Communist espionage and missile smuggling: Is America hearing the alarm bells?

The News of the Day can be found here.

I must confess: I don’t watch television news very much. For that reason, I may be missing the reaction to the news that Communist China has stolen some of our most precious military technology secrets while a Communist general tried to smuggle shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles into the United States.

However, if the internet is any indication, there has been no reaction.

This is unbelievable. The military espionage involved, according to Bill Gertz (Washington Times), electromagnetic pulse weapons, our Aegis tracking technology, unmanned aerial vehicle technology, and “classified details related to the new Virginia-class attack submarines.” In the words of one U.S. official, “The Chinese now know more about our military than we know about their entire country.”

That news is now almost a week old, and outside of the BBC, I’ve seen no response.

Meanwhile, two Chinese-born Americans were just indicted for their role in a scheme to smuggle shoulder-fired missiles with a range of three miles into the U.S. Among the folks involved in the scheme were an unnamed Communist Chinese general. The eventual destination of the missiles is up for debate, but according to Gertz – whom I trust more than anyone – the U.S. was the final destination for them.

This is less than a day old, so it’s harder to gauge, but if the espionage story is any indication, I can expect to be disappointed, again.

I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised, given the collective yawns from the powers that be when Communist China was caught helping the Iranian mullahcracy develop nuclear weapons, selling other arms to the mullahs, laundering al Qaeda’s drug money, selling weapons parts to Saddam Hussein, supporting the Taliban (second and third items), etc. However, I’m beginning to wonder if the “tipping point” will ever be reached.

Part of the problem in the myopic viewpoints on “foreign policy” that we are seeing out of the nation’s capital these days. It seems all that anyone wants to discuss is Iraq. It is either the greatest attempt at society building in the history of the world, or a hellish comedy of errors unlike any in the annals of humanity. I have personally supported the liberation of Iraq for over fifteen years (and I still do), but I refuse to fall for the notion that this is the be-all and end-all of the planet.

The fact is Iraq’s democratization is important because of the prior regime’s support from Communist China, and the fact that the other major terrorist-sponsoring satrapies in the region (Syria and Iran) have been major beneficiaries of the Communist military. Iraq and the War on Terror – no matter how one views the relationship between the two – are both part of the larger Second Cold War: that between Communist China and the U.S.

Yet American officials say nothing about this. President Bush, who will head to Communist China is just over a week, has said nothing about the espionage network. From what I can tell, no one is pushing the President to demand the spying stop.

Truth be told, part of the problem is the lack of media attention to this: one can hardly expect the American people to be outraged over information they haven’t seen. However, unless I miss my guess (and feel free to let me know if I have), neither “mainstream media” nor the “talk-show circuit” has focused on this. It’s all about local elections, a Supreme Court nominee, and – you guessed it – Iraq.

The alarm bells are ringing – loudly, but hardly anyone hears them. That has to change. The American people must be made aware of this, and once informed, they must (and I am still confident they will) act accordingly. Until then, however, it may very well be that the hopes of the entire planet lie with the long-suffering Chinese people. If they can turn the seething anger in the rural interior and the mass resignations from the Chinese Communist Party (approaching 5.5 million as I write this) into a full-scale anti-Communist revolution, they would do far more than they can possibly imagine. They might even save the world.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: America will never be secure until China is free. We had two perfect examples of this over the last week. The alarm bells are ringing. Is anyone listening?