That’s my impression, too. We certainly avoided some very dangerous shit in East Asia. Between Bush’s installation as president and 9/11, some of the leading neo-cons were publicly calling for both ‘regime change’ in Beijing and war with Iraq. At that point, they were so intoxicated by having gotten into power that they thought they could do it all. But 9/11 caused them to fixate on the Middle East.

I don’t think economic issues are the main motivation for the neo-cons. What gets these guys off is trying to play geo-politics on the grand scale and imagining themselves to be imperial masterminds.

You ignorant slut.

The POLICE took the supposed terrists into custody. 18 months before the plot was supposed to come to fruition. which is likely infeasible, because the way airports pipe fuel is designed to prevent chain reactions. So the current crop of big, bad scary terrists are kinda the George W Bush league of terrorism: All hat, no cattle.

But it Wasn’t conservatives. LAW ENFORCEMENT, asswhistle, like we’ve been saying all along. Terrorism isn’t a military enemy.

But then, if conservatives had listened to law enforcement officials, the Trade Centers would still be standing.

You’re not evil, Kevin, just…disappointing.

And then did someone at INR say “Have you ever seen the Princess Bride?”

how sad that this point even needs to be made.

I suspect the PNACkers still think we could take ‘em. “Sure, the economy’s in the dumper and China holds all our IOUs. Sure, we can’t win wars in the Middle East against people armed with simple guns and IEDs. But we can beat this giant country armed with nuclear weapons because, um, Chinese laundries are funny.”

But attacking China? I thought the standing Chinese kleptocracy had bought the neocons’ loyalty, via the combination of Treasury-propping bond buys and supplying slave-produced trinkets to quasi-American megacorporations, by the time Bill Clinton was first elected. Did their fears that America’s metaphorical manhood would shrink up into our national abdomen if we didn’t have a capital-letter Enemy to militarize us really outweigh the neoconservative loyalty to their own pocketbooks? Given the revelations about Perle, Wolfowitz, Delay, and Abramoff, it seems as though their devotion to the Almighty Dollar outweighed any allegiance they pretended to either religion or realpolitik. Maybe the professional military guys just don’t understand how little respect the neocons have for those points of view that are understandably foremost among military thinkers?

After the appointment, a friend and I were trekking through the sub-tropics of the Yunnan province. We were listening to VoA on shortwave radio, which reported that Bush sought to make China the “new enemy”. Only then did my friends begin to believe me about Bush, and we were all worried for our very lives. Things got even worse after the airplanes hit over Hainan Island.

Ironically, 9/11 may have averted a Taiwan/China/US war, as we then had a new enemy to confront, focusing their bloodlust in another, conveniently oil-rich, region of the world.

These Republican psychopaths cannot exist without some enemy to confront. It defines them. It always will. We have to always be mindful of this, because there are a LOT more where they came from.

Ahh, the PNAC… So deliciously Evil. Like Austin Powers Evil.