Going nuts over some rocks
Dear Johnny,
What’s up with all this Diaoyutai bullshit, and don’t spare my feelings. Am I the only one who thinks Taiwan should tread softly when the government’s brandishing a big stick instead?
Maybe they haven’t noticed that Japan actually has control over the Diaoyutais. And that claiming sovereignty over a place you don’t actually control is suspiciously similar to China claiming sovereignty over a certain place it doesn’t control.
A certain place with 23 million people, give or take a few. Get the drift?
So am I the idiot or is everyone else?
Major Tom
Hsinchu
Johnny replies: Pundits on international relations and psychiatrists will be intrigued by the outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease that followed the sinking of that Taiwanese boat near the Diaoyutais.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has hardly come out of this covered in glory, but give him a break: This guy goes to sleep at night dreaming of a Republic of China flag fluttering over those islets. How can we expect him to pull his party’s legislators into line for calling their own overseas representatives “traitors”?
For me the most laughable aspect of this beat-up is the utter collapse in credibility of the Diplomacy and National Defense Committee, the pan-blue members of which thought that bearing their chests and beating them by entering the area with a naval escort was going to send Tokyo into a panic and lead to a unilateral withdrawal of Japanese forces all the way back to Kyushu.
Instead, all we got was a quick phone call from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) headquarters after the Americans said “Enough, already,” and these pitiful little men became as meek as lambs.
The other thing I note is the over-exposure of Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋), who has milked dry every opportunity to grandstand and get his mug on camera over this incident.
Gee, I wonder if that has anything to do with the plummeting level of support he has among his county’s constituents? Naaaah.
The funny thing is, the Diaoyutais are technically part of Ilan County, but that good county’s commissioner has hardly been tearing his hair out at this latest encroachment on his territory.
One thing you can be sure of: If it came to a fight between these pissant legislators and the Japanese coast guard — or any other armed Japanese agency — my money is firmly on the Japanese.
In fact, if you had these KMT and People First Party patriots dumped on the main lump of Diaoyutai rock together with their ultranationlist counterparts from Japan for some barefisted combat, the pan-blue side would have its ass whipped so bad that it would be embarrassing.
So yes, Major, it seems that everyone else is an idiot.
It is still possible that you are one, too. But you are going to have furnish some genuinely incriminating evidence before I can come to that conclusion.
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