Failing The Test
By Oliver North
March 13, 2009
WASHINGTON -- "Can we all get along? ... Let's try to work it out." That was Rodney King's plaintive plea in May 1992, after his highly controversial confrontation with the Los Angeles Police Department led to arson and anarchy. Now, 17 years later, the Obama administration apparently has made "get along" its response to every national security test. So far, it has been the wrong answer.
Since Mr. Obama's announced his deadline for pulling U.S. combat troops out of Iraq, there has been a spike in violence in the Land Between the Rivers. His decision to "open a direct dialogue" with the theocrats ruling in Tehran has yielded thus far an Iranian satellite launch -- using North Korean ICBM technology -- a check ride on Iran's Russian-built Bushehr nuclear plant, and, just in case we didn't get the message, rejected visa applications for the U.S. women's badminton team.
"Nice guy" diplomacy hasn't worked very well elsewhere, either. Pakistan replied to the administration's "let's get along" overture by allowing Dr. A.Q. Khan -- the world's most notorious nuclear weapons proliferator -- to travel and "resume scientific research." Hamas responded to the promise of $1 billion in U.S. "reconstruction funds" by showering Israeli civilians with Iranian-made, Syrian-delivered, Egyptian-facilitated rockets.
Syrian strongman Bashar Assad's answer to last week's White House proffer of "dialogue with Damascus" came this week, when he told visiting Japanese journalists that such talks would "have to involve" the Iranian-controlled terror group Hezbollah. For those who may have forgotten, the only terror organization that has killed more Americans than Hezbollah is al-Qaida -- on Sept. 11.
The "O-Team's" offer to "reboot" the U.S.-Russia relationship was so moving that Moscow bribed Kyrgyzstan's government into booting U.S. troops from Manas Air Base, a crucial base for supporting allied operations in Afghanistan. The Kremlin followed up by forging ahead with plans to sell advanced S-300 (SA-10) surface-to-air missiles to Tehran, presumably to help protect Iranian nuclear facilities.
With this track record as a preamble, it is not surprising that the People's Republic of China decided to conduct a little "O-Test" of its own. On Feb. 22, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton concluded two days of "very promising" meetings in Beijing by emphasizing that "the United States and China have a positive, cooperative relationship." Five days later, the U.S. and China resumed direct military-to-military "consultations" -- talks that had been suspended in 2008, when the Bush administration sold Patriot air defense missiles to Taiwan. It went downhill from there.
On March 4, Chinese ships and aircraft commenced harassing the USNS Impeccable and the USNS Victorious while they were operating in international waters. The two unarmed, civilian-manned vessels (with U.S. Navy personnel aboard to operate specialized equipment) are designated as ocean surveillance ships. Both are equipped with the newest generation of submarine tracking sonar, known as SURTASS LFA.
The Victorious -- operating in the Yellow Sea, between the Korean Peninsula and mainland China -- was approached at night by a Chinese patrol vessel using a high-intensity spotlight to blind lookouts on the ship's bridge momentarily. The Impeccable -- operating about 75 miles off the coast of Hainan Island, which is a major Chinese naval and submarine base in the South China Sea -- was "buzzed" repeatedly by Chinese Y-12 maritime patrol aircraft and then surrounded by no fewer than five Chinese vessels.
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