Bush-era “peace and social justice” group Code Pink will do what small thing it can to destabilize the shaky peace between mainland Communist China and the Republic of China on Taiwan.
Code Pink’s Jodie Evans wrote to me on Wednesday to say that “activists from Code Pink and other organizations will deliver a letter to Congressmember Brad Sherman urging Congress to block the sale of $750 million dollars worth of weapons to Taiwan.”
Sherman, a Democrat, represents California’s 30th district and sits on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
According to Evans, the Code Pink letter contains more than 3,000 signatures, and protests the sale of “40 M109A6 self-propelled howitzer systems, 5 M2 Chrysler Mount armored vehicles with .50-caliber machine guns, nearly 1,700 kits to enable GPS-guided munitions, and other assorted weapons systems.”
I somehow doubt Evans is going to like any of the words I’m about to write about her silly, barely-noticed protest letter.
Please note that with the exception of the GPS guidance kits — which could only strike mainland China on the off chance Taiwan were to gain air superiority — all the weapons being sold to the Republic of China are no threat to Communist Chinese soldiers unless they were to invade Taiwan.
I’m trying to decide whether Evans’ peacenik organization is actually trying to help that along.
“This massive arms sale to Taiwan,” Evans wrote, “will only exacerbate the regional tensions and increase the potential for another U.S. ‘forever war’ — this time between the U.S. and China.”
Um, no. Providing local arms to a small island constantly threatened with forceful reunification by its massive neighbor might increase tensions inside Beijing (good!) but a well-armed Taiwan is a deterrent to Communist adventurism.
Evans says the sale is “in direct violation of China’s sovereignty,” which is exactly the kind of language one also finds in CCP press releases.
What was really chilling was what Madison Tang had to say in the same press release.
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Tang coordinates Code Pink’s “China Is Not Our Enemy” campaign, and when Tang says “China is not our enemy” it sounds more like “China is my best bud.”
She says: “Adding $750 million worth of sophisticated weapons and contractor services to Taiwan’s military arsenal will ultimately not make Taiwan safer; instead, it will increase the risk of Taiwan’s destruction.” [Emphasis added.]
Again, that kind of threatening language — bend the knee or face destruction — is right out of Beijing’s propaganda playbook.
Was Xi Jinping given a pass at the final edit of Code Pink’s press release?
For a so-called peace organization, Code Pink sounds awfully hawkish today — if only I knew how to saw “war hawk” in Mandarin.
I am amused by two other things.
The first is that even in this age of social media and Beijing’s easy money policy for fringe leftwing groups, CODEPINK was still able to garner a mere 3,000 signatures.
I could get back on Facebook tomorrow (shudder, I won’t) and get that many signatures on a petition to outlaw Presidentish Joe Biden’s favorite flavor of ice cream — and I mean on my personal account, not some big Salem media-backed corporate account.
The second thing that brought a smile to my face was that Jodie Evans is so desperate to get Code Pink some attention, any attention, that she sent this press release to vicious ol’ me.
That’s why I saved this piece for our VIPs.
Evans will get her attention, all right, but only from a select group of readers smart enough to be VIPs and well informed enough to say, “Code Pink? I think I remember them.”
