Tea at Trianon: Beijing's Man on the Inside

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, September 17, 2021

Beijing's Man on the Inside

From Mark Steyn:

Having taken twenty years to lose the last war, the Pentagon has decided to fast-track things and pre-lose the next war:

Twice in the final months of the Trump administration, the country's top military officer was so fearful that the president's actions might spark a war with China that he moved urgently to avert armed conflict.

In a pair of secret phone calls, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People's Liberation Army, that the United States would not strike, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and national political reporter Robert Costa...

"General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay," Milley told him. "We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you."

In the book's account, Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, stressing the rapport they'd established through a backchannel. "General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we're going to attack, I'm going to call you ahead of time. It's not going to be a surprise."

So America's "top general" secretly pledged to the ChiComs that he'd give 'em a head's up if his soi-disant commander-in-chief was planning anything...

There are phrases to describe countries where the military isn't under the control of elected officials, and "republic of self-governing citizens" isn't one of them.

As I've said multiple times in recent weeks, key American institutions from the CDC to the NBA act as if the Chinese have already won. The Pentagon has apparently joined them. You don't need to penetrate Thoroughly Modern Milley: He's his own Fang Fang.

Given that the interest on America's debt has largely funded the expansion of the ChiComs' military (including what's now the world's largest surface fleet), Milley's offer to further hobble his own side seems a little superfluous: the Pentagon are the Washington Generals and Beijing are the Wuhan Globetrotters. (Read more.)

From The Post-Millennial:

According to the Post, Milley leaned on his longstanding relationship with Li, saying "General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we're going to attack, I'm going to call you ahead of time. It's not going to be a surprise." It was revealed additionally that the Joint Chief's of Staff enacted a "top-secret action" to prevent President Donald Trump from performing his job as Commander-in-chief.
It was Trump's military advisory General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who allegedly "was certain that Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election." Milley's resignation has been called for by at least 90 retired generals. (Read more.)

More HERE.

julygirl said...: Speaking of phone calls...what comes to all of our minds is the phone call that brought about a president's impeachment. But, of course, and as usual, this one will get swept under the rug.; September 17, 2021 at 4:17:00 PM EDT