Part I: The Unexamined Effect of the Hainan Island Outrage

by D.J. McGuire
http://china-e-lobby.blogspot.com/
Email: china_e_lobby AT yahoo.com

This is the first of three posts that were inspired by Sunday’s anniversary of the 9/11/01 attacks. Tomorrow’s post will focus on occupied East Turkestan, which the Communists have used as their smokescreen to cover up their support of anti-American terrorists. The final post, on Sunday, will describe in detail those ties between Communist China and America’s enemies in the War on Terror.

This Sunday will be the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. For America, it is a time to remember the fallen, and to assess where we are in the War on Terror. For those not familiar with this blog and its author, one would expect perhaps that this day would pass by without notice here. That would be wrong. In fact, this is the first of three posts that will deal with 9/11 and I suspect, it will be viewed as the most controversial.

Whenever I am asked if President Bush could have prevented 9/11, I always answer, “it’s certainly possible.” This usually stuns the person who asked me, because that’s not really their question. The real question they want answered (and thought they asked) is if the Bush Administration had enough foreknowledge of 9/11 to prevent it and was unable to act upon it due to incompetence or unwilling to act for pernicious political reasons. My answer to that question is “no,” but no one has ever asked it. So I am usually forced to explain that I believe the President could have taken action that would have led Osama bin Laden to postpone the attack, perhaps long enough to prevent it from happening. Often, I get quizzical looks, and a response of “how could he have done that?” That’s when the conversation goes to Hainan Island.

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One argument defenders of the Bush Administration have used ever since September 11, 2001 was that the terrorists wouldn’t have planned the attacks of that dark day but for the weakness of the Clinton Administration, best revealed by the complete lack of reaction to the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. That argument is very effective, and quite true – until 2001, in particular the first day of April, 2001, when a Communist Chinese air force fighter plane collided with an American EP-3E surveillance aircraft flying off the coast of Communist China.

Among the kernels of information the Communists would rather not be known include the following: at the time of the collision, the EP-3 was on “autopilot;” after the collision, the American plane tried to leave Communist air space, but according to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, it was forced to land on Hainan by another Communist jet fighter; the Communists “wrestled a U.S. crew member guarding the entrance” and “threw the airman to the ground” in order to get into the plane (Agence France Presse: the link has since died). The Communists were far less adept at hiding the fact that the twenty-four member crew was taken off the plane and held captive on an island hotel.

This is where Osama bin Laden, and indeed all of us, saw President Bush in his first international crisis. The result made an impression, and it wasn’t good.

At first, the President held firm, demanding that the American crew be returned, and that the plane be left untouched (the Communists were so eager for the technology bonanza that came with the plane that they began ripping it apart before the latter demand before it was even made). However, as days went by, his tough talk on the crew went soft. The President never called the American crew “hostages”-- preferring the value neutral and utterly silly "detainees.”  Meanwhile, the demands for the crew’s return devolved into offers of “regret” and even a willingness to say “sorry.” Even this wasn’t enough for the cadres, who demanded an American apology for daring to fly a plane on autopilot in international waters when a hot-dogging Communist slammed into it.

In fact, contrary to nearly all American media reports, the Bush Administration actually did apologize, albeit in the Chinese-language version (Washington Times: link has been archived). Even the English-language version included the ridiculous concession to the Communists that the EP-3 had landed “without verbal clearance” on Hainan – especially outrageous given what the South China Morning Post reported.

All in all, it was the great two weeks for the Communists, who were “able to force the Bush team to yield one thing after another” (CNN’s Willy Lam). Here in the U.S., the “engagement” crowd was praising the President to the skies. However, two pundits, William Kristol and Robert Kagan, cast a worrying eye to the future as the crew returned home:

. . . we have suffered a blow to our prestige and reputation, a loss that will reverberate throughout the world if we do not begin immediately to repair the damage. The problem is not merely that we have lost face – though the Chinese are right to believe that great powers should place a high value on their reputation. The bigger problem is that our reliability as defender of the peace and protector of friends and allies, especially in East Asia, has been thrown into doubt . . . Nor should anyone doubt that Saddam Hussein has studied this whole affair intently to see how the United States responds when faced with this kind of bullying. So far the lesson is all too clear: When you bully the United States, the United States searches for a way to apologize.
 

Whatever conclusions Saddam may have reached have now been relegated to the hypothetical realm. Osama bin Laden is another story. While the 9-11 Commission (which suddenly has a lot more to explain on other matters) did not examine possible reactions from Hainan, they did find that the “muscle” hijackers didn’t enter the United States en masse until late April 2001. The whispers in the terrorist camps that something big was going down didn’t start until mid-summer. Admittedly, this is circumstantial, but I wonder, had Osama seen something that led him to believe that President Bush, like Clinton, was unwilling to risk confrontation?  Did it steel his resolve to go forward with the attacks?

Now, many upon reading this would counter: Osama was going to hit us anyway, even if he waited a few more months, what would it mean? In fact, it could have meant a great deal: in September 4, 2001, the President approved a de facto alliance with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan, something the Clinton Administration had turned down twice (Washington Post). Nobody in Afghanistan had any knowledge of the Administration’s decision before al Qaeda murdered Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud on September 9 (four years ago today). The World Trade Center fell two days later – and I refuse to believe that was a coincidence.

Would Osama bin Laden have pushed back plans for the 9/11/01 attack if he had seen the Bush Administration act with firm resolve? By this point, Communist China was already helping Osama bin Laden launder money through its financial fronts around the world. What, if anything, would the cadres have told him about Bush if they had seen a tougher reaction from him regarding Hainan (I do not mean this to imply the Communists had any foreknowledge of the attack, an issue I will address on Sunday)?  If Osama had postponed the attack – and admittedly, that remains a very large “if” – would it have been long enough for the new Administration policy to knock the Taliban out of the box in Afghanistan, or at least to keep Massoud alive?  Finally, would either change to the timeline of events have led the 9/11 attack to be prevented or cancelled?

As far as I know, no one has even thought to ask these questions, let alone answer them. I’m not even sure they can be answered. That Osama bin Laden wanted to strike America is beyond doubt. That al Qaeda was, in 2001, planning to make such a strike is also beyond doubt. However, the factors bin Laden, et al, took into account when the time came for the final “green light” – in particular the anticipated American reaction – is still very much in doubt, and one very big, but largely unexamined, reason for this is the Administration’s weakness in April of 2001.

On the War on Terror, Part II: East Turkestan

by D.J. McGuire
http://china-e-lobby.blogspot.com/
Email: china_e_lobby AT yahoo.com

When the War on Terror is discussed, Communist China is almost always ignored or avoided. As such, the Communists' role in providing aid and support to our enemies is hardly ever in the conversation. Of course, the cadres themselves have been very eager to make sure no one knows about their weapons sales to Saddam Hussein, their involvement in Iran's nuclear weapons program, their economic deal with the Taliban, their laundering of drug money for Osama bin Laden, their continuing support for Stalinist North Korea, etc. However, they have been very effective in keeping attention away from the above information by insisting that they are victims of al Qaeda. In making this claim, they are, in fact, wrongfully slandering the most pro-American Muslim nation on the face of the earth, a nation that has suffered horribly at the hands of the Communists: occupied East Turkestan.

The lies the Communists spew on East Turkestan have hidden two critical aspects of the War on Terror. Before I get to those, a brief history of the occupation is in order.

In 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party defeated Chiang Kai-shek's government on the mainland, they invited the leaders of East Turkestan, which at that time was still independent, to come to Beijing for talks on the country's future. On August 27 of that year, the plane carrying the leaders of East Turkestan crashed, killing all on board. The Communist marched in and have occupied the overwhelmingly Muslim country ever since (they even renamed it "Xinjiang").

The occupation has been beyond brutal: executed political prisoners, razed mosques, mass forced immigration of ethnic Chinese, deliberate economic discrimination in favor of said ethnic Chinese, "Sinicization," etc. Folks who are familiar with the painful history of occupied Tibet will find all of this familiar. However, there is one additional outrage from which the Tibetans were spared: open-air above-ground nuclear tests that killed over 200,000 East Turkestanis. Among other things, this means that East Turkestan -- not Palestine (however one defines it), and not Iraq -- has suffered more deaths at the hands of a foreign military than any Muslim nation since World War II.

So the Communists certainly gave Osama bin Laden a perfect victim to exploit in his apparent war against the non-Muslim world. The trouble is, bin Laden's supposed hatred of occupying infidels has not extended to East Turkestan. While he has spoken out against the American military presence in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the Israeli military presence in the West Bank, and even the Spanish presence in Spain (last under Muslim control in the 15th Century), he has been completely silent on the brutal treatment of East Turkestan -- despite it being right next door to his five-year headquarters in Afghanistan.

So, despite all the Communist post-9/11/01 ranting about bin Ladenite terrorists in East Turkestan, bin Laden himself has no interest in the place. This is for two reasons -- which bring us back to those two critical aspects to which I hinted earlier.

First, there is Osama's relationship with Communist China (the use of Communist financial front companies to launder his drug money for him, the Communists' support for the Taliban (second and third items) and its Pakistan enablers, etc.). The Communists don't want the rest of the world to know, but they have found bin Laden to be quite useful, or to quote CNN's Willy Lam: "some kind of check on U.S. power." So long as the Communists' lies on East Turkestan are believed, the American people are far less likely to examine the Communists' real history -- in support of the terrorists.

Secondly, but just as important for bin Laden, is the people of East Turkestan itself. As numerous American reporters have discovered (third, third, second, and second items), the East Turkestani people (usually called Uighurs, who are the overwhelming majority among non-Chinese) are just about the most pro-American Muslims on Earth. I can attest to that personally from my numerous encounters with this proud people during and after I wrote my book on the Communists' ties to terrorism.

On September 14, 2004 (on my advice) they formed the East Turkestan Government in Exile, to give those in occupied East Turkestan a voice once again, and let the American people -- indeed, the peoples of all democracies -- know that there was a Muslim nation that condemned terrorism and supported freedom. They have proclaimed that message ever since.

How would America view the War on Terror if they knew the Communists' support of our enemies and the fact that the Muslim nation the Communists occupied are strongly pro-American and anti-Islamist (one member of the diaspora dismissively referred to Wahabbism as a "Saudi religion")? This is one question the Communists do not want answered. As I mentioned above, I'll go into detail on what the Communists do not want you to know, next.

On the War on Terror, Part III: Communist China's Support for anti-U.S. Terrorists

by D.J. McGuire
http://china-e-lobby.blogspot.com/
Email: china_e_lobby AT yahoo.com

Four years ago today, America suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history, and the worst attack of any kind since Pearl Harbor. Today, the nation is examining where we are in the War on Terror, and where we need to go. For most, Communist China will not be a topic of conversation. This is a tragic mistake. While I made this clear in a brief post in July, just after the London subway attacks, this post will have far more detail on Communist China's role as the largest benefactor of international terrorism on Earth.
 

In the myriad of pro-democracy, anti-Communist events that I have been fortunate enough to attend, I am usually the only one who brings up the War on Terror (and I have nearly every time, in large part because I have written a book on this subject). Sadly, the consensus inside and outside the 'movement' is that Communist China and the War on Terror are separate and distinct issues. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, when one examines our enemies in the War on Terror -- the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Ba athists in Iraq, and for the more expansive among us, the regimes of Syria, Iran, and Stalinist North Korea -- one finds only two things they all hold in common: hatred for America, and support from the Chinese Communist Party.

Let's begin with al Qaeda and their Taliban hosts. As mentioned in my post yesterday, Communist China has tried to claim that they are al Qaeda's victims, and as such America's allies in the War on Terror. What follows are the facts that the cadres are hoping to conceal with their lies.

In 1998, after the American cruise missile attack on al Qaeda, Communist China paid up to $10 million to the terrorist group for American unexploded missiles. The so-called People's Republic bought the missiles to "reverse engineer" them, i.e., use them to be able to advance its own cruise missile capabilities (Washington Post, link archived).

In 1999, a book by two Communist Chinese officers presented a scenario in which the World Trade Center is attacked as a situation that the United States would find difficult handle. The two colonels recommend Osama bin Laden by name as someone with the ability to orchestrate the attack of that magnitude via his al Qaeda group (Newsmax).

Communist China initially opposed United Nations sanctions against the Taliban, even after it refused to hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States for al Qaeda's role in terrorist attacks against American Embassies and the U.S.S. Cole. The regime maintained its opposition until the proposed sanctions were weakened in late 2000 (CNN).

Communist China signed a pact on economic cooperation with the Taliban on the morning of September 11, 2001, the very day the World Trade Center fell (Washington Post, link archived).

Communist China's Xinhua press agency later produced a video on the 9/11/01 attacks "glorifying the strikes as a humbling blow against an arrogant nation" (London Telegraph).

The Communist leadership considered al Qaeda as "a check on U.S. power" (CNN) and only decided to back away from the terrorists after deciding that "now is not the time to take on the United States."

Days after September 11, as Pakistan was mulling over a request from the United States to allow its troops to be based there for operations against the Taliban, Communist China -- a 50-year Pakistan ally -- announced it would "oppose allowing foreign troops in Pakistan" (Washington Post, link archived). This likely made efforts to convince Pakistan to accept U.S. troops -- while still successful -- much more difficult.

After September 11, U.S. intelligence caught the Communist Chinese military's favorite technology firm -- Huawei Technologies -- building a telephone network in Kabul (Washington Times, link archived).

Raids of al Qaeda hideout by U.S. Special Forces and allies have netted, on more than one occasion, a large cache of weapons from Communist China, including surface-to-air missiles, mere weeks after the U.S. government warned that al Qaeda terrorists in the U.S. would try to use said missiles to take down American planes (Washington Times, link archived, and CNN).

Also during the liberation of Afghanistan by the U.S. Special Forces and local anti-Taliban Afghans, Communist China, through public statements, and behind-the-scenes actions, tried to prevent what they called "a pro-American regime" in Kabul (CNN).

Then-communist Chinese leader Jiang Zemin even went so far as to rip the U.S. military presence in Central Asia during a visit to Iran (CNN, more on the mullahcracy later).

In the late summer of 2002, almost a year after Afghanistan was liberated, a three-man delegation from the Taliban -- led by Ustad Khalil, purported to be Mullah Omar's right-hand man -- spent a week in Communist China (Newsmax) meeting with cadres, at their invitation.

At roughly the same time, intelligence from the post-Taliban Afghan government revealed that Communist China had turned a part of Pakistan deemed under their control (most likely 'Aksai Chin,' the piece of disputed Kashmir Pakistan gave its longtime ally in the 1960s) into a safe haven for al Qaeda.

In mid-2004, it was revealed that the Communist Chinese intelligence service had used some of its front companies in financial markets around the world to help al Qaeda raise and launder funds for their operations.

Remember this list the next time the cadres claim to be our "allies" in the War on Terror.

Regarding Iraq, I understand there are many (including founding Members of the China e-Lobby), who remain unconvinced it is (or was prior to March 2003) a theatre in the War on Terror. This post will not attempt to convince you otherwise (although the book does). However, Communist China certainly believed Saddam Hussein could be useful against the United States (that 'check on U.S. power' line applied to him, too). The evidence is as follows.

Starting in 2000, Communist China's favorite military technology firm -- Huawei Technologies (they of the telephone network in Kabul) -- supplied Saddam Hussein with high-tech fiberglass for his air defense facilities (BBC). In January 2001, Communist China was found to be selling Saddam Hussein missile technology (Washington Times, link archived).

In February of 2001, the U.S. military bombed an Iraqi fiber optic network (Washington Post: link archived) installed by Huawei Technologies and ZTE (CNN) to help the Iraqi dictator integrate his air defense network. Well over a year later, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pointedly refused to rule out continuing Communist involvement with Saddam's air defenses: "Whether they are currently in there, I don't know." (Washington Times).

In November of 2002, a Communist Chinese shipment of missile launching patrol boats to Iraq was intercepted by the U.S. Navy (Washington Post: link archived).

Communist China had a deal with Saddam Hussein in 1997, to be executed as soon as United Nations sanctions were lifted, for access to the Al-Ahdab oil field -- worth 90,000 barrels a day -- and was in the process of securing rights to the 300,000-barrel-a-day Halfayah oil field.

As detailed in the Duelfer Report, the Northern Industrial Corporation (Norinco) -- owned by the Communist military -- received 15.5 million barrels worth of oil-for-food vouchers from 2000 to 2002 in exchange for missile technology and parts. Communist China was also listed as one of the "the top 12 countries that sold Iraq arms despite sanctions."

Of course, Communist China strongly opposed the U.S. military action in Iraq, although they preferred to let France do the heavy lifting (CNN).

These are, of course, the two areas where Communist actions have led directly to a further loss of American life. The other issues described in detail below (Syria, Iran, and Stalinist North Korea) do not involve the U.S. military in combat -- although there are still tens of thousands protecting South Korea from the Stalinists -- but they do involve terrorism and anti-Americanism.

We'll start with Iran, where in June 2001, the U.S. found evidence of two Communist-owned firms involved in arms sales to the mullahs that, according to Congressional staffers, "fell under the Chemical Weapons Convention" (CNN). There would be more sanctions against Communist Chinese firms for weapons sales to Iran, including missile part sales by Norinco, and an air defense system (Cybercast News, Washington Times: link archived). None of the above includes Communist China's extensive support for Iran's nuclear weapons program.

As for Stalinist North Korea -- the final axis-of-evil regime -- it should be remembered that Kim Jong-il's brutal dictatorship wouldn't even exist if his father hadn't been bailed out by Mao Zedong (CNN). Most recently, as the Stalinists' nuclear ambitions attracted world-wide attention, the Communists were trying to portray themselves as disinterested peacemakers (CNN). In reality, they have refused to push their Stalinist allies toward an agreement (CNN), and have sold tributyl phosphate -- a chemical essential to making plutonium and weaponizing uranium -- to Kim Jong-il (Washington Times: link archived). Just recently, it was also revealed that the Communist-owned Bank of China was linked to the Stalinists' illicit money-raising schemes, including narcotics, used to fund their nuclear weapons program.

Syria is the home base for the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah terrorist organization (no real surprise given that the Ba'athist Assad family has allied itself to the Khomeinists for over a quarter-century). This hasn't stopped Communist China from inking other deals with the Ba athists. In fact, it was in Syria where Hu Jintao -- when he was merely a high-ranking but largely anonymous cadre -- referred to Israel as a "colonialist plot aimed at detaching from the Arab nation a part that is dear to it, Palestine" (Lateline).

Then there is Sudan -- Osama's former home and current recipient of massive Communist oil investment (UPI) and jet fighters (World Net Daily) -- and longtime Communist ally Pakistan -- which may be an 'ally' in the War on Terror to the U.S., but certainly isn't to India (Washington Post, link archived).

Why would Communist China support anti-American terrorists in such an extensive fashion? For starters, we are the main obstacle to their plans for conquering Taiwan. More generally, Communist China has relied on radical nationalism as the regime's raison d'etre ever since the Tiananmen Square massacre. That means replacing Japan as the lead power in Asia, and replacing the U.S. as the lead world power. We're the obstacle on those, too. In other words, the Chinese Communist Party sees the United States as the chief threat to its survival in power.

This is why Communist China is fighting a cold war against the U.S. This is why the War on Terror has become part of the Second Cold War. This is why, the War on Terror can not and will not be won unless America sees the Chinese Communist Party for what it really is: an enemy. The road to victory in the War on Terror ends not in Kabul, Baghdad, Tehran, or Damascus, but in Beijing.  America will never be secure until China is free.