Monday, January 22, 2007

It is now head out of sand time

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 — Bush administration officials said that they had been unable to get even the most basic diplomatic response from China after their detection of a successful test to destroy a satellite 10 days ago, and that they were uncertain whether China’s top leaders, including President Hu Jintao, were fully aware of the test or the reaction it would engender.

In interviews over the past two days, American officials with access to the intelligence on the test said the United States kept mum about it in hopes that China would come forth with an explanation.

It was more than a week before the intelligence leaked out: a Chinese missile had been launched and an aging weather satellite in its path, more than 500 miles above the earth, had been reduced to rubble. But protests filed by the United States, Japan, Canada and Australia, among others, were met with silence — and quizzical looks from officials in The Chinese Foreign Ministry, who seemed to be caught unaware.

How about this for an explanation; the Chinese don't care what we think and are letting us stew for a bit before they come forward with platitudes designed to soothe diplomats and imbeciles (OK, redundant).

The Chinese have proven that they can blind our intelligence gathering satellites, which would certainly be the first step in a planned conquest of Taiwan. This knowledge is intended to make us timid and accommodating. Especially with a congress which will be extremely reluctant to spend money defending the nation, rather than buying votes with social programs. After all to liberals appeasement is always more preferable than confrontation.

America needs to get off the stick and start taking the Chinese threat seriously. Otherwise we will wake up one morning and find that the power grid has crashed and is offline. The Internet is down along with our telecommunications network. The financial information in our banks and brokerage houses will be corrupted, wiping out pension funds and the bank accounts of the bulk of the population. Government operations will be compromised meaning federal employees will not be paid and the Social Security, VA and welfare checks will not be mailed or direct deposited.

Pipelines which carry oil and gas will be shut down and the nation's railroads will grind to a halt. The nation's industry which depends on electric power and "just in time" delivery of supplies, which in turn depends upon the telecommunications network and the Internet will have no choice but to shut down.

As the nation shivers in the cold (this will most likely come in winter) and floods the supermarkets attempting to barter jewelry and family heirlooms for food when cash is no longer enough (and in some areas people will fight to the death over cans of pork and beans) reports will trickle into the Pentagon about massive troop movements in China and massive amounts of shipping moving across the straits of Formosa toward Taiwan.

The American carrier battle group in the area may survive if it is in deep water where the Chinese diesel-electric submarines (almost perfectly silent) can't get to it, but it will be unable to effectively support the Taiwanese and lacking satellite communications be unable to even report its situation and request orders.

Of course scrambled computer data and crashed networks will be restored when technicians load backup copies of programs and files, but the costs will still be counted in the hundreds of billions. The damage to America's reputation as a superpower will be irreparable.

As sure as night follows day the world will begin realigning itself around a Chinese axis.

Everything I've said here can and will happen, but only if we allow it.