As much as the media would like us to believe that 'muslims' are all of one mind, it simply isn't true. As much as we are told that Arafat has 'overwhelming support' among Palestinians, I don't even believe that that is true. The average person may go through the motions of 'support,' but if the average palestinian was buying into the line Israel would be gone by now, because they would simply be overwhelmed. If the average palestinian was buying into the myth, Arafat wouldn't have to keep their news censored; candy wouldn't be neccessary to get kids to celebrate Israeli deaths, he wouldn't have to threaten his own people or drag them- or often their relatives- into his 'police stations' for attitude adjustment.
The same goes in Iran where the people know their leaders are bankrupt beyond repair. The same goes for Iraqis. All these people are held in bondage to a minority of people who just happen to be very prone to violence, while the people are for the most part wholly unarmed, or barely making a living to spare time to think up grand conspiracies to topple madmen.
Castro routinely rouses his people to parade around and protest the US, but he does so by bribing people with T-shirts while others are reluctant to look 'unpatriotic' by not showing up. If they are absent the local nark will note it.
We were treated in the West to years of silly communist parades showing thousands upon thousands of people marching in lock-step to the glory of the revolution, flashed countless images of rockets and missiles in ghastly parades, shown the glistening ranks of tractors produced by maniacal communist empires to awe us with their production capacity, given discrete peeks at quaint wholesome villages... and they all turned out to be Potempkin villages and so much useless junk. What we didn't see were nations critically short on basic products such as nails, bread lines, flats crowded with too many occupants, the dirt, the pollution, the purges, the bribery, the depression... little did some of us know that it was all... blown way out of proportion. Some were deathly afraid because they couldn't see what the people in htose societies see every day- the utter despair that people undergo and they know the cause is not the US. They know what the cause is.
We saw it in Pakistan when the street was filled with 'enthusiastic' bin Laden supporters... all ready to go out and fight the Great Satan. Where did they go? They seem to be in hiding, or have gone about with more important things to do now that they don't have to put up with unbridled terrorists owning their streets.
we can rely on 800 million Hindus to tip the number balance in our favor,
We won't need nearly so many of them with our kill ratio.
and we may not want Taiwan to change the balance by adding 1 billion Chinese to the Muslim side.
With the Chinese currently fighting separatist muslims, that's not too likely. But the Chinese are not one undifferentiated mass of people ready to be programmed by the state, either. This is even more true for China than for muslims. The various Chinese peoples aren't stupid. Their own government isn't too popular among them either.
They aren't all going to jump on the 'I think invading Taiwan is great' bandwagon... many would be thrilled to get out into the west as we see by how many come here and even to other countries.
In these times, we need to keep our passions in check and our minds cold and calculating.
The best thing the US can ever do is retain its integrity. That means we should keep our word- and if we need to be cold and calculating to do it, so be it.
ROFL. That is assuming you know how the enemy thinks. These are the real questions: when will the Chinese regime become desperate enough to focus the masses' attention away from domestic problems? When does a hard-liner take over China? When does China determine that the US is unable to help Taiwan?
Taiwan might as well walk with her head high until that time. No point in having Taiwan muzzle itself fearfully, cringing from the giant bully. China decides when to attack. Not Taiwan. Taiwan's morale is more significant than diplomatic word games.