zaterdag 12 maart 2005

March 12, 2005

The hot topic here today, and probably for a week or so, isn’t the Gannon scandal which has more or less died away. Gannon has been quiet and no one here in the White House even remembers who he was. Officially.

The concern here is the PRC. They have been annoyed with Bush for his clumsy and arrogant behavior towards not only them but just about everyone else. Bush is pig-headed and totally devoid of any diplomatic skills. Rice in narrow-minded and clever but inflexible. The problem is that the PRC has always believed that Taiwan was a part of China and must eventually be reunited. This does not sit well with the people of Taiwan and there has been ongoing tension. To show how clever he was, Bush sent US naval units to the area last year and in essence stuck his tongue out at the mainland Chinese. Now, Beijing has retaliated. They have warned Bush, through the DoS that they would no longer tolerate any interference by the Bush Administration in their problems with Taiwan and they went on to <>demand<>, not request, that Bush back off.

He was told, again, not asked, that if he did not make a public statement to the effect that the United States believed that the problems between the two entities could be solved between them and wished to remain strictly neutral, they would retaliate against the US. In other worse, if Beijing decided to invade Taiwan, which they are now seriously planning, Bush would have to butt out and stay out. Their threat? Clever. If he keeps up his current nose-thumbing at Beijing, they will repeg their currency and dump all of their US treasury holdings on the market and never again buy any US paper.

This would be a devastating blow to our economy and the Chinese, and the world banking systems know it. If China did this, all the other countries holding American notes would very quickly follow suit so as not to be caught with increasingly worthless paper. I understand from a friend at the DoS that the note was civil but devoid of any of the usual diplomatic bs. In essence, Bush was ordered to butt out and stay out or the Chinese would at once carry out their threats.

Those in the know are horrified but many of wonder if Bush is even aware of this (he is told what his handlers want him to hear and nothing else…he never reads any newspapers or watches anything on TV but the sports programs…and no one at Foggy Bottom has any idea what to do.) It is well-known that the Chinese do what they say and if there is no Bush response very quickly, there will be hell to pay economically.

The standard threat from the Bush people is that we would cease doing business with them unless they followed our orders but now, the Chinese have been quickly opening up other markets to compensate for their anticipated loss of American trade and the DoS and CIA people feel that they have found more than enough support in Europe and elsewhere from countries that are outraged by the Bush drumfire of malicious threats. This man is going to destroy the United States economy all by his pin-headed self!

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