Pentagon Levels Cyberspying Accusations At China

[Therumancer]

We all watched it happen, and frankly that's not the guy that's going to lead the US into war, nor is he the kind of guy that an international coalition would follow even if he was 100% right because at the end of the day he's
a wuss whose national defense plan basically amounts to yelling "stop, or I'll say stop again!".

Bizarre, isn't it? It's almost as though the American people now want their leadership to be cautious about starting wars with other countries. That's the frustrating thing about democracy, isn't it?

In what fantasy world does the cost of invading, occupying, and rebuilding China realistically lie within the US budget? Even in a best case scenario, there's no way we could accomplish that short of converting to some kind of total war economy, and I don't think anyone would support that even if Xi Jinping was filmed on international tv shaking hands with Satan.

No, it's more a matter of simply being oblivious and ignorant.

Besides, the problem is that you don't "invade, occupy, and rebuild" that's the kind of stupidity that has caused us a lot of our problems. I just wrote another lengthy post on that subject.

In Obama's case he's a coward, not cautious, he was elected almost entirely due to promises he made on domestic policy.

For the US to fight a war successfully we'd need to elect leadership that knows what it's doing and is willing to simply do what it takes, including letting the moral chips fall where they may despite the whining. You go in, kill people and break things, force a surrender, and then go home and let your victims rebuild on their own dime (perhaps never succeeding) as an object lesson. Half our problem is nobody is afraid of a group of idiots that are scared to do any real damage, and then promise our enemies to improve their infrastructure.

At the end of the day what the US needs is a real warrior at the helm, Obama's more of an statesman who would be good in a more peaceful and lucurative time without any real threats on the horizon. Bush and Cheney had a lot of the right atitudes but lacked the will to fight a war the right way with the opposition, and in the end they were businessmen first and foremost who gave into the temptation of simply letting the idiots derail a proper war, and instead started focusing entirely on what kind of money could be put into their personal pockets from the whole thing. They pretty much decided to let the democrats win their ideas for an "antiseptic war" which was never going to work, in order to basically use the military as glorified bodyguards for whatever contractors were going to give the biggest kickbacks. It rapidly became less about making Afghanistan and Iraq wish they never existed, and removing any threat they posed, while presenting an object lesson of "this is what you get if we even suspect you F@cked with us" for other minor rogue nations, and more about say promising to build new power plants and infrastucture and such for the "poor Muslims" to "win the peace", with the explicit intent of giving the contracts to whatever contractors would kick back the most money to the politicians whether they would get the job done or not. As a result the US kind of became a laughing stock, and cartoonists have ven kind of made the point in the past with things like the US threatening "Stop, or we'll pretend to buy you a new house, and then pocket the money". For obvious reasons guys like Kim Jong Un aren't intimidated, never mind China, due to the believe that if we do attack we'll do exactly what you say, and it will do nothing but slam our own economy while doing nothing to our enemy besides maybe make them stronger if we actually manage to build anything for them.

 

[Therumancer]

*snip*

So another country builds up it's military to anything near yours so it can defend itself and you want to attack it. No wonder the US is seen as hostile to the rest of the world. Your not the world police, nor do you have the right to go around and enforce yourselves onto others. The irony being that you want to do this to protect yourself from an 'agressive' enemy and yet the most agressive nation on earth for the last 50 years has been the USA, you've invaded more countries since WW2 than Germany did in WW2. Think about that for a second, then think why a country that doesn't agree with your morals may want a military that could rival yours to defend itself.

I may not agree with how China runs itself, but it's their country and as long as they keep it that way it's their nation and values not ours.

China being a potential threat to the US military?

Good, I don't like the way the US pretty much has this globe in a stranglehold.

Agreed 100%, I'd like to see more countries (UK/Europe etc) stand up and say enough is enough. The US needs to be reminded the world isn't theirs to do with as they wish.

Actually the thing is that China is not building up a defensive military force though, it's building up an offensive military force with the intention of projecting it's military into other countries. It's even stated that it's developing anti-satellite technologies to force more other nations into conventional warfare.

At the same time it's violating patents, copyrights, and other assorted things to the tune of costing the US and Europe trillions of dollars due to their knockoffs every year.

The ironic thing here is that really Europe is only taking the position it is because of the US being fairly passive. It's nice to act like what I'm saying here is the US using the world as it's military hackey sack, when on a technical level I'm agreeing with nations like France and Germany via complaints leveled on behalf of companies like Pfizers and Merck that have lost huge piles of money which also cost their patron nations a ton of money (and the US has been appealed to because it also lost a lot of money). Right now I do however represent a minority position.

As far as the world standing up to the US, the odd thing is that there is nothing to stand up to since the whole problem is we're a limp dish rag that doesn't do much of anything except wring our own hands in moral indeciveness. We can't even bring ourselves to fight a proper war when the central hub of our military apparatus is attacked (people forget The Pentagon was hit during 9/11). When Kim Jong Un can pretty much stare down the US, calling us a group of military bullies is comedy gold.

Now of course to be fair, I am talking about acting a lot like you mention, but that's not indicative of current US policy, and again, is on a lot of levels me agreeing with action European powers have in the past been pretty much begging the US to take.

See, if the US ever DID decide to go up against China, most of these European nations you argue should "rally against us" would pretty much fall into step behind us. Sure, some would give a song and a dance, but at the end of the day nobody likes where China's economy is going, or how it's been oprating, Europe just plays along with it and pretends it's happy with the arrangement because it's doubtful even a combined Europe could do much against China in it's current state without the direct military assistance of the US or MAYBE Russia (which it's also not on good terms with, as the shutting down of the oil pipeline into the EU during that whole Georgia fiasco showed). The US has been acting very friendly to China even when it shouldn't be, so Europe has been doing the same. Do not confuse what I'm saying with the actions being taken and policies that are in force which is what I'm protesting actually.

Also I'll be honest, in my more depressed moods I'd kind of like to see what some of the people on these forums thinks is possible. Some hawk of a US president, followed by a Euro uprising, followed by the US demonstrating what "MAD" is as it dumps enough firepower to wreck the world 10x over killing everyone including itself. The reptiles couldn't get past eating each other, the mammals (us) couldn't get our crap together and build a unified society, maybe the insects will have better luck in another billion years. I have to admit it would be amusing to see the expression on some beret-wearing Eurocrat's face as he announces the US is defeated and no longer the dominant global power, right before the wave of nuclear fire hits him as the world dies along with our dominance and Cockroacha Sapien rises from the ashes... fed on the crumbs of these new counterfeit Twinkies.

 

[kingpocky]

*snip*

So in order to stop China's human rights violations, we need to cause even greater human rights violations on a more massive scale? I'd imagine I was being trolled, except you are putting quite a lot of effort into your responses.

Of course, in a way you may be right. It's quite possible that the kind of war you describe is the only way to produce such an outcome. But you're assuming it's possible for modern first world countries to conduct that kind of war, which seems pretty unlikely. Half a century ago, people had different attitudes about supporting their government. The effects of war weren't brought to you every moment of the day on live camera. People were generally fine with using racism to justify dehumanizing an opponent, which is a very useful tool.

Say that people of America and Europe are limp-wristed cowards who don't understand how to do what needs to be done all you want. Without their support, a war couldn't happen.

 

[Therumancer]

*snip*

So in order to stop China's human rights violations, we need to cause even greater human rights violations on a more massive scale? I'd imagine I was being trolled, except you are putting quite a lot of effort into your responses.

Of course, in a way you may be right. It's quite possible that the kind of war you describe is the only way to produce such an outcome. But you're assuming it's possible for modern first world countries to conduct that kind of war, which seems pretty unlikely. Half a century ago, people had different attitudes about supporting their government. The effects of war weren't brought to you every moment of the day on live camera. People were generally fine with using racism to justify dehumanizing an opponent, which is a very useful tool.

Say that people of America and Europe are limp-wristed cowards who don't understand how to do what needs to be done all you want. Without their support, a war couldn't happen.

No, I'm calling Obama a coward, the countries right now are fully capable of doing what needs to be done, it's largely a matter of a lack of willpower in leadership. Europe on some levels has more guts than the US does, it just doesn't have the firepower to get the job done, as I've said in other posts, a lot of my sentiments on what China has been up to and the need to stop them come largely from Europeans, the breakdown on how much money was being lose to the French and US economies over Viagra alone made quite an impression when Pfizers was begging for direct internvention years ago.

To be honest there is no more anti-war sentiment right now than there was during other wars, the US was hugely isolationist before both world wars, and even after Pearl Harbour there was a lot of effort being made politically to keep the US out of foreign wars. The thing was that the goverment at that time had the guts to do what it needed to, it declared martial law, took relative control of the media, instituted a draft, and so on... pretty much going onto a full wartime footing. People screamed "the people will never stand for it" loudly and clearly but it still happened and worked perfectly well.

The thing is that our current leadership lacks the conviction to really have the US go to war, and admittedly some of that is arrogance. The left wing aspects of our goverment really did believe we could win "The War On Terror" morally and without going onto a full wartime footing, but proved that we cannot do so.

I'll also say that a lot of it also comes down to our leadership being unwilling to take strong positions on pretty much anything. See, right now a lot of people don't think China is a threat like I'm talking about because nobody in a position of authority is willing to say that they are, and while the information I've given is out there, and perfectly legitimate, the authorities tend to gloss over it. A lot of this comes down to the "peace at any price" movement, combined with a degree of arrogance, the belief that if we pretend that there isn't a problem and don't take any aggressive action, everything will work out and nothing will change here. To some extent this served the US well in the past, and is sort of a modernization of our old isolationist principles, unfortunatly it's been causing the USA to die a piece at a time due to thigns like China's robber economy, and us gradually losing position around the world as we choose to give it up as opposed to fighting for it or our own interests.

I mostly post what I do to rant, and I guess in some vague hope it will make a differance, but at the end of the day I sort of expect that like with most things political, everything will fall apart, and I'll be here watching it as people come to these "new realizations" after the fact which were things I had mentioned years beforehand. I mean I pretty much predicted how totally useless the whole "War On Terror" was going to be as soon as people started talking about "winning the peace", "antiseptic wars", "shock and awe" replacing "doing damage", and of course letting pretty much the entire opposing army in Iraq surrender and then "go home" which shockingly lead to a massive insurgency. Of course nobody wanted to listen at the time, and here we are like 10 years later, having not even so much as gotten a progressive constitution in place, and wondering how the hell we're going to pull out of there given the giant mess we created trying to be the good guys instead of you know... wrecking them and going home. The war should have been in, millions die, out (clear exit strategy once the damage is done), followed by watching the burning wreckage of cities and saying "this is what happens if we even suspect you were part of an attack on the US... any questions?". Our troops would probably have been home within the year, and I doubt many pissant nations would have been playing
"cross the line" with us right now.

We're not going to agree here though, at the end of the day I'm a militant (I believe in military force as the solution to most major human issues... dialogue of course comes first, but when a meeting of the minds is impossible on a societal level... it's best to just get it over with).

 

[Xarathox]

Erm... lets NOT talk about how countries are a threat and how we should attack them and stuff, okay?

War is um, bad. Innocent people always die. That price is always too high. Just because you're scared is no excuse.

Let's not have another war... ALREADY.

No, let's have ALL THE WARS at once so we can get this shit out of our system and finally have that utopian society we keep dreaming about.

 

[Edible Avatar]

China is a lot like the US: its strength lies in its economy.


I can see a possible (peaceful) economic solution to China's growing dominance:

Cut back free trade agreements with China, implement tariffs that balance with the Chinese government subsidies for exporting companies (US corporations especially). Then, subsidize smaller domestic US competitors, pressuring corporations to move their production to the US to remain competitive.

It wouldn't work though due to lobbyists, which would pressure politicians to shoot down any legislation regarding trade regulation with China, but i can dream, right?

 

[New Troll]

China... united state #51. That'll show those damn Texans! Especially since they didn't take the hint with Alaska.

Seriously, this would be like me complaining about my neighbor leeching my internet connection while I'm hacked into his Netflix account. Spend less time bickering and more time just enjoying the luxuries in life.

Plus we'll need each other at our strongest if (and when) anyone/thing happens to stumble across our meager little planet.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

I'm not at all surprised, hacking is the way of the future in warfare and China has been reported for hacking many times previously, but at the same time it's a bit immature to say that the Chinese having anti-ship missiles is a threat to the US specifically. What is this, no-one's allowed to have things you don't like?

 

[Veylon]

You might not like the point, but I see a lot of similarities between China's current behavior, especially in terms of offensive military build up, and what we've seen from Germany in the past. I'd much rather gut China's infrastructure now and take the losses that would entail, than wait a couple of decades until they start invading, try and rebuild our own military infrastructure when they have countered a lot of our big tech advantages (or caught up to them), and see even more people die as a result.

You know what didn't exist in the 30's? Nukes. If Poland or the Czechs had had half a dozen big ones ready to turn Berlin or Nuremburg into radioactive glass, the Wehrmacht wouldn't have gotten far enough in conquest to touch France, the Soviets, or, more importantly, us.

Long before Chinese invasion flotillas appear off of the western seaboard, they have to subdue Japan, Taiwan, and the Phillipines. So, if we're worried, give them nukes. Heck, give Vietnam and Mongolia nukes while we're at it. Give them the tools and they'll cage the dragon for us. And if China fights anyway? It'll be our "allies" who fight a nuclear war and not us.

But I don't think China's all that eager to play empire-builder, so this is likely to be a moot point. And if they were going to take on a large nuclear-armed Western power, they've got Russia right next door.