Posted on 04/27/2002 1:31:21 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
It's funny -- in a sad way -- how government propaganda can cause you to think that your enemies are your friends, and your friends are your enemies.
Now THATS funny!
Reason: bullies can dish it out, but can't take it.
Example: Chinese journalsts (and others) cheered the distruction of the WTC 3,000 people.
President Bush delivered a speech and an ultimatum. The speech was jeered by the people who should have been frightened, and the ultimatum(s) ignored.
We stomped the offending a$$es without further preamble. No muss, fuss or posturing.
Now harken back to Kosovo, in the '90's, when a stray bomb damaged China's po widdle embassy building, killing two or three people, if I remember correctly.
China stamped and screamed and threatened and bawled and cried and...well, you get the picture. Clinton gave China an apology, and though I dislike the guy intensely, even his administration seemed clearly annoyed with China's childish tantrum.
I'm sure you see the contrast, too.
Scew you, Hu.
Again?? LOL, they lost BIG time the last time they tried it...even though their own government dropped the strict limitations on access to the EEEVEEEL, subversive West, just so their 'hackers' could do a bunch of damage!
Now THAT'S funny.
BUMP
Callous and "Not Ready For Prime Time".
I wish we could get India to ramp up and manufacture the consumer goods that China does. I buy Taiwanese, Korean, and other non-Chinese goods whenever I can, but it is not always possible to find them.
Yep. Looking forward to the next bout.
There have been three large scale campaigns of missle attacks on civilian population centers with conventional HE warheads in history. I leave out minor affairs like Iraq's few scuds at Israel and Saudi during the gulf war, which were just pinpricks.
In the "war of the cities" during the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq fired 520 ballistic missles at Iran. Most of them targeted at Teheran relatively late in the war. They caused a total of 2000 KIA and 6000 WIA. Each missle could be expected to kill 3-5 people and wound 10-15.
Late in WW II, the Germans fired not a few hundred, but around 3000 V-2 rockets, mostly at London and Antwerp. They killed a few thousand people and wounded a number in the low tens of thousands. Each missle killed 1-2 people and wounded 5-10. The main reason for the difference from the Iraqi experience is that the earlier model missles were substantially less accurate, with only about half hitting targets the size of large cities.
Earlier in WW II, in the summer and fall of 1944, the Germans launched not a few hundred, or a few thousands, but around 20,000 V-1 "buzz bombs", the first cruise missles, mostly at London in the summer, and at Antwerp later on, after ground forces overran the launching sites at put London out of range. (They also fired around 1200 V-1s from aircraft, at British targets). These killed about 10,000 people, and wounded about 40,000. Each buzz bomb fired thus accounted for only 0-1 KIA and 2 WIA. The main reason for the lighter result was that around half of them were shot down in flight by aircraft or flak, and another half missed even city sized targets. Even the ones that got through and hit urban areas on average killed 1-3 people and wounded 5-10.
While the loss of civilian life was certainly regrettable in each of these cases, and in the case of the much larger scale German WW II attacks (combined) involving a significant destruction of housing, and some serious diversion of military effort to shoot down V-1s and to bomb launch sites, the net effect was neglible in military terms. With a few hundred missles, you just don't do anything militarily serious even to a large city, let alone a whole nation.
They are purely weapons of spite. They are intended to frighten the civilian population of the targeted countries, and to cause wanton destruction to civilians out of simply hatred, but their bark is far worse than any militarily relevant bite. They are not accurate enough to be used at targets much smaller than cities, and their blast effect is too small to make up for this. Only hyper-accurate "smart" weapons can do anything militarily important with 1000 lb or 2000 lb conventional warheads.
50 more such weapons are meaningless. The Germans fired *5000* V-1s in the first 40 days of the "V-1 blitz" in the summer of 1944. And only made Londoner's lives harder, without helping the German army in the Normandy fight, beyond diverting some Allied aircraft to respond.
To threaten Taiwan, China needs either (1) to nuke the place, in which case there is nothing to take over and probably no one left to do the taking either, or (2) invade. To invade they have to get across the strait. To get across the straight in their grab-bag of merchant and transport ships, they need to keep everybody else's navy and air force out of the area.
They can't hope to keep our navy out if we come in - their whole navy has less modern naval combat power than some single Russian ships. And they would be hard pressed even to keep the Taiwanese air force from controlling the skies over the straits. They have only a handful of first line aircraft purchased from the Russians. They have a large number of MiG-21s of 1960s vintage, and an enourmous number of MiG-19s of 1950s vintage. But against F-16s they might as well be in biplanes. Only their top of the line late model Russian fighters are worth a darn, and they are outnumbered by the Taiwanese airforce. To say nothing of ours.
I am sure China's intentions are as bad as you please. And there is every reason to keep an eye on them, as they try to upgrade their military. And to keep Taiwan ahead of them by military help. But the peace there has not been kept for the past 40 years due to loving intentions on the part of the Chi-coms. It has been kept by a healthy fear of getting their asses kicked. Which they have every reason to believe would happen if they went tomorrow. Which is why they didn't go today.
Peace is kept by superior military power in the hands of the peace-loving, not by benign intentions among communist dictators. That communist dictators do not have benign intentions, especially toward us, is not exactly news. And 50 more - or 500 more - conventionally armed ballistic missles don't change the military power equation at all.
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