China-Russia-Iran. Will China and Russia rue the day? Will they ultimately be able to contain the jihad that already nips at them, and which is likely only to grow stronger in both countries -- abetted by Iran in Russia?
From the Telegraph, with thanks to Interested:
Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, arrived in China last night for a summit of Asian states and Russia that Washington fears is forming a new anti-western alliance.Mr Ahmadinejad will seek support for his country's nuclear programme, fuelling US concern that Iran is being protected by its growing friendship with Russia and China, who both sit on the UN Security Council.
He is also believed to be pushing to join the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, which is holding its annual summit in the city today and tomorrow.The SCO, under the leadership of China and Russia, is playing an ever-greater role in the jostling for power in Central Asia. The dictatorial nature of some of its membership, which also includes the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, has provoked descriptions of it as an anti-American alliance of despots.
Both China and Russia deny this, and China's vice-foreign minister, Li Hui, this week ruled out early accession by Iran. But Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, said in a newspaper article: "The SCO is not a closed and exclusive club whose lines of demarcation have been clearly drawn."
Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, has expressed concern about the summit, and the presence of President Ahmadinejad as an official observer.
"It strikes me as strange that one would want to bring into an organisation that says it's against terrorism. . . one of the leading terrorist nations in the world," he said.
Yes.
Both China and Russia are still showing a most communistic trait: short sighted poltical commitments simply to discomfort the west.
I can understand China as her Islamic problem is small and she was friends with Pakistan. But considering the Chechen problem why Russia would be so stupid I cannot understand. Is Putin trying to get the Muslims to "ease off" in Chechen in return? If he is then he also has NO understanding of Islam.
Maybe under the guise of free expression and minority rights we should supply weapons, explosives and training to the brave Muslim freedom fighters in Chechnya and China to help them in their fight against Russian and Chinese imperialism. Short sighted, yes, but perhaps the quickest way to bring them to their senses..., after all we are only following Russian and Chinese examples of peace loving and responsible behaviour to further our own national interests?
Aw,c'mon fellas...Dick Cheney recently went to
Kyrgzstan, one of the 'despots'-these Oil Rent Boys will do anything for the smell of a Petroleum rag-'congratulated the President on 15 yrs[without Democracy] & how America was its Friend. Then he had the audacity to attack Putin and 'Human Rights.' Bush and his Cronies are LOUD MOUTHED WALKING DISASTERS. Their arrogance will turn even their allies against them. That and their ABYSMAL IGNORANCE of everything which isn't the American way. Get yourself some leaders
who aren't cowboys before the whole world blows up in their faces.
I do not believe that Russia would go along with this 'alliance'. However, I do agree with Morgane, if Putin is critised for 'human rights' which in this case stands for 'jihadi rights', he is bound to make some short term blunders. China, is different. It supports pakistan, it supports NK, it supports iran. It is using the war against terror to its maximum advantage. Add to it the fact that China opened its gates to FDI and lots of Western corporates are settled there now. This is going to hit when conflict breaks out with China. And the Chinese certainly are not courteous, they don't hide that they want territory. China has serious territorial disputes with 16 of its neighbours.
Russia has its Chechens and China has its Uighars to remind them of the jihad being waged withing their own borders. Given enough time they will come around.
Hulegu:
What makes you think the Russians and the Chinese aren't just as screwed up vis Iran's duplicity (supporting jihad on Russian and Chinese turf) as we accuse the American administration of being over Saudi Arabia's duplicity (supporting jihad in the US)?
After all, wasn't it Mao who said, "my enemy's enemy is my friend", and both China and the former Soviet Union have their own super power ambitions too.
"Russia has its Chechens and China has its Uighars to remind them of the jihad being waged withing their own borders. Given enough time they will come around." (from above)
but more and more it looks like there will be not enough time... ever sooner it will seriously destabilize, and then...
It's time to throw China out of the WTO.
Morgane:
But the Bush Adminstration has yet to massacre more than hundred million people. Which Communist ideology has already done-- and somehow the Communist manifesto STILL reigns supreme in Russia and much of eastern Europe and Asia. So much for the value of human life in these lands.ANd no that is not America's fault ( it was done without our consent I'll have you know).
Americans including the Bush Administration officials now everything about Communism and Communist sypmathizers. And Communism is STILL nowheresville. Virtually anything and everything Communist states have today has been acquired through parasitism off the western democracies (pirating goods, etc, you know all about that).
No Communist-bloc supporter is in any position to critize ANYONE. And that includes YOU.
Please. Put your money where your mouth is. And shut up.
Dear Pythagorus [American Pie-can't resist a little joke].
Do tot up the MILLIONS KILLED BY AMERICANS IN VIETNAM,KOREA, CAMBODIA & LAOS.All those innocent men,women and children destroyed by napalm and 'carpet' bombing. You will find America isn't far behind any Communist country in murdering civilians. Only difference is a finger on the button in the latest technology for killing people seems more 'hygienic' somehow than brutal, messy face to face murder...To Americans, that is.How many more dirty covert wars has America taken part in from Afghanistan to South America?? No, American hands aren't clean.It is merely a case of THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK.
Morgane-
You have to decide whether a culture that reports on and reforms its flaws is desirable to one that exalts its cruelties and deifies its crimes as its greatest glories.
The West, in the first case.
Islam, in the second.
Whatever the crimes you cite of any culture (and none- since the first Cro-Magnon brained the first Neanderthal- are angelic), it is what they do about them that defines the level of the civilization of the people.
Committing suicide by allowing current barbarians to destroy you because some of your ancestors were also once barbaric is insanity.
You're welcome to it.
Right now is a bad time for U.S. European relations to be poor. But it looks like Chirac will get his way and a counterbalance will emerge to American power. It just won't be Europe, and it won't be friendly. But judging by a posters comments above, Europe has more in common with China, Russia, and Iran at this point, so they may pile on against the U.S. too (along with half of the U.S. population).
Lady Liberty, it looks like your alone in this one. GW had better pull his head out of his hind quarters and stop wasting precious resources. This is only the beginning. Americans, surely there are better leaders amongst you than Bush(es),Gore, Kerry and Clinton(s)? Can you find them? Not in your two current parties. Time to look outside and confine those who have ignored your safety and well being for the last 20 years to the dumpster where they belong. Will you do it America? Will you actually vote for a JFK, Ronald Regan, Harry Truman or Theodore Roosevelt again? Let us hope so.
Morgane:
The number of casualties incurred in the Indochinese wars during the 14 years the US fought there is between 3 and 4 million.
Now, in 1949 the Chinese Communist Party massacred at least 50 MILLION Chinese civilians. During the 1960s the Mao Tse Tung government is believed to have massacred more than 30 million more. Some sources claim over 70 million. Many millions more were tortured. Now, in the 1950s, during the CHinese military takeover of Tibet the Communist govermnment of China killed an unknown number of Tibetan civilians. it could easily be millions more.
In 1930s Russia, the Stalin government is estimated to have intentionally killed at least 30 million Russian civilians under the banner of "collectivization." The killings of Russian civilians continued long after that. Many millions of Russians were also sent to Siberian labor prisons for the remainder of their lives for no reasons other than state ideology.
In addition, the Russian government int he eartly twentieth century helped militarize the German government paving the way for WW2 and many millions of more deaths.
Even if you add the 19th century wars against the Indians the USA led-wars resulted in far les than 10 million ciasualties. I'm not excusing all of this, but it is a fraction of what Communism has incurred on humanity.
By the way, if the Communists hadn't started the COld War none of the things you cite (out of contgext) would have happened.
Sheik 'Er Bouti-
Tom Tancredo and Curt Weldon in 2008.
They aren't out-of-left-field like Ross Perot or out-of-his-depth-realpolitik-ally like Ralph "Unsafe at any speed" Nader.
Spread their names, one and all.
Border security and national security combined.
And they don't sound like the average small-minded sleazy hucksters common in current U.S. politics.
Between the two of them, they almost make a Churchill.
TANCREDO AND WELDON IN 2008
The other options are too laughable to contemplate.
Gore? (Worrying about the possible shape of coast lines in the year 2200? From theoretically human-'induced' "global warming"? Ignoring the other equally-valid scientific theories that place the "cause" not on human intervention, but in solar activity, or on other natural occurences? Would he prefer two-mile thick ice sheets creeping over the Northern hemisphere from global cooling? New coasts would be an "inconvenience" to an advanced civilization, but glaciers sliding down to cover the Earth as far south as Rome and Houston and Shanghai and Kyoto would result in a calamitous diaspora and human disaster of supra-historical proportions.)
Hillary "Klaxon" Clinton? (A poli-pimp par excellance.)
John Edwards? (Proved himself a lightweight of near anti-gravitational stature.)
Kerry again? (Wrong again.)
Frist? (Looks too much like comic impressionist Rich Little doing Reagan.)
Guiliani? (His personal foibles would make him defeatable in a hopefully VERY tough race.)
Newt Gingrich? (Alienates too many with his moraline preachiness that is not reflected in his homelife, although he would make a good Director of Homeland Security.)
I want a team who understand the two main threats to the country:
-uncontrolled borders allowing the demographic destruction of America, and:
-Islamic Imperialism.
And who are fighting for our survival, now.
If you know of any good candidates, who are at least as viable, let's hear some names.