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Posts Tagged ‘War With China’

Dailywire Article – ‘I Think He’s Right’: Top House Foreign Affairs Republican Agrees With U.S. General’s War With China Prediction

Posted by M. C. on January 30, 2023

I don’t know about Fetterman but trying to convince MIC budget busting warparty water carriers like PA’s Kelly and Casey not to go to war will be tough sledding.

“Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a report last week, which follows a CSIS wargame scenario that pointed out that in a conflict with China, U.S. arms, including long-range, precision-guided munitions, could run empty in one week.”

Makes one wonder where all the money goes.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/i-think-hes-right-top-house-foreign-affairs-republican-agrees-with-u-s-generals-war-with-china-prediction

By  Brandon Drey

U.S. Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX) said Sunday the odds of a conflict with China by 2025 “are very high” after a four-star Air Force General warned officers that he sees a war on the horizon over Taiwan.

McCaul, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told “Fox News Sunday” he agreed with the recent statement made by Air Force General Mike Minihan, which noted the military official believes U.S. forces “will fight in 2025.”

“I hope he’s wrong . . .” McCaul said. “I think he’s right, though, unfortunately.”

The top GOP lawmaker said China could look at a military invasion of Taiwan if President Xi Jinping of the Chinese Communist Party fails to influence Taiwan’s presidential election in 2024, which takes place a year from today, and further China’s efforts on its so-called “reunification” with the island.

Taiwan, officially the Republic of China, has been independently governed by China since 1949. China holds a “One China” policy, asserting that Taiwan is a part of China.

“We have to be prepared for this,” McCaul said. “And it could happen … as long as Biden is in office — projecting weakness as he did with Afghanistan that led to Putin invading Ukraine — that the odds are very high we could see a conflict with China and Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific.”

Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a report last week, which follows a CSIS wargame scenario that pointed out that in a conflict with China, U.S. arms, including long-range, precision-guided munitions, could run empty in one week.

See the rest here

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US Military Increasing Cooperation With Japan to Prepare for War With China – News From Antiwar.com

Posted by M. C. on January 10, 2023

“The top Marine Corps general in Japan says the US is ‘setting the theater’ in the region the same way it did in Ukraine after 2014”

Just like Ukraine! And how is that working for ya?

So Japan’s (and Australia’s) sons and daughters will die for Taiwan before US sons and daughters. Works for the pentagram.

https://news.antiwar.com/2023/01/09/us-military-increasing-cooperation-with-japan-to-prepare-for-war-with-china/

The US and Japanese militaries are increasing cooperation to prepare for a possible war with China over Taiwan or other areas in the Asia Pacific, the top US Marine Corps general in Japan told Financial Times.

Lt. Gen. James Bierman, commander of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF) and of Marine Forces Japan, said the US military was preparing for a future conflict in the region the same way it did in Ukraine in 2014 following the US-backed ouster of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

“Why have we achieved the level of success we’ve achieved in Ukraine? A big part of that has been because after Russian aggression in 2014 and 2015, we earnestly got after preparing for future conflict: training for the Ukrainians, prepositioning of supplies, identification of sites from which we could operate support, sustain operations,” Bierman said.

“We call that setting the theater. And we are setting the theater in Japan, in the Philippines, in other locations,” the general added.

Bierman’s comments came after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced a major overhaul of the Japanese armed forces that involves doubling Tokyo’s military budget. A new security strategy issued by Kishida’s government names China “the biggest strategic challenge” and includes language that can justify military action in defense of the US, breaking from Japan’s post-World War II pacifism.

The Marines Corps has been undergoing an overhaul of its own as it is shifting its focus on preparing for war in the western Pacific rather than fighting counterinsurgencies in the Middle East. Be seeing you

See the rest here

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Real Cancel Culture: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix – by Caitlin Johnstone – Caitlin’s Newsletter

Posted by M. C. on October 11, 2021

Propaganda is the foundation of all our problems, and the us vs them dynamic is the foundation of propaganda. If humans can awaken in a visceral, experiential way to the reality that all is one we can inoculate ourselves against propaganda and begin moving toward health together.

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/real-cancel-culture-notes-from-the

Caitlin Johnstone

“To protect Taiwan we must be prepared to go to war with China.”

~ Imperialists who just lost a war to the Taliban

I’m genuinely disturbed at how many people would be willing to fight a world war over Taiwan’s governmental preferences. The power and effectiveness of the imperial propaganda machine never ceases to amaze me.

The astonishing amount of pushback I’m getting for my very sane and normal “Let’s not fight World War Three over Taiwan” position makes it abundantly clear that many people don’t truly understand that starting a war means you have to actually send actual human beings to go fight that war.

The correct response to someone who supports going to war if China attacks Taiwan is “Are you enlisted?”

The correct response when they inevitably answer “no” is “Then shut the fuck up.”

People who are fine with the idea of increasing aggressions between nuclear-armed nations simply haven’t thought hard enough about what nuclear war is and haven’t learned enough about the many different ways it could occur. It’s a comfort held in place by compartmentalization.

The decision to go to war with China would be the single most important and consequential decision ever made in human history. You’d have to weigh it against millions to billions of deaths. Defending Taiwan’s preference of government clearly wouldn’t weigh enough to justify that cost.

Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ @caitozThe empire’s greatest weapon is not its military, but its propaganda machine. ian bremmer @ianbremmer% of Americans who favor the use of US troops if China invaded Taiwan — going up up up 1982 19% 1986 19% 1998 27% 2002 31% 2004 33% 2006 32% 2008 32% 2010 25% 2012 28% 2014 26% 2015 28% 2018 35% 2020 41% July 2021 52% -Chicago CouncilOctober 9th 2021139 Retweets561 Likes

The empire’s greatest weapon is not its military but its propaganda machine. There’s simply never been anything like the global narrative control provided by the western news media, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood. The military fights wars, the propaganda machine wins them long before they start.

A lucid and well-informed examination of the world’s problems will keep bringing you back to this one fundamental issue: that Earth’s inhabitants are being psychologically manipulated at mass scale into organizing themselves in ways that serve the powerful instead of the people.

Congratulations to those who were awarded the same highly esteemed Peace Prize as Barack Obama and Henry Kissinger.

Conduct critical journalism on an empire-targeted government: get a Nobel Peace Prize.

Conduct critical journalism on the empire: get a CIA plot to assassinate you.

Real cancel culture is when the CIA plots to assassinate a journalist for publishing authentic documents in the public interest.

Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ @caitozWhat? Isn’t that how all whistleblowers are treated? Matt Agorist @MattAgoristwow, so I had to vet this for myself, and it is real. pretty insane how blowing the whistle gets you an instant red carpet on twitter, a blue check, and 56k followers, a podium in congress, and a massive legal team literally overnight. https://t.co/pXdLtbny8POctober 7th 2021425 Retweets1,549 Likes

It’s very cute how we all think that everyone else is gullible except for us. Even assuming that is true is already very gullible.

Humans are not inherently fucked up, we’re just traumatized and manipulated by an abusive system into doing fucked up things. Very few of the ugly behaviors we see in people would exist if we had conscious and compassionate systems in place for organizing ourselves in this world.

Everyone gets that it’s wrong to blame an entire group on the misdeeds of a few of its members, but few people seem to apply that same logic to humanity as a whole. All our systems are dominated by the worst among us, simply because they’re sociopathic enough to climb to the top.

Really it just boils down to the fact that the majority don’t understand how sociopaths’ minds work or how to counter them, and that the trauma of preceding generations keeps giving rise to sociopaths. I think the initial trauma stretches back to our evolutionary ancestors who literally spent their lives running from giant monsters who were trying to eat them. Our nervous systems still operate that way today, even though those monsters are long gone.

If we could just catch a break for one or two generations to heal that trauma, I think we’d be fine. But we keep passing our trauma on to new generations because the worst among us keep thwarting everyone’s attempts to set up conscious systems.

To compensate for the fact that it won’t ever give the left any economic concessions the empire has been loudly amplifying some concessions on racial and sexual justice, so now even though nothing really changed you still get rightists saying politics moved “too far to the left”. This gives the propagandists a couple of different tools: it keeps discourse tied up on issues that will never hurt the agendas of any plutocrat or warmonger, and feeds into the culture war dynamics which facilitate us-vs-them propaganda tactics.

Propaganda is the foundation of all our problems, and the us vs them dynamic is the foundation of propaganda. If humans can awaken in a visceral, experiential way to the reality that all is one we can inoculate ourselves against propaganda and begin moving toward health together.

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Would the Military Side with Leftist Tyranny or with America? – The Burning Platform

Posted by M. C. on August 14, 2020

…and the institutions are what the generals are loyal to even if the leaders of those institutions have morphed into rabidly anti-American aspiring dictators. To embrace Trump and populism is to repudiate the whole establishment hothouse that grew their power and prestige. They would be opposing themselves.

Look at CNN and see the endless parade of fully semi-automatic Obama generals babbling like idiots about how Trump is ruining their sweet gigs, though they don’t put it quite that way. Look at the appalling Chairman of the Joint Chiefs apologizing for following the elected president’s lead. And, especially, look at their horror that America is ending those endless wars.

Those are the generals, and they have the elite’s back, not yours.

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2020/08/13/would-the-military-side-with-leftist-tyranny-or-with-america/

Guest Post by Kurt Schlichter

The Democrats are wargaming how to steal the 2020 election, and after Grandpa Badfinger selected Lady Mac (Willie) Brown, their last best hope seems to be the military marching in and removing Donald Trump from the White House after he wins and they refuse to accept the election results. But will the military actually do the bidding of the coterie of Marxist Muppet masters with their fingers, ironically, up inside Joe Biden like he is a crusty, senile Kermit?

Which he is, except the real Mr. Miss Piggy isn’t a manifestly mentally incompetent socialist Trojan Frog.

And don’t even get me started on his veep, Botoxic K.

Between the perma-coup against the American people, the mainstream media’s myriad and shameless lies, and the Democrats’ election fraud agenda (including the Golden Ticket to anarchy that is mail-in voting), it is absolutely clear that the Democrats will not accept Donald Trump’s impending victory. It is also clear that their plan is to sow chaos when they lose, with outright ballot box-stuffing, riots, and endless counts and recounts, so that they can obscure Trump’s win enough to create a patina of fake doubt about the result. Then they will rush into some Hawaiian courtroom and get some Hawaiian judge to announce that the Delaware Basement Crustacean won the election. The idea is to then have a deus ex militaria where somehow the establishment gets reestablished forever at gunpoint. And the liberal elite is said establishment.

But it’s not completely crazy, unfortunately, to consider whether the military, or at least a portion of it, would cooperate in a liberal attempt to seize power. Here’s the troubling truth: the generals will absolutely fall in line with the liberal elite.

“Wait,” the reader asks. “Aren’t generals and majors and stuff conservative?”

Well, in temperament, yes. But they are not conservative in terms of American politics. And for that reason, it is entirely possible, if not likely, that many of them would take the side of the leftist establishment if called upon to resolve a disputed election instead of demurring to the politicians to decide the matter themselves.

Wow. Just writing that is scary. But these are scary times, and we are blessed with what Instapundit Glenn Reynolds tells Americans is “the worst ruling class in your history.” The generals are absolutely a part of that failed caste.

The generals – a term I’ll use to describe the majority of senior active duty officers (Colonel/Captain O6 and up; note that reserve officers have a slightly different perspective, being civilians most of the time) – are creatures of the establishment. Yes, it is absolutely true that many of them showed great courage in battle against foreign enemies and made great personal sacrifices. It is also true that in the culture war they have been entirely AWOL. They are terrified of crossing the establishment by doubting its preferred mores, and that is why they accept every bizarre modern SJW trope regardless of its effect on combat readiness. They will charge a jihadi with a bayonet and wet themselves in the face of an irate Kirsten Gillibrand. It’s weird, but it’s true.

Here, Trump and his populist movement are agents of rapid and disruptive change. The military, in which these generals grew up and which gives them their identities, is the least disruptive institution in American society. The lengthy and laudable tradition of civilian authority over the military, as well as the hierarchical nature of the military itself, makes it instinctively against rapid, disruptive change.

Though the Democrats have moved left, they maintain a headlock on the institutions, and the institutions are what the generals are loyal to even if the leaders of those institutions have morphed into rabidly anti-American aspiring dictators. To embrace Trump and populism is to repudiate the whole establishment hothouse that grew their power and prestige. They would be opposing themselves.

Look at CNN and see the endless parade of fully semi-automatic Obama generals babbling like idiots about how Trump is ruining their sweet gigs, though they don’t put it quite that way. Look at the appalling Chairman of the Joint Chiefs apologizing for following the elected president’s lead. And, especially, look at their horror that America is ending those endless wars.

Those are the generals, and they have the elite’s back, not yours. A general who said “all lives matter” or refused to buy the ridiculous but fashionable notion that America’s greatest strategic threat is the weather a century hence or uttered some other heresy would not be a general much longer – and certainly not cash in on a sweet post-retirement gig at Boeing.

But most Americans don’t see that. Because America remembers the military of 30 years ago that could actually win a war in a reasonable period of time (as we did in Desert Storm), today’s generals benefit from residual respect for yesterday’s Cold War military. Americans are unaware of the devastated culture cultivated by our military senior leadership. Here’s the ruinous legacy of today’s generals: Afghanistan is a disaster and still not won, ships colliding and catching fire due to gross failures of leadership, boats of sailors on tape whimpering as they surrender to the Iranian Navy, senior officers leaking to the media, colonels, generals and admirals getting court-martialed, massive prosecutorial misconduct by JAGs, woke West Point (which recently graduated an open communist), and troops kneeling before rioters. It’s a military that puts Diversity Day before D-Day.

Unfortunately, the first 24 hours of war with China would make the rot agonizingly apparent – at the cost of thousands of our warriors’ precious lives. They’ll deny it, of course, and I fervently hope I’m wrong. But I fear I’m not, because none of the incentives in today’s military are aimed toward achieving combat readiness instead of achieving ideological conformity.

So, count on the active duty generals to fall in line when the New York Times trumpets the Democrats’ line that Trump’s victory is illegitimate. That’s the voice of the people they really take their orders from.

Then what?

Good question, but remember that the military is not just the generals. The military includes the middle-grade and junior officers and non-commissioned officers as well as the enlisted troops. And while the woke poison has spread into these ranks too, there is a real question about whether those leaders, who are where the tank treads meet the road, would follow an order to make war on American citizens.

That’s a harsh way of putting it, but making war is what the military does – it uses fire and maneuver to destroy the enemy, and to the liberal establishment, those of us who refuse to allow the election victory of our candidate to be undone will be the enemy. Intervention by the military necessarily means America forces killing American patriots.

And no, the New York Times’ Marxist newsroom will not be exploding in protests over that domestic use of military force; it will be loudly cheering it.

We know we cannot trust this generation of generals to stand up for freedom, but I’d like to think that a good portion of the troops would refuse to enter civilian politics in favor of the anti-American left. Yet, I would have also liked to think that we’d never see law enforcement officers eagerly obeying the fascist decrees of liberal poohbahs. The sight of overeager Barney Fifes hassling citizens about piehole thongs made it clear that for some people oaths come behind the giddy joy of power and keeping their pensions.

So, the question is, what will our troops do? Will they make war on the American people so that Basement Biden’s puppet masters can turn America into Venezuela 2: The Quickening? Or will they say “No” to imposing a leftist dictatorship, which is what the Democrats’ Revenge Agenda proposes? Our troops are loved in large part because they don’t take a side in domestic politics; if they do, and turn on the people for the benefit of a senile old puppet and the Truancy Avenger, well, that affection evaporates.

Sadly, we cannot rely on the generals to not make the error. Let’s just hope that the danger is mooted because Trump’s margin of victory is so great that the Democrats cannot cheat.

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Is America Up for a Naval War With China? – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on July 17, 2020

Should we start issuing war guarantees to China’s neighbors? Should we start
putting down red lines China will not be allowed to cross?

Before we plunged into our half dozen Middle East wars, we didn’t think through
where those would end. Have we considered where all our belated bellicosity
toward Beijing must invariably lead, and how this all ends?

https://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2020/07/16/is-america-up-for-a-naval-war-with-china/

Is the U.S., preoccupied with a pandemic and a depression that medical crisis created, prepared for a collision with China over Beijing’s claims to the rocks, reefs and resources of the South China Sea?

For that is what Mike Pompeo appeared to threaten this week.

“The world will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire,” thundered the secretary of state.

“America stands with our Southeast Asian allies and partners in protecting their sovereign rights to offshore resources … and (we) reject any push to impose ‘might makes right’ in the South China Sea.”

Thus did Pompeo put Beijing on notice that the US does not recognize its claim to 90% of the South China Sea or to any exclusive Chinese right to its fishing grounds or oil and gas resources.

Rather, in a policy shift, the US now recognizes the rival claims of Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, and the Philippines.

To signal the seriousness of Pompeo’s stand, the US sent the USS Ronald Reagan and USS Nimitz carrier battle groups through the South China Sea. And, this week, the guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson sailed close by the Spratly Islands.

But what do Mike Pompeo’s tough words truly mean?

While we have recognized the claims of the other littoral states of the South China Sea, does Pompeo mean America will use its naval power to defend their claims should China use force against the vessels of those five nations?

Does it mean that if Manila, our lone treaty ally in these disputes, uses force to reclaim what we see as its lawful rights in the South China Sea, the US Navy will fight the Chinese navy to validate Manila’s claims?

Has Pompeo drawn a red line, which Beijing has been told not to cross at risk of war with the United States?

If so, does anyone in Washington think the Chinese are going to give up their claims to the entire South China Sea or retreat from reasserting those claims because the US now rejects them?

Consider what happened to the people of Hong Kong when they thought they had the world’s democracies at their back.

For a year, they marched and protested for greater political freedom with some believing they might win independence.

But when Beijing had had enough, it trashed the Basic Law under which Hong Kong had been ceded back to China and began a crackdown.

The democracies protested and imposed economic sanctions. But the bottom line is that Hong Kong’s people not only failed to enlarge the sphere of freedom they had, but also they are losing much of what they had.

The Americans, seeing Hong Kong being absorbed into China, are now canceling the special economic privileges we had accorded the city, as the British offer millions of visas to Hong Kong’s dissidents who fear what Beijing has in store for them.

In June, Pompeo also charged Beijing with human rights atrocities in Xinjiang: “The world received disturbing reports today that the Chinese Communist Party is using forced sterilization, forced abortion, and coercive family planning against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang, as part of a continuing campaign of repression.”

These reports, said Pompeo, “are sadly consistent with decades of CCP practices that demonstrate an utter disregard for the sanctity of human life and basic human dignity.”

China has rejected US protests of its treatment of Uyghurs and Kazakhs and of its handling of Hong Kong as interference in its internal affairs and none of America’s business.

As for the South China Sea, China dismissively replied, the US seems to be “throwing its weight around in every sea of the world.”

These American warnings, and Beijing’s response, call to mind the darker days of the Cold War.

So, again, the question: Is America prepared for a naval clash in the South China Sea if Beijing continues to occupy and fortify islets and reefs she claims as her own? Are we prepared for a Cold War II — with China?

While China lacks the strategic arsenal the USSR had in the latter years of the Cold War, economically, technologically and industrially, China is a far greater power than Soviet Russia ever was. And China’s population is four times as large.

Can we, should we, begin to assemble a system of alliances similar to what we had during the Cold War — with NATO in Europe and Asian security pacts with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand? Should we adopt a policy of containment of Communist China, which, says Pompeo, is an expansionist and “imperialist” power?

Should we start issuing war guarantees to China’s neighbors? Should we start putting down red lines China will not be allowed to cross?

Before we plunged into our half dozen Middle East wars, we didn’t think through where those would end. Have we considered where all our belated bellicosity toward Beijing must invariably lead, and how this all ends?

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

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