The common theme of this video and this news…
… is that powerful people are taking our country away from us. Whether it’s Tim Geithner’s friends looting the Treasury, or the Obama White House claiming that it has the exclusive right to license public domain images, the arrogance of power coming from the White House and Treasury Department is awful.
GEORGE LUCAS: Oh, man, I can’t wait to get my hands on this technology. Did you see what I did with Jar Jar Binks? Imagine that, but times a billion!
Our President is so awful when it comes to economic management (as opposed to foreign policy, where he’s generally solid) that the truth sounds like hyperbole.
While Obama spends our money on a new $100 billion bailout announced today, China is becoming the world leader in renewable energy.
While clean tech companies are starved for capital, Obama is busy re-inflating the housing bubble.
Obama, apparently not concerned that many freshmen are unprepared for college, Obama is thinking of ending the requirement that schools show adequate yearly progress and giving up on the goal to close the racial gap in education,
While Obama spends that our national debt is now our largest national security threat, Obama will end the program to safely store nuclear waste.
I have been following this for a week, and so far, nothing from Chinese sources.
For the first time, probably ever, a Republic of China (Taiwan) military jet landed in California. The purpose of the trip was for President Ma of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to visit local leaders in California before heading to Honduras.
Hmmm…
I was speaking with my father-in-law, and noted that I had now read biographies of many of the Communist leaders of China: Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Zhou Enlai, Zhao Ziyang, and the rest, who by their actions also highlighted the personalities of men like Mao Zedong and Lin Biao. Who should I learn about next?
“Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT,” he said.
So here are two overlapping stories of the KMT and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek: Stillwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 and The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China. Chiang, of course, was the leader in the KMT who lead the Republic of China both on the mainland and Taiwan (and for a very short period, both). Stilwell was the Chinese-speaking American general, probably the best we had going into World War I, who was picked by Marshall to turn the Chinese army into a force that could expel the Japanese from the mainland of Asia. Stillwell and Chiang were allies against Japan. They shared a deep distrust of the British. And, disastrously, they despised each other.
Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 is the third book by Barbara Tuchman I have read, after Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour and Notes from China. Stilwell is a professional biography of Joseph Warren Stilwell (1883-1946), Chief of Staff of Chiang Kai-shek. Through Stilwell, Tuchman gives a history of the Republic of China, from its birth in the revolution of 1911 to shortly before the general collapse of 1949 (a collapse which left it in control of only one province, Taiwan))
In the Philippines, Stilwell conducted counter-insurgency operations.
In the first World War, Joseph Stilwell worked under John Pershing to create America’s 3GW force in Europe. Stilwell served as an American liaison officer to China’s Beiyang (Warlord) Government.
One of the trageies of the books is that Joseph Stilwell and Chiang Kai-shek worked at cross purposes. Stilwell was interested in defeating Japan. Chiang believed that China was too weak to defeat Japan, and therefore should hang back while Americans would do the fighting. Stilwell was interested in defeating America’s enemies, and so saw the Communists as potential allies. Chiang was interested in defeating the enemies of the Chinese Party-State, and so saw the Communists as the prime enemies.
This must be emphasized: Stillwell was perhaps the best offensive thinker to be an American General in history. In the largest ever wargames conducted in the United States, Stillwell, as the “red” team invading from Mexico, rapidly seized the south-west and was prepared to march on the capital. Likewise, Chiang was perhaps the best defensive thinking to be a Chinese General in centuries. Just as Stilwell emphasized rapid transits, mission-based orders, cutting enemy communications, and taking risks, Chiang emphasized multiple redundant layers of protection, clear lines of escape, atttrition-based fronts that played to his advantages, and so on.
When it became clear that Chiang had no intention of launching an offensive against the Guandong Army, Stilwell realized that if the Soviet Union did not intervene, an unimaginably bloody American invasion of the Japanese Home Islands would simply be followed up with an Imperial retreat to East China, and the hellish prospect of a land-war in Asia against the Japanese. To Chiang, this was fine: the “Imperial” overseas powers would wear each other down, and a Chinese force would pick up the pieces. To America, this was completely unacceptable. From then on, American planners were generally indifferent between the KMT and its mini-me cousin, the Chinese Communist Party.
During the war, Chiang remarks that the Party-State could survive even if it held only four provinces. Indeed, had that happened, China’s history may have been happier. Chiang’s weakness meant that his Whampoa Clique could not hold China, and so the Party-State had to rely on local warlords. After the collapse to Taiwan, the Party-State reformed itself, the Chiang Clique was firmly in control, and the Republic of China Military Academy was formed to crate the next generation of leaders. Strikingly, Chiang seems to have realized that control over a large country did not suit his retinue of followers: he, Zhou, and Mao repeatedly turned down Soviet offers to partition the country into a Communist “Red” China and a KMT Congress-style China.
These are long books, but excellent for understanding the dynamics of china immediately before Mao became an Emperor. Both the biographies of Chiang Kai-Shek and Joseph Stilwell are must reads
I was chatting with Catholicgauze a few weeks ago. In that chat I mentioned I wanted to read the perfect book — something about a subject I had been following and cared about, but that would put all the pieces I already knew into a broader contexts. Without saying anything, Catholicgauze quietly purchased The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 and sent me a copy. I am glad. It is a perfect book.
Before I go into my reflection, here are some thoughts I shared in a thread on Coming Anarchy
I strongly recommend The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. I was turned off by the name, as it seems like more of a popular book than a history. Really, to capture the seriousness of the work, it should have a boring title, such as Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, and the Islamic Group: Violent
Political Islam in the Wake of Sayyid Qutb (1966-2001).Fortunately, Catholicgauze talked me into it, and I’m glad he did. From the trivial (bin Laden was an an acapella group that put out a cassette), to the insightful (two of bin Laden’s wives have Ph.D.s, he was the only of his brothers not to leave KSA for university), from the network-oriented (Zawahiri’s uncle was Qutb’s defense attorney) to the operational (Zawahiri had a spy within American special forces, who attempted to gain their trust by passing on secret (and true!) information about bin Laden; bin Laden’s previous organize, the Special Bureau, operated openly in the United States), The Looming Tower is a must read.
The book is written like a novel — while incredibly informative and surprisingly balanced, it is written by the author of The Siege — a movie that is sometimes blamed for discouraging the Clinton Administration from taking steps that would have averted 9/11.
The Looming Tower ends with a real-life cliffhanger — al Qaeda has been chased out of Afghanistan, the retreat into Pakistan was a bloody disaster, and Zawahiri is seen riding south on horseback.
The sequel is yet to be written.
Several friends have emailed me about the iPad, and asked me my thoughts.
It serves a couple of niches.
If I was in classes where I had to take lots of notes, or I was often a passenger on buses, cars, trains, or planes, I would buy one. It is more convenient for travel than a netbook and affords more work than an cell phone.
Apple’s good at hype, and Apple-haters are good at anti-hype, but this is a real product that serves a real purpose for some users.
Update: Half Sigma agrees.
The Handbook of 5GW: A Fifth Generation of War? will be published in hard-back.
It is a serious reference book. A printed copy is meant to last for generations.
Yesterday, my old friend Jeffrey sent me a draft petition, criticizing Fox News for not having enough Haiti-related coverage, and not doing enough to support Haitian relief.
While I applaud Jeffrey’s civic-mindedness, I cannot support such a petition. Haiti’s root problem is not an earthquake, or even poverty. It is a absence of civil society and an absence of a functioning government.
Haiti does not need more aid. Haiti needs to be conquered by an Imperialist power able to dedicate enough blood and treasure into turning Haiti in a quasi-functional colony.
The worst disaster in Haitian history was the Rebellion of 1791, though many disasters along these lines are regularly appear in Haitian history. Probably the second worst disaster for the Haitian people was the Monroe Doctrine, which cruelly prohibited the Haitians of living in the shade of an Imperial Power that may have, eventually, provided some form of indigenous civil society on that awful half of an island.
I applaud FoxNews for focusing on news about which Americans might actually do something, such as the victory of Scott Brown, the defeat of ObamaCare, and the Apple Tablet.
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