More weapon are not the answer

The head-shaking starts registering 7.3 on the Richter scale once they get to the bottom line: the Americans are all we have, and we certainly cannot go it alone. After all, they say, Beijing only understands power after the fashion of Chairman Mao's "out-of-the-barrel-of-a-gun" dictum. Only Kidd-class destroyers and vulnerable spy planes will answer for it.

Nonsense! For if we say that it was the democratic way of life that we are defending when we stand up to China's presumptive takeover, and that only by militarily going toe-to-toe with China can we get them to stand down, then we are forgetting that it was in the face of a fascist regime backed by the most "powerful" (meaning presenting the most formidable armed force) regime on earth that our own home-grown movement put forth roots, and grew rapidly to where it ultimately unseated the tyranny.

This movement was overwhelmingly nonviolent, and while indeed lives were lost to a pathological ruthlessness, still the fatalities were nothing compared to what they were when armed insurrection enjoyed strong support as the only apparent viable response.

A coup d'etat by a single corrupted Supreme Court vote has brought the revanchist Bush dynasty back to where it can perform its mischief from the oval-room pinnacle. But there is coming another day, and a better one.

The DPP and those who lean to the US as guarantor of liberty must rethink their strategy on an urgent basis, and renounce the use of force as a means of either advancing one's own ambitions or defending against another's. Instead they should cast their lot with the international champions of the erstwhile tang wai (黨外)ideals. That international movement is already looking to the Bonn summit and beyond, and even to the ultimate disarming of those cold, cold warriors.

So distantly has the DPP departed from its tang wai pacifist agenda that it is but a ghost of its former self. I pray that it may come quickly to its senses, and realize that it was never the US which guaranteed Taiwanese democracy and human rights, but rather the people of Taiwan themselves first and then their international friends -- the ones who were always opposing the jingoists.

Lynn Miles is a Los Angeles-Osaka-Taoyuan-based writer, editor and translator.