Bloodlust

The maniacs who now rule us were looking for an enemy prior to 9/11 when Al Qaeda fell into their lap. They wanted to force a showdown with China, a nuclear power. Some might remember that the only foreign policy crisis prior to 9/11 was the downed spy plane that got caught surveilling the Chinese coast, a mistake that Bush made a complete hash of. Turns out that this surveillance was part of a concerted effort to confront China, one that Gary Hart told James Fallows about in the context of the Hart-Rudman commission report on terrorism in 2001, which was completely on the money, by the way.

Early in 2001, the commission presented a report to the incoming G.W. Bush administration warning that terrorism would be the nation's greatest national security problem, and saying that unless the United States took proper protective measures a terrorist attack was likely within its borders. Neither the president nor the vice president nor any other senior official from the new administration took time to meet with the commission members or hear about their findings.

At the first meeting, one Republican woman on the commission said that the overwhelming threat was from China. Sooner or later the U.S. would end up in a military showdown with the Chinese Communists. There was no avoiding it, and we would only make ourselves weaker by waiting. No one else spoke up in support.

The same thing happened at the second meeting -- discussion from other commissioners about terrorism, nuclear proliferation, anarchy of failed states, etc, and then this one woman warning about the looming Chinese menace. And the third meeting too. Perhaps more.

Finally, in frustration, this woman left the commission.

"Her name was Lynne Cheney," Hart said. "I am convinced that if it had not been for 9/11, we would be in a military showdown with China today." Not because of what China was doing, threatening, or intending, he made clear, but because of the assumptions the Administration brought with it when taking office. (My impression is that Chinese leaders know this too, which is why there are relatively few complaints from China about the Iraq war. They know that it got the U.S. off China's back!)

The maniacs who now rule don't care who we're fighting, as long as we're fighting SOMEBODY. War with China would have been the greatest disaster the world has ever known, possibly a world-ending disaster, and it would have been completely unnecessary. Now we have China meeting with top campaign aides for the future President, maybe because they don't want the next one to harbor the same ideas of needless confrontation. We should be confronting China economically, cutting off trade deals if they continue to sell us tainted meat or toothpaste with antifreeze in it. But military confrontation? When they make all our steel needed for weaponry?

We are ruled by elites who feast on blood, who must have an enemy to sow fear in the populace. They're certifiably insane.