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I never said we should stand by and watch as the Chinese rape Taiwan. I do, however, support a waiting game right now. As I see it, the President is being careful not to give the Chinese a gift-wrapped causus belli to justify an invasion to the international community.

If a war does come, our navy alone--great as it is--cannot defeat the Chinese. For that, we need troops on the ground and planes in the air. It would take time to consolidate and focus our military for trouble in the Taiwan Strait--especially since Chinese planners almost certainly intend to consummate an invasion in a matter of days. The President, I think, is working desperately to wrap up our Iraq involvement as quickly as he can so that we can lower our troop commitment there in order to reallocate those forces where they are more needed. As emotionally and psychologically satisfying as publicly declaring our intention to militarily support Taiwan might be, it would serve no useful strategic purpose.

Finally, as I've asserted earlier, I think the driver behind the whole Taiwan invasion scare of the last several months has been the Chinese military. The Party, I think, would rather play for time until a more amenable American administration comes along. Why fight Bush when you can drink tea with Kerry (or his equivalent)?

"It would take time to consolidate and focus our military for trouble in the Taiwan Strait"

We need to start dramatically increasing the number of our troops and equipment as quickly as possible. It takes time to do these things and we need to be pursuing this right now as fast as possible. We can't afford to start doing this after a big war has already broke out.

China has become more aggressive lately because they don't think we have the troops to defeat them. Especially while we are occupied in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should have never allowed our military to shrink to the size it has. The best weapons technology in the world can't completely make up for actual troops.