As summarized by the Daily Herald, Saturday, 20 October, 2012
Dispute draws aircraft carrier:
HO CHI MINH CITY: Vietnam -
America sent a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier on a cruise through the South China Sea today, projecting its power in waters that are fast beomicng a focal point of its strategic rivalry (here's a hint: U.S. "strategic rivalry" is overstating the case by many orders of magnitude - U.S. foreign policy can only focus on one crisis at a time, and we seem to have chosen ... the "Iranian Nuclear Program" as the sabre-waving, war-mongering, fear-mongering, policy de jure. The Chinese DO have a strategic plan for dealing with the U.S. -- appear to kow tow, to let the Corporate Welfare State and War Machine pat itself on the back in the belief that we can talk rough while carrying "the big stick" (China has nukes too - their stick is as big as our stick, even if they don't have as many sticks, and we have more dicks to self-inflict disaster) but the Chinese need to deal with finding jobs for 5,000,000 people a month and the Chinese government is very well aware that it is the American consumer that "floats the boat" of the world's economy. So, at no time soon will China do more than make diplomatic requests to cease and desist, and our elected officials, state department and military elites can pound their own chests and pat themselves on the back for being able to "get away with" military actions that WE (U.S.) would declarer to be acts of war, were the shoe on the other foot, or were there being anything resembling moral equivalence in the la-la land wherein dwell the dreams and misinformed notions of our "greatest" leaders. As Ho Chi Minh said of the U.S., "We ate Chinese shit for 1,000 years; we can surely eat American shit for the little while that they will be here.") with Beijing. The USS George Washington's mission could raise hackles in China, which is locked in disputes with Vietnam, the Phillipines and other governments (as in WHAT other governments? JAPAN, for one) over ownership of islands in the region.
