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To: d:oug who wrote (58258)	9/17/2000 11:53:17 PM
From: Lee Lichterman III	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116796

OT Once again I have to come out of lurk mode. I won't argue the merits of going to war over Taiwan as there are two sides to every story and being good friends with a person of Chinese decent, I have my biased US view against China and I received his view of why Taiwan should be "repatriated". I will intervene however in saying one can not compare Vietnam nor Korea to an all out defence of Taiwan nor can one assume we would receive huge causualties. Korea was the last war where we faced off directly with Chinese in Chinese uniforms. Their strength was in numbers. They utilized wave attacks giving their first waves rocks, the second wave picks and shovels, the 3rd wave bayonets and the 4th wave guns. By the time we shot the first w waves, the barrels of our guns were melting down and we were running out of ammo. Now days, we have anti personnel cluster bombs, Stand off weapons, B-52s, B-1Bs and B-2 Bombers. A handful of either of these could wipe out as many troops as they care to mass on the coastline of China. The Chinese army's technology was so far behind, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel prior to Clinton being bought and giving them a means to catch up in the last few years. Still, I doubt they are anywhere close to putting up as poor a fight as Saddam Hussein. The challenge in regards to China will be the willingness to start and fight an all out war and how much backing the UN would provide for such a commitment to defend Taiwan. The military challenge will be how to strike fast enough due to the proximity of Taiwan and the low warning time of an invasion as well as the question as to defending Taiwan against an all out missile strike or artillary barrage should China pull a "if we can't have it, no one will" type assault. I am not trying to come off as a cocky American, but we have yet to use many of the tools in our arsenal against an enemy and I think too many think of air attacks as single smart bombs going in windows and forget about Pearl Drops of 50 -80 munitions tha each carry bomblets that can clear miles of terrain of any living organism. We don't need to exchange nukes to do mass killings. The political repurcusions of a war with China will be more of a burden than the military aspect of one. People forget that the old Soviet Union Army was in disarray due to limited economic resources with much of it's air force grounded due to maintenance etc. China is in even worse shape economically. They haven't fought a war in ages so there is little if any experienced Generals, much less in the field type leadership from officers or NCOs. Russia and the US fight limited campaigns on an unfortunate regular basis and have lessons learned from Afganistan, Iraq etc. We know how many times we can turn an airplane before it has to be grounded for maintenance. We know exactly how many times a target must be hit by each type of munition and thanks to the Iron Curtain falling, we now also know to even better detail what each MIG's strength and weakness are. We won't need a draft, and we won't have heavy casualties. There will be some, as there always are, but I would bet it would be more like Desert Storm where we killed more of our own men and women than the enemy did. Clinton has so much money in his pocket from China, he wont declare war but if China really wants Taiwan, they better hurry up or pray Gore wins because a Republican just might. Good Luck, Lee