Something tells me the writer is more concerned about China's economic threat than the anything.

Both David Horowitz and Jamie Glazov's concern is preserving and spreading human liberty...and pivotal to that, is continuing the ongoing struggle to prevent the persistence of Communist oppression wherever it is the world. And also being wary of the threats to our own liberty that they may be growing into...and helping to alert us thereto.

These are all concerns we should be sharing...and to impute the cynical motivation is just silly:

There's no money to be made or power to be wielded worrying about muslim terrorism all the time.

I don't know that there's any money to be made in "worrying about" the looming Chinese communist menace either! If that were the case, I'd already be a zillionaire!

To emphasize the point about intellectual sincerity, I want to reiterate and quote Arthur Waldron's above summary points which do so better than my own. Are there any points which any reasonable analyst can honestly disagree?:

"China has reaped the benefits of American policies. Her government is rich and many Americans and other westerners now have so much money invested in China that they are reluctant to do anything other than support the regime. Yet it is becoming clear that the Communists have no intention of giving up power, allowing free speech, elections, freedom of religion, or other serious change.
It is also becoming clear that economically China is mercantilist in her behavior, not a true free trader. And finally, she is using the money and access to foreign technology obtained in these decades to engage in a major military build-up.
This is the phase in which we find ourselves now. I think we can call it dawning disappointment and concern. Without intending to, we have helped create a formidable geopolitical competitor, that threatens our friends and allies in Asia militarily, and whose economic behavior is undermining our interests. That competitor now feels strong enough not to pay much attention to what we say, one way or the other. Beijing feels it can make its own way.
I believe our interest is above all in having a China whose government is legitimately constituted, elected by its people, and that honors the rights of its people. This is the fundamental consideration."

This is precisely what we conservative anti-communists always warned of. Our policies merely strengthened them in all ways that threatened us, and undercut our own ability to resist their oppressions and threatening capabilities. I am not here merely to say "I told you so." or crow over how everyone was misled by the Panda-Huggers...but we conservatives weren't.

As Ronald Reagan always was proud to display on his desk a placard which said:

There is no end to what you can accomplish if (or when) you don't care who gets the credit.

I am begging for people to wake up...not give up or give in to what the Appeasers will say is now unstoppable or simply too inconvenient to oppose... We need to change course. We need to do the Right Things. Now.

"China has reaped the benefits of American policies. Her government is rich and many Americans and other westerners now have so much money invested in China that they are reluctant to do anything other than support the regime. Yet it is becoming clear that the Communists have no intention of giving up power, allowing free speech, elections, freedom of religion, or other serious change. It is also becomi"China has reaped the benefits of American policies. Her government is rich and many Americans and other westerners now have so much money invested in China that they are reluctant to do anything other than support the regime. Yet it is becoming clear that the Communists have no intention of giving up power, allowing free speech, elections, freedom of religion, or other serious change. It is also becoming clear ithat economically China is mercantilist in her behavior, not a true free trader. And finally, she is using the money and access to foreign technology obtained in these decades to engage in a major military build-up.

China does not have parity with the U.S. militarily. And it doesn't surprise me a bit that you're spending most of your time worrying about China as an economic power (not to mention the griping about some other large countries in the developing world). China is going to do what is in "China's" interests regardless of what we do. We should do the same. The difference is that China is basically centrally controlled by an entrenched undemocratic regime that won't give up much of its power voluntarily (this is news to you?) and the U.S. is most certainly not (last time I checked anyway). The fact of the matter is that China is not going away regardless of what we do, just like Mexico. You can fanticize all you want about how some indespensable CIA operatives, protectionist economists, and weapons systems could "contain" China and keep it a backwards hellhole full of illiterate rice farmers or get all hysterical about how Iowans are soon going to be speaking Chinese or lick your chops over the prospect of a short, glorious war with a nation of a billion people, but I have less and less patience for that. Mercantilism is dumb policy on the part of the U.S, because the country's real problems are increasingly domestic (our shitty education system, our out of control entitlements and debt, creeping government, the public's inability to embrace change). U.S. policy towards China is incoherent at best and needs to be changed drastically in places, but we should be careful to pick our battles. Even Sun Tzu would agree on that point.

We need to do the Right Things. Now.

I wholeheartedly agree. I just don't think you have any clue about what the Right Things are.

Cluelessness?:

CIA operatives, protectionist economists, and weapons systems could "contain" China and keep it a backwards hellhole full of illiterate rice farmers

Too late, genie is out of the bottle, all we can do is at least staunch hemhorraging. And no one is opposed to the Chinese People getting a better life Who.

or get all hysterical about how Iowans are soon going to be speaking Chinese

?What are you smoking? Who believes that? No. They will simply kill us if we get in their way. And take what they want. They have said so. Of course, you probably think that's "hysterical".

or lick your chops over the prospect of a short, glorious war with a nation of a billion people,

Nope. Standard leftist drivel about purported arm-chair warmongers. The late Dr. Constantine Menges laid out what our strategy should be...in China the Gathering Threat. but of course you are too knee-jerk Panda-hugging and free-trading to listen to his wisdom.

but I have less and less patience for that.

Yes, it is doubtful you have patience for wisdom.

Mercantilism is dumb policy on the part of the U.S,

But its okay for the Chi-Comms? Its most definitely working for them. There is only one way to fight this. You fight fire with fire. Dr. Menges indicates we must expressly tailor our trade policies to choke off the threat.

because the country's real problems are increasingly domestic (our shitty education system,

Standard Leftist Drivel. They create the problem, then they harp about throwing them still more money to "correct" the problem...LOL! The only problem is one of the Federalists making. It has enabled the Leftists to use Federal mandates and interference in local education to polticize it and use it as a tool for indoctrination.

our out of control entitlements and debt,

Made worse by the principle Free Traders, this Administration (can you say Prescription Drug Benefit, or No Child Left Behind?), its Treasury Secretary (apologist deluxe for evading admitting China's violations of "Free Trade" and being "manipulative" of its currency), the Federal Reserve Chiefs, both Greenspan and Bernanke.

creeping government,

Again a problem of those free traders who believe in the oxymoronic notion of Big Government Conservatism. Fundamentally self-contradictory.

the the public's inability to embrace change)

Actually, it is the Free Traders who have shown an inability to either admit reality...their schemes in China are backfiring...BIG TIME...and they have overtly made themselves enemies of our freedom and liberties. Very explicitly in their actions, such as Google and Yahoo. But we warned the free traders all about that. And they pooh-poohed, exaggerating the infinite power of the internet. LOL! The Free Traders had "no patience" for that obviously "hysterical" concern.

U.S. policy towards China is incoherent at best

You're too charitable. It is totally contrary to reality. And needs to be completely redirected.

and needs to be changed drastically in places, but we should be careful to pick our battles.

Maybe. But as you recall, Reagan did a "full court press" short of a shooting war...and prevailed.

Even Sun Tzu would agree on that point.

Somehow I don't think Sun Tzu would abdicate the power of our nation's right to police its foreign trade...and take that tool off the table. Especially while the other side is manifestly exploiting that same tool...to the hilt.

We need to do the Right Things. Now. I wholeheartedly agree. I just don't think you have any clue about what the Right Things are.

But you, in your humble opinion, you do?

The late Dr. Constantine Menges laid out what our strategy should be...in China the Gathering Threat. but of course you are too knee-jerk Panda-hugging and free-trading to listen to his wisdom.

I'm not too wild about scientology either. There are thousands of books out there that aren't worth my time.

Standard Leftist Drivel. They create the problem, then they harp about throwing them still more money to "correct" the problem...LOL! The only problem is one of the Federalists making. It has enabled the Leftists to use Federal mandates and interference in local education to polticize it and use it as a tool for indoctrination.

I'm afraid I haven't a clue what you're talking about. And what's more, I no longer care.

does the CCP know something about the future that we don't? And do they believe that they control the timing of that future? THANK you for posting this. I just read it. We goofed big time. Just as "democracy" won't be the answer in the ME, without a change in Islam, "free trade" hasn't been, and won't be an answer for China's threat to us until there is regime change there. I hope the President sees this China problem for what it is - a totalitarian nation. There is NO indication they are beoming more free. Just more rich. They are still evil.

I'm not too wild about scientology either.

What, pray tell, has that got to do with the late Dr. Constantine Menges? I am not going to venture any speculation as to what you could be driving at there.

Do you know his religion? It wasn't Scientology. Here is a brief obit from National Review.

Constantine Menges, a Turkish-born freedom fighter and rightwing revolutionary, has died at the age of 64
* Constantine Menges, a Turkish-born freedom fighter and rightwing revolutionary, has died at the age of 64. From helping East German refugees escape over the Berlin Wall, to working for equal voting rights in Mississippi, to organizing civil resistance after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Menges sought to extend the sphere of freedom to the oppressed. In the early 1980s, he worked as a Latin America specialist for the CIA and the White House--from which perch he helped plan the liberation of Grenada from the Castro-backed Communist government, threw his weight behind the Nicaraguan Contras, and supported the Salvadoran rebels. "Constant Menace," as he was nicknamed by his friends (and foes), firmly believed in rolling back Moscow by turning the Soviets' own methods against them through sponsoring "national liberation movements," authorizing covert action, and underwriting democratic revolutionary insurgencies in anti-American despotisms.
More recently, Menges cast his eye on the rise of China and Russia, the emerging pro-Castro constellation in Latin America, and the dubious role of Iran in Middle Eastern affairs. We will miss his wisdom and spirit in the tumultuous era to come.
R.I.P.

There are thousands of books out there that aren't worth my time.

Perhaps your time isn't too valuable to read Dr. Menges. I am extremely busy too, but found his insights absolutely solid. And others were also profoundly effected by him. He was a solid warrior for freedom in the Reagan Administration:

July 26, 2004

Constantine Menges: A Tribute

By Kenneth R. Timmerman

With the passing on Sunday of Constantine Menges, whose hauntingly-prescient columns on foreign affairs have graced these pages for many years, the free world has lost a revolutionary strategist.

An academic by training, Dr. Menges was recruited by incoming CIA director William Casey in May 1981 to become his National Intelligence Officer for Latin America. It was not just Constantine's impressive intellectual firepower that attracted Casey, but his fierce independence, his tenaciousness, and his over-riding vision that it was America's destiny among nations to serve as the standard bearer of freedom to the oppressed of the world. Casey wanted to challenge the corporate views of Agency insiders, and saw in Menges the right man for the job.

Constantine's goal in life was to devise strategies for defeating tyrannies, just as V.I. Lenin and Trotsky had devised strategies to create them. He was a professional revolutionary on the side of freedom.

Just before joining the CIA, Menges proposed that the U.S. government establish a "National Foundation for Democracy" to promote nascent democratic movements in countries living under communism and other forms of tyranny. President Reagan embraced the idea, and two years later convinced Congress to fund the National Endowment for Democracy.

While working for Casey, Dr. Menges urged the CIA to adopt a "pro-democracy" approach toward defeating communism in Latin America, that skillfully blended support for pro-democracy political movements with the selective use of force. When he moved to the White House in 1983 to become a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, his very first assignment was to draw up plans to restore democracy in Grenada after a Communist coup. It was this part of the Grenada mission, more than the military intervention alone, that marked the definitive end of the Carter era and demonstrated that it was possible to "roll back" Communism, surely Ronald Reagan's greatest legacy.

When I met Constantine four years ago, I never would have imagined it would be in the "sunset" of his life. He had just turned sixty; he and Nancy, his wife of twenty-five years, were enjoying Georgetown like a young married couple. Dining with them at restaurants, or in their home or in mine invariably became an intellectual fireworks display. Constantine was not only bursting with his own ideas, but knew how to inspire others.

Indeed, over the past two years, Menges has been more active than ever in warning of new threats looming just over the horizon. He has warned the Bush administration repeatedly about the active infiltration of Iraq by thousands of Iranian government thugs and intelligence operatives. Even as the U.S. was celebrating the end of major combat activities in May 2003, Constantine predicted that the lull in violence would be only a respite. The Iranians had established no fewer than 42 Arabic-language radio and television stations beaming anti-American propaganda into Iraq, he said, without an effective U.S. response. The results were predictable, and deadly.

In Iran itself, Constantine urged the Bush administration to aid pro-democracy groups to build a broad-based national movement capable of challenging the tyrannical rule of Iran's clerics. As a strategist of freedom, who knew that dictators could be defeated - but that it required hard work, good planning, training, and dedication. Arm chair revolutionaries, who ran for cover at the first shots, would never do the trick, he knew. But equally dangerous were armed Marxist-Islamic groups who sought to replace one dictatorship with another.

The son of German refugees from World War II, he had a special understanding of appeasement, and blasted the Clinton administration for caving in to Communist China. But in a just-completed book-length manuscript called 2008: The Preventable War, he was scarcely more tender toward the Bush administration for its failure to recognize the threat of the growing military and strategic cooperation between Russia and Communist China.

Those whose loss is arguably the greatest, however, are those who have never met him and who don't even know his name: freedom-lovers in countries such as Iran, who aspire to break the yolks of tyranny. They have lost not only a friend, but a revolutionary thinker and strategist who understood that if you failed to fight for freedom you inevitably die in chains.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is a senior writer for Insight and author of The French Betrayal of America, just released from Crown Forum.

[I previously said that the Dept. of Education and those for federalizing education had]...enabled the Leftists to use Federal mandates and interference in local education to polticize it and use it as a tool for indoctrination.

Everybody here at Free Republic knows EXACTLY what I'm talking about. Nobody with a shred of conservative constitutional convictions or knowledge or sentiment would then make the response you did:

I'm afraid I haven't a clue what you're talking about.

And what's more, I no longer care.

Mayhaps you will care to at least learn of a fallen oak...

EULOGY FOR CONSTANTINE MENGES
by Curtin Winsor, Atlas Economic Research Foundation,
July 16, 2004

Constantine Menges has passed from us -- a great tree fallen in the forest before its time. As in his sunlit clearing, we now gather to honor him and to share grief that has come to linger -- but not to last. Our sorrow for his passing is not for him, but for us. As we were made better by his presence, his passing diminishes our nation and each of us.

Constantine was the child of democratic opponents to Hitler. He was born on the first day of the Second World War, after their flight to safety in Turkey. He once explained to me that he was sent alone to America at the age of four, identified by a tag on his overcoat coat, with other children of refugees in 1943. He was to live with family friends that he had never met for the next three years. He described his childhood memory of the Statue of Liberty as his ship entered New York harbor in the morning light. Its torch infused him with the spirit of democracy. It was a light that would shine forth from Constantine throughout his life and work.

I met Constantine in 1978 and immediately found him to be a kindred spirit, a warm, considerate and true friend, and a rock of principle. He stood strong for democracy when destiny thrust us both into the storm of the Central American Crisis in 1980. He expected no less of his friends, and our friendship, warmed by his positive outlook and broad interests, gave me an opportunity to share the challenges and heartaches that arise from standing on principle…

Constantine's ability to conceptualize and guide political warfare in support of democracy was his strongest contribution to America’s victory in the Cold War and after. He offered a rare combination of analytical ability, idealistic orientation and practical implementation. This balance of talents enabled him to support active freedom movements against communist dictatorships and to encourage transitions to democracy.

Constantine was prescient as an analyst. Many of his recommendations tended to look too far into the future for the reactive "professionals" who comprise much of our foreign policy establishment. Had Constantine’s proposal to then-Vice President George H. W. Bush's Commission on Terrorism been heeded in 1987, problems we now face would be less significant or even absent. He was almost alone in warning that Iran would pose a major threat to post-Saddam Iraq, a year before the Second Iraq War. He long foresaw the dangers to democratic prospects in Latin America from the Foro do Sao Paolo, the alliance of Chavez in Venezuela, Castro in Cuba and Lula in Brazil. He warned us that this dark alliance would endanger the South American continent and Mexico. Evidence increasingly suggests that he was correct. His final work, now at the printer, raises unpopular but increasingly evident concerns about the danger of links between Russian corruption and advanced military technology feeding the capacity and ambitions of the Peoples Republic of China.

Constantine was a kind hearted, cheerful and friendly human being. He strongly believed that most people contained goodness (albeit temporarily impaired in some instances) and that they were inclined to do the right thing if enabled to do so. He listened well at an interpersonal level and was always concerned about the wellbeing of others, even when he was confronting his own mortality.

He was a dedicated family man. He and Nancy were married for 29 years. He was considerate and generous. He was devoted as a father to their only child, Christopher, and as a loving son to his own recently deceased parents. As a family man, he embodied the very principles that he stood for in all aspects of his life. As a friend, he was caring and supportive. His broad interests, positive and articulate nature were uplifting for those so fortunate as to be his friends and he sustained these qualities to the very end.

Constantine was brave. Adversity was his lot. But he was armored by inner light and conviction that his message of optimism and active opposition to evil must be heard.

He was modest without being humble. Although Constantine endured scorn and rejection from some of his peers, such was his nature that these encounters with negativity did not abash him. He was a confident man, fortified by his strong belief in a just God and in the essential link between his work and the summum bonum that must eventually prove God’s will.

Like a giant oak that stood against the wind, alone in a field, where each bough was as great as a full tree, so was Constantine Menges -- scholar, patriot, linguist, humanist, man of ideas, man of understanding, man of action, and warrior in the truest sense.

Today, it is for his friends who are gathered here to carry forward the political vision and ideas that he championed. His chapter has ended - and we who are left behind must find ways to sustain both his unheeded concerns and his transcendent optimism.

We need to sustain his forward looking political vision more than ever in the unfolding battle of Liberal Civilization against the dark and chaotic forces of international terrorism. It will require many of us to take up the duties that he sustained alone -- standing against the wind.

Resqueat en pacem et luce aeternum, Constantine.

Amen. Dr. Menges was a true American Patriot and someone who understood communism.

Also I will add that Menges also wrote quite a few articles on Central & South America on the growing communist movement, and China's involvement prior to his death.

He long foresaw the dangers to democratic prospects in Latin America from the Foro do Sao Paolo, the alliance of Chavez in Venezuela, Castro in Cuba and Lula in Brazil.

Way back in the early 1980s in the National Review, might have been from Bill Buckley I remember a prediction that Latin America with its 500 million people would be a bigger threat to US stability than even the Soviet Union. How right these guys turned out to be.

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