michael. I generally recommend Daily Kos diaries on Taiwan, even when I don't completely agree with them. That way, they lead to conversation in the comments section. I think Robert Scheer is anti-War and anti-military at all costs, and as evidenced from this post, is ignorant of the events on the ground and the history of the situation in Taiwan.
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