Defense Secretary Robert Gates is now in Seoul, after completing two days of meetings in Beijing during the first stop of a three-nation tour (he also will be visiting Japan before heading home). In China, Gates traded compliments with Chinese leaders, issued correct statements on the need for dialogue, and toured the Forbidden City, the imperial palace at the north end of Tiananmen Square. It was Gates’s first trip to the country since succeeding Donald Rumsfeld as Pentagon chief, and senior U.S. officials marked the event by reporting modest progress on a range of secondary issues. The Chinese, for example, promised to provide more cooperation on accounting for American prisoners taken during the Korean War.
Both sides also announced the planned establishment of a military hotline between Washington and Beijing “at an early date.” The initiative was announced during Hu Jintao’s summit in Washington last April and has been the subject of periodic re-announcements ever since, such as one this June when Gates was in Singapore. Despite the apparent signs of progress, the Chinese have been dragging their feet over technical issues. The United States has sought to establish such a hotline for more than five years. Yet the critical issue now is not how such a link will be established. It is whether the Chinese wish to engage the United States in substantive discussions at all—or whether they wish merely to sip tea and waste our time.
There is reason to believe that when we call, no one will answer the phone. (There was, remember, nobody taking Washington’s calls during the Hainan reconnaissance plane incident in April 2001.) The issue is as much about the ability of the Chinese government to make decisions in the middle of crisis as it is about the state of relations between the two countries.
But there’s a more fundamental reason why the phone may not be of much use during the next confrontation. At the same time that Gates was talking with Chinese officials this week, Premier Wen Jiabao was in Moscow talking with President Vladimir Putin about their countries’ “friendship for generations.” While the American defense secretary was arguing about the technicalities of telecommunications lines, Moscow and Beijing were putting together the alliance that will challenge the international community for a lifetime. It seems they have been communicating just fine without a hotline.
I can’t believe I’m defending the buffoon who so annoyed me in the campaign, but I do think Biden will be invaluable in acting as a kind of “whip” for Obama in the Senate. He’s very popular there in spite of his grandiosity and general buffoonery.
George Washington turned down the position of king. By Jennifer Rubin’s logic, Washington therefore was less consequential than he could have been. In fact, just the opposite was true. He was significant because he refused despotic power. Biden’s renunciation of Cheney’s extra-constitutional precedent — including the stupid assertion that the vice presidency is a fourth branch of government — alone will make him one of the most consequential veeps in history. Anything else Biden accomplishes is gravy.
Your mindless twit Palin, by contrast, was last seen fitting herself for a crown.
Nice misogyny on display there, Ari.
Recent statements of a mindless twit:
President Franklin Roosevelt went on television to address the American people when the stock market crashed. (Surely it’s not necessary to tease out the mindless twittery in this statement, which contains at least two historical illiteracies).
Exhorting a paraplegic veteran not once but several times to “Stand up!”
“J-O-B-S is a three-letter word!”
A man I’m proud to call my friend, “Barack America”!
Barack Obama is a “clean, articulate” black man.
You’ve got some nerve to call Sarah Palin a “mindless twit.” If she, or any Republican for that matter, had uttered such blatant stupidities the Internet would have crashed from all the traffic from lefties like you deriding her.
Sarah Palin has taken on the powers that be in her state and won, again and again, with no pedigree, no trust fund, no party machine and no corrupt union thugs backing her. She’s done it through sheer political genius and tenacity in the face of the hatred and derision of misogynistic bullies like you. And it’s the Republicans who are supposed to be the party of reactionary chauvanist pigs. Yet it ‘s never Republicans coming in forums and saying hateful things about women. It’s always people like you. Why is that?
Why don’t you take your hate and spew it somewhere else?
Nice comeback CFB. This is the tenaciousness that is missing among conservatives when dealing with really mindless liberals.
#3
Misogynistic — you really want to go with that?
Twit means a silly, annoying person: a fool. I believe its etymology is Latin, bellows or wind bag. It is without gender connotation.
If Sarah Palin were a man, she would be equally stupid. (I can see Russia from my house.)
What’s sexist is you calling me a “bully” and a “chauvinist pig” and riding on your white horse to defend Sarah Palin’s honor. Would you do the same for a man? Exactly. I criticize her because she is an idiot, not because she is a woman. And, unlike you, I have confidence that she is tough enough to take it.
Hmmm.
@ Ari
“He was significant because he refused despotic power.”
–LAUGH–
You are an imbecile.
Ari, the twit (and thus, fool) here is you. Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house. However, her doppelganger on SNL, Tina Fey, did.
The point is that no one is riding to Palin’s defense on anything, however, it would be nice that at least once in your sorry lives you liberals would practice some balanced critiquing of people within your own party.
Hmmm.
It’s astonishing how the liberal left simply cannot discern between fantasy and reality. They mix the two together into an indistinguishable mess.
Biden was just sworn in as Senator the other day so he still has the option of turning down the VP job, so Obama can ram a better selection, like Bill Ayers, through the Senate.
Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house. Don’t you think it would be advisable to get your facts straight before you go around making misogynistic insults?
Throughout the history of Western civilization, women have been considered weaker, less moral, less intelligent than men. These are just a few of the stereotypes people have traditionally believed about women. Women have been referred to as hysterics (controlled by their uteruses), bi****s (behaving like an aggressive female dog), wh*res (having more than one sexual partner), tramps (ibid), etc. They have even been called “mindless twits” or “silly, annoying” persons. The basic idea is that if a woman did not tailor her moods, words, actions or sexual behavior to conform to the wishes of a man, she proved herself a stupid, immoral lunatic beyond the pale of polite society.
Part of the way men (and other women) have traditionally kept women in line is by calling them names such as “mindless twit.” To refer to Sarah Palin as a mindless twit is to denigrate all of her accomplishments and consign her once again to the ash heap of inherently inferior, idiotic females. You choose to ignore her accomplishments, which are legion. You chose instead to raise the specter of that misogynistic stereotype. Deal with it and stop whining that you’ve been maligned.
Again, your behavior is that of a bully and a chauvinist (though I was referring to the stereotype of Republicans when I said chauvinist, not you). In your post, you again refuse to acknowledge the well-documented buffoonery of your chosen vice president . You return instead directly to a blatant lie and to your opinion — based on that blatant lie which you nevertheless choose to believe against all logic — that Mrs. Palin is an idiot. I don’t think it is she who is the idiot here. And I know misogyny when I see it.
CFB:
Two of the most satisfying posts I have read in some time. Thank you!
On an unrelated note, as an elementary school student during the Truman administration I was once assigned to do a brief paper on the Vice President, Mr. Barkley. In those pre-google days, it was the toughest assignment of my young life. It was impossible to find anything written, anywhere about our VP. Mr. Biden’s mouth, which one prefers to hope is totally disengaged from his mind, will eternally spare him such anonymity.
The way some people tell it, Caroline Kennedy’s biggest recommendation for high office is that she led the search for Joe Biden. LOL
CFB,
As a lifelong democrat, I applaud your response to that mindless twit Ari. The sexist treatment of Gov. Palin (and Sen. Clinton) shows how low the so-called progressive wing of the democratic party has sunk.
Of course, it is also possible that Ari is actually the Raleigh News & Observer editorial writer that called Biden a great statesmen before the election, which means Ari is so dumb he needs to be told to come in out of the rain.
Imbibin’ Joe Biden actually makes a lot of sense if you catch him between the second and third silver bullet. With Teddy Kennedy it was before he went under the table or over the bridge.
Banjo,
Written like a man with personal experience in this area.