The American Spectator

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p> CURSES! br> Re: Doug Bandow's The China Syndrome : /p>

Doug Bandow has caught us dastardly Euro-weenies at it again! Curses, the light of truth shines on us again, the nukes bulging under our trench coats as the Reds hand over the envelope with the unmarked bills and the ticket to Marrakesh! Is there no end to our insolence?

Mr. Bandow's piece is very cleverly tailored to appeal to some elements on the American conservative right. However, big parts of it are also incorrect. No doubt I was only ever taught revisionist history, but America did not liberate Europe all on her lonesome -- the Allies did. Otherwise, my uncle, who according to the best of my knowledge and belief was not an American, wouldn't have been shot in the neck aged 18 serving with the Highland Light Infantry in Normandy. It might be in bad taste to remind Mr. Bandow how long it took y'all to come to that particular party, seeing as my dad still has a scar on his right hand caused by the Luftwaffe dropping an incendiary bomb on him in 1940, when he was four.

His invocations of increased Chinese prosperity don't really sit well with the realities of world-Sino relations:

- At least one million made homeless by the government's rush to build the Three Gorges hydroelectric project.

- U.S. economic dependence on China as one of the biggest buyers of the $2 billion of securities the Treasury pumps out every day in order to finance a budget deficit the President seems disinterested in reducing.

- The threat to the security of Taiwan caused by that dependence. I mean, if the Chinese go for regime change on Formosa, is the U.S. going to bite the hand that feeds it? Or are the Chinese going to be (gasp) appeased? It's only Euro-weenies who ever appease anyone -- isn't it?

As a lifelong resident of this continent, I keep looking for this "Europe" that commentators like Doug Bandow keep talking about. Perhaps I'm too close to it to see it -- then again, it could all be in their imagination.

p>I think it's the latter. br> --

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