A Lesson for the Chinese

It is interesting to watch the buildup of China. China apparently is now one of the few nations in the world which has money in the bank, and is a growing power in the world financial scene. Not only that, but China is growing stronger militarily. According to a recent report, China has made impressive gains in modernizing its armed forces. Apparently, China has announced a new stealth jet some years ahead of the time frame expected by American analysts, improvements to its carrier program, and it has substantially increased various missile programs as well as the quantity of missiles in its arsenal. The report suggests that China is moving to increase its power projection in its home region.

To augment its growth, China seems to be moving to make financial and trade arrangements with nations in the middle east region, presumably to secure sources of petroleum and other resources. It may be inferred that China also hopes to influence the middle eastern nations to support China as it becomes a more dominant player in the world.

However, one wonders if the Chinese leaders will be able to understand and learn a lesson that American leaders have not yet taken to heart.

When Russian forces were fighting in Afghanistan from 1979-1989 to support the Marxist government known as the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, the Americans, among others, provided support to the Muslim freedom fighters. The war became essentially a proxy war, a part of the cold war between east and west. The Mujahideen, the freedom fighters, reportedly received training, weapons, and material from America during that time.

Fast forward to 2001. America is hit on 9/11, and goes to war against the Taliban. Nearly ten years later, America is still at war in Afghanistan, and appears to be bogged down like the Soviets were in their conflict. Why is that? Is it not reasonable to assume that the Afghani people would have felt some gratitude to America for her support in the earlier conflict? The answer is that it is not. The Muslims do not want freedom in the sense that America understands it any more than they wanted socialism in the sense that Russia understands it. They accepted America's support because they like our guns (to quote Bin Laden) and laughed up their sleeve at the stupidity of Americans for offering it.

There is an almost universal idea that religious people are stupid and superstitious and can be educated out of those mindless superstitions. None of those assumptions are true; very often the highly educated come to profound faith, and "religious crackdowns" typically backfire because they disclose the moral vacuum of those who conduct the crackdown, and merely drive religion underground. Muslims are no exception. However, Muslims have their own agenda for world dominion, and they are busy exporting it world-wide. It includes daily prayer, forced conversions, shari'a law, and theocratic government; it does not include communist socialism.

One wonders whether, while the Chinese prepare to compete with America and other countries, they have learned this lesson, and are prepared to compete with this other agenda, because the Muslim agenda works quietly over the long term to change the nature of every nation it enters.