So how long does China get before they hold elections or get invaded?

[soupkitchen]

Do you think the Chinese leaders gave a rat's ass about what Bush said? What do you think: Are they worried, perplexed, or laughing their asses off that America is committing it's reources to fighting wars it cannot win. At a time when the Chinese are determined to become the number one economic power in the world.

[pk_du]

1. Until the twelfth of never (yuk- sorry about that)

...Republicans only invade countries with piss-ant armies.

[Lexingtonian]

2. Who cares what they think?

Yes, the U.S. is going to piss away another 2-5 years in picking scabs that originate in the Cold War and Colonial Age. But: at this point it does have the overall wealth and capability (material and human resources) to recover from just about any misadventure- multiple nuclear weapon detonations being the exception- to world leadership and a remarkably well functioning society. Yes, Stupid/Obsolete America is indulging itself in a kind of selfmutilation-based therapy. But remember, the U.S. was written off as a power in 1775-80 by its colonial overlords, in 1860/61 by its own imperialistic rebels, in 1939-41 by the Axis militarists, and 1988-94 by the Asian Tigers. Look at what happened to each of these misunderestimator groups....

Yes, the Chinese leaders/elites have interesting ideas about world prominence and competition, and they have the mixture of assumed superiority and concealed inferiority about them that Third World elites always do. But for all their calculating and occultic imperialism, the Modern Age is going to hit them hard in about 10 years and schism their society, with Taiwan being the biggest individual bug getting into their butt. Let 'em whisper and laugh behind our backs, we can easily rebuild our manufacturing base to larger than theirs in 2-3 years and get all the manpower we can handle from Latin America. The U.S. tolerates rivals to a point, and a fight with us is not one in which the Chinese elite can prevail in for another decade or two at least.