Idiotic Pseudo-Analysis of the Day: Hey, Let's Abandon Taiwan Because China's Emotional

Dignified Rant disassembles this half-baked attempt at an analysis of the Taiwan-China-US nexus.

The "analysis" contains this little gem:

But the real question is whether Taiwan is strategic militarily to the United States. The small island nation is not, and the United States shouldn’t risk escalation with a nuclear-armed China to defend it.

I don't even know where to start hammering at it -- the target is too big! That's not even getting to a later bumblingly ludicrous argument that because China is "emotional" about the Taiwan issue, the US should simply concede it.

A brief blurb from DR:

Ivan Eland thinks we should abandon the defense of Taiwan because it isn't important to us and is important to China. Taiwan is only useful as a base to attack China, Eland says. (So would Eland say we have the right to own Cuba given their position astride our Gulf Coast sea lines of communication?)

This assertion ignores the role Taiwan would play as a springboard for Chinese power projection should China hold the island. So already Eland's analysis is bad.

And he ignores the morality of abandoning free people to China's communist rulers.

I do believe the ignoring of morality in foreign policy is often conveniently called "realism" by its practitioners. Naturally, it leads to some appalling "decisions" and "analyses" that are in themselves heavily, even blindly ideological (here's a pithy reminder -- penned by a thoughtful voice from the reasonable center-left-ish).

Well, what a cheerful chaser to the 30-year anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act, the recent release of the annual Pentagon report of China's military, and the latest KMT shenanigans.

Is anything so pathetically evil as free people being willing to abandon other free people -- to autocrats -- in the name of being "nice" to those autocrats? There's nothing so craven as kissing up to potentially hostile groups while being treacherous to one's actual friends, allies, and dependents.

UPDATE: Here is a piece arguing for the defense of Taiwan, via blogfriend View from Taiwan.

Taiwan: Chiang's Legacy and Historical Revisionism

I've been so busy ranting about taxes that I haven't looked back at Taiwan in a while, but I just did, and I'm not thrilled to see the KMT prancing around.

Indulging in a little historical revisionism mingled with current self-preening, are we, KMT? Taiwan News, though, is calling them on it. Blurb (my emphasis in boldface):

The ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang)'s celebration of the centenary of the late president Chiang Ching-kuo, the autocratic son and successor of KMT dictator Chiang Kai-shek, marks a major step in the restored KMT regime's attempted "historical cleansing" of the Taiwan people's "quiet revolution" of democracy.

The taxpayer financed commemorations for the late KMT leader have included a mountain of "pulp panegyrics" and exhibitions, a music concert, a website (www.cck.org.tw) and an official memorial service topped off by a 11,000 Chinese character essay by President Ma Ying-jeou, who is transparently positioning himself as his mentor's political successor.

In his address posted on Friday, Ma lauded the younger Chiang for launching the so-called "10 Major Construction Projects" in the early 1970s, improving the livelihood of the Taiwan people and creating an economic miracle" and "guiding democratic reform and lifting the freeze in cross-strait relations" with the People's Republic of China which is ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, which expelled Chiang Kai-shek's KMT regime from the China mainland in 1949.

Ironically, Ma's keynote account is more noteworthy for what it omits than for what it includes.

For example, readers will look in vain for any mention of the younger Chiang's role as the mastermind of the KMT martial law regime's security network in the 1950s and 1960s and his role as the hands-on executor of the "White Terror" purge of alleged "communists," Taiwan independence advocates, liberal dissidents and rivals for power that cost the lives of at least 5,000 mainlanders and native Taiwanese, nearly 30,000 imprisoned political prisoners and the destruction of tens of thousands of families.

Learn the history! That way you can recognize whitewashing when you see it.

The editorial does have a firecracker of an ending, though:

But the very fact that Ma and the rest of the KMT leadership are unwilling to confront the true and full history of Chiang Ching-kuo and exposes their fear of the historical memory of the Taiwan people's successful if imperfect democratic revolution in the face of the incompetence of the restored KMT government.

The Taiwan people should never forget that our democracy was not a "gift" but a priceless treasure which the blood, sweat and work of hundreds of thousands of activists and the votes of millions of ordinary citizens "repossessed" from a dictatorial regime.

We should also never forget that we did it once and can do it again.

YES.

More here.