Taiwan: A Key to China’s Rise and Transformation

Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at www.ips-dc.org). Copyright © 2009, Institute for Policy Studies.

Recommended citation:
Fei-Ling Wang, "Taiwan: A Key to China’s Rise and Transformation" (Silver City, NM and Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, December 21, 2006).

Web location:
http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/3817

Production Information:
Author(s): Fei-Ling Wang
Editor(s): John Feffer, IRC
Production: Chellee Chase-Saiz, IRC

Mao did make many mistakes during his tenure but was not a per se despot. He was the one with an iron will, under such impossible circumstances then, that brought about a successful unification of the Chinese nation. Chiang Kai Shek & his ROC was not defeated by Mao but by the Chinese masses who had grown disillusioned with his corrupt rule.

China under communism is not such despotic as alleged by the author. There were decent economic growths even under the most difficult period in the 1960's. No regime in the world does not make mistakes during his/her rule, let alone one which had been under constant sanction/blockage by the rest of the world misled by the West. China will not be what it is today (biggest poverty reduction in human history, biggest foreign reserve in history, rise of a big nation which hardly 100 years ago sounded like a failed state beyond redemption, etc) without the iron-fisted rule of the Communist Party. It is time the world acknowleges this great feat of the Chinese communists!

Taiwanese democracy is a joke! The campaign themes constantly harp on petty little things like the candidate's sex-life, his & his fore-father's background, the `colour' of his leaning etc. There is hardly any mentions on national/international agenda! Politicians are more interested in media theatreship rather than real arbitrations on economy, social & national agenda! If anything at all, Taiwanese democracy sets such a bad example to the rest of Greater China that we would rather not be infected with it but opt for the more authoritarian Singaporean model of tighter discipline in exchange for more effective/corruption-free governance. So much for the myth of the good-for-all `democracy'!

The mentality of the Taiwanese elites/intelligensia is just incredibly pathetic! At this age & time, they still regard Uncle Sam as their naturel father, drawing an illusionary comfort from her imagined bloated power for protection from their real benigned biological mother. It is utterly shameful for Chinese to ask a foreign power to arbitrate an internal quarrel on matters pertaining to our own affairs. Shame on you, Taiwanese! In any case, Uncle Sam is not genuinely interested in Taiwan's welfare, all Uncle Sam does is to calculate meticulously how much capital she can make out of our mutual misery. So, Chinese all over the world, beware!

Taiwan's role as a democratising Trojan Horse is the author's naiive self-imagination of the highest order. The same goes for the alleged & much-hyped Hong Kong role. Contrary to these Western thinkings, there is every possibility that China's unique path to democracy, albeit with Chinese characteristics, shall overwhelm all scheming/cold-blooded, manufactured, Western-imposed democratic models which the West finds so desirable! Proud Chinese shall never live at the whim & fancy of the West!

Taiwan's chips in bargaining with China is slowly but surely slipping away as time passes. It is utterly foolhardy for the Taiwanese elites not to have smelled this impending disaster. With the modernisation pace ever gathering speed, Taiwan, just like HK, runs the danger of becoming irrelevant in relation to the rest of the provinces. Time is definately on China's side, she will just sit tight & keep on improving the financial infrastructure to suck dry all of Taiwan's talents, capitals, stragetic commerce/industries. With regards to the US threat of intervention, we just need to constantly beef up our military capabilities (e.g. our submarine fleet, air-craft carrier busters, electronic jamming devices, stealth busters etc) to such an extent that an intended American intervention shall be so costly they will hopefully be deterred. Of course, in the final analysis, when indeed the crunch comes, we will once again rise to the occasion, just like in the Korean War, & be prepared to face up to the US, irrespect of how much losses we shall endure.

Taiwan is indeed the key to the saviour of China; not so much as a democratising force as the author would like to believe, but as a key test on how much resolve China has to forever erase all the century of foreign humiliations during the weak Qing Empire. By bringing back all the lost territories will send a powerful signal to friends & foes alike how serious we attach to the phrase `territorial integrity'. So, please don't mess with us as far as Taiwan, Tibet, Xingjiang are concerned.

(1) the majority of people in Taiwan today consider themselves Taiwanese, not Chinese,

(2) the Taiwanese people are not interested in any sort of unification with China, whether conditional, provisional, temporary, or any other categorization,

(3) Taiwan is not Chinese territory. There are no international legal documents which can show that the territorial sovereignty of Taiwan has ever been transferred to ROC China or PRC China,

(4) The sale of military hardware to ROC/Taiwan is in violation of the "common defense" clause of the US Constitution, because in fact Taiwan is an "overseas territory under the jurisdiction of the United States of America."

In summary, the three options for Taiwan's future are (1st) unification with the PRC, (2nd) immediate independence, (3rd) recognition as an overseas territory of the USA.

In closing, let me extend my best wishes to the author and his associates for a prosperous 2007.

Furthermore, if Taiwan was to effectively rule out the possibility of independence, would it not have weakened its bargaining position without guarantee of reciprocity? Certainly, it could claim the moral high ground in the international community, but whilever the CCP controls the media it is doubtful that this would be communicated fairly to people on the mainland (especially not in a way that would catalyse the masses to demand democracy in the way you envisage). It is also doubtful that tensions would reduce across the strait due to the historic suspicion that exists, and we all know well enough that the CCP resents and resists being dictated to on policy by anyone.

However, there are a couple of important points to be made. First of all, the article takes for granted that there is a tangible unit called Greater China, and that all ethnic Chinese for some unexplained reason would want to be an integral part of that unit (the article does not explain why that is. Maybe the argument is that blood is thicker than water, but that argument of course does not hold water.). In Taiwan, however, many, if not most, people do not subscribe to this idea other than as a loose description of a common ethnic and cultural heritage.

Second, since the main point for arguing that Taiwan and China should unite is that Taiwan's democratic experience would help push democracy in China, it is quite remarkable that the article sticks to the Greater China concept as a predetermined fact and does not seem to even entertain the possibility that the Taiwanese people could want to exercise their democratic right not to unite with China. As so often when this issue is discussed, democratic rights apply to people in all other countries and are an absolute goal for China, but it is has no worth as an argument for letting the people of Taiwan exercise their democratic right to decide the future of their country.

A recent survey on national identification conducted by the Election Study Center of National Chengchi University, the Okinawa-based University of the Ryukyus and the University of Hong Kong found that if China promised not to intervene, 62 percent of Taiwanese respondents wanted de jure independence for Taiwan, and if China did not make such a promise, 54 percent still want de jure independence. Things like this must of course be taken into consideration when democracy is the basis of the argument one makes.

And to clarify the comment about "many senior cadres of the ruling party (which has traditionally supported independence) now assert that 'unification is one of our future choices, too:'" The idea that the Taiwanese people should be allowed to choose between unification and indepence is not a new assertion among ruling party cadres but has always been part of the party program, although the party has made clear that it would prefer independence. What is exceptional in this context is that the KMT chairman a while back said that de jure independence is one future option for Taiwan, thus acknowledging the democratic rights of the Taiwanese people.

You talk of a benign China, yet then go on to talk of sucking Taiwan dry, building up the military to fight the U.S. and threaten anyone who 'messes' with China over disputed territories. China also has hundreds of missiles pointing at Taiwan right now. Why would anybody want to unite with a place that threatens and bullies them on the international stage?

For your information, Mao had little to do with the regaining of 'lost territories' and unification. All major lost territories were regained by Chiang Kai-shek by 1949, except parts of Manchuria, for which he had extracted promises of return. Given the weakness of his situation, Chiang's achievements were remarkable.

For all its theatre and faults, democracies have never gone to war against each other and allow the people free speech and most importantly uphold the rule of law. Something that will never happen under authoritarian systems for the simple reason that nothing can be above the party. The law is beholden to the party, and malleable.

Finally, it is always amusing to find the same old 'hanjian' nonsense being trotted out when a Chinese person dares to question the official line. It is this intolerance of difference that creates a bad impression of China in the eyes of many.

As evidenced by the Anglo-American invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, or the atack on Yugoslavia, the greatest bullies and thug nations on this planet just so happen to be the same nations that tout themselves as great democracies that uphold the rule of law, blah, blah, blah.

These crimes against humanity have been waged, led, propagandized for, and committed by none other than the Land of the Free and Beacon of Democracy that is America. Maybe that is what "democracy" is really about, eh?

Probably the best measure of govenrments is in their upholding the will of a well-informed population. It seems that China may be doing as good or perhaps much better a job at this than the US. It's worth looking into, so we may learn "best practices". Geopolitics is a beloved game to many, but the vast majority of people don't need it, and don't want anything to do with it. They don't need it because localism is the cake, and globalism is the icing which is expendable. You must respect the people's right to be free from the chains of geopolitics. When we observe states like China focusing energy on people, instead of power, we welcome that. When the US damages our security with geopolitical adventurism, we reject that. When your own state comes clean, then you may criticize other states.

1. Most Taiwanese do not want to be annexed to China for any reason. Period. They want to be independent and live in a democratic state.

2. Nobody would want to be annexed to a hostile authoritarian state that points 1,000 missiles at them and demands they be annexed or else. China's attitude toward Taiwan was neatly illustrated by its attempts to block WHO and other world health bodies from interacting with the island during the SARS crisis. China despises Taiwan and treats it with fear and contempt.

3. Taiwan has never been part of China. The only "Chinese" emperors to rule the island were Manchus, who were not Chinese. The Qing in any case did not exercise sovereignty over the whole island, but only over the lowlands on the west. Not until Japan did in the 1930s did any one government control the whole island.

4. "The ruling party" -- which the author does not even have the grace to mention by name -- does not have "cadres". It is not a centralized Leninist nightmare like the KMT and the CCP. It has recognized annexation as a possible option for Taiwan, but does not support that. Ma Ying-jeou, who recently had to step down as KMT leader after being indicted for embezzlement, is a pro-China ideologue whose long-term goal is to sell out the island to China. Neither he nor the hugely corrupt, pro-China party he once lead supports democracy, and the conditions he talks about are strictly for gullible foreigners. The reality is that if the KMT takes power in '08 the island's freedoms are doomed.

5. Washington is committed by the terms of several treaties and the postwar agreements about the status of Taiwan to NOT sell out the island to China. Washington under no circumstances should support such a move, and at the moment outside the State Department, which is busily serving Beijing, most of the government understands that. The US government policy has been, since WWII, that the status of Taiwan is undetermined. To sell out Taiwan to China merely because the Chinese might feel bad if they can't annex it would be a gross injustice. As Roger Lin notes above, a case can even be made that Taiwan is an unincorporated trust territory of the US, a fact that the US government is certainly aware of, though it chooses not to recognize that at the moment.

6. The current Chinese government is expansionist and covets a number of territories that were never part of China. Not only has it occupied and pillaged Tibet, it also wants Taiwan, and recently told India that it claimed an entire Indian state. Chinese maps routinely list islands and islets that have never belonged to China as being part of China, even if another power owns undisputed sovereignty over them (see the flap with Indonesia over the Natunas). To allow China to annex Taiwan would be to feed that hunger for land -- perpetuating other injustices and evils, and provoking a very large war in the future. Taiwan is not China's Alsace and Lorraine. Taiwan is China's Czechoslovakia.

7. The author's arguments are generally laughable assertions of hope unsupported by history, and filled with stock Chinese expansionist phrases like "Greater China" and "a Taiwan...seeking to leave China" (Taiwan isn't part of China, so it can't "leave")......

"...the words and acts by many in Taiwan for full independence have served to deprive the ROC of its rightful political influence in Greater China."

A vast ignorance of history. The ROC has no "rightful place" in Chinese history. It lost the civil war, and deservedly so, being murderous, controlling, corrupt and incompetent. The ROC fought democracy in Taiwan for 50 years and democratized only after pressure from below and from the US. It has no legitimacy on Taiwan, except among a tiny elite of mainlanders, and has no real legitimacy in the world. Either China will annex Taiwan and snuff it out, or Taiwan will become independent and snuff it out. Either way, the ROC is an illegitimate virtual state living on borrowed time. It has no right to any influence whatsover.

"Beijing's political rivalry with Taipei should stimulate, rather than stifle, China's democratization. Instead of propelling China into imperialism and militarism, Chinese nationalism could become a powerful driving force to constrain the rising Chinese power and reorient it toward democracy and peace."

On what planet has nationalism ever been a force for "democracy and peace"? It has always and ever been a legitimating ideology for every kind of violence and repression. The author is simply tossing out contradictions here and pretending they are arguments. Like this:

"A timetable for China's conditional unification should be linked directly and clearly to verifiable political changes in the PRC. Nationalist desires for unification among the Chinese, including many elites, will generate the kind of incentives and energy for political change in Beijing that few external pressures could ever achieve. It will be a great awakening for the Chinese people to see that the biggest obstacle to China's national unification and peaceful rise lies in Beijing's refusal of political reform: a powerful message that will help to reshape minds, paradigms, policies, and paths."

China is already unified so there can't be a timetable for "unification." Beijing has been refusing political reform now for 60 years and Chinese nationalism has produced no such demand for change. Why on earth would holding Taiwan at arms length for a specified length of time produce such a change? Why on earth would anyone think such a condition would be acceptable to Beijing, when that government has repeatedly indicated it will accept no conditions on its drive to annex Taiwan? The author is, not to put too fine a point on it, living in a fantasy world.

One thing I've noted over the years is how irrational the Chinese get when discussing Taiwan. Arguments like "nationalism will lead to peace and democracy" are a good example of how once you say the word "Taiwan" to a Chinese, any ability to rationally think about the future, ethics, and China, goes right out the window. You need only look at the comment above:

'By bringing back all the lost territories will send a powerful signal to friends & foes alike how serious we attach to the phrase `territorial integrity'. So, please don't mess with us as far as Taiwan, Tibet, Xingjiang are concerned."

....to see the madness that underwrites this attitude. China never owned Tibet or Taiwan or Xinjiang, and the people that live in those areas are not Chinese. Yet, after complaining about the "humiliations" of the past, they promptly go out and inflict even worse humiliations on others.

No ethical human can encourage such behavior, and the only proper ethical response, whatever form it might take, is opposition.

8. The author writes:

"To help China change politically and rise peacefully, and also for Taiwan's own future, the Taiwanese must sacrifice their understandable but ultimately self-defeating desire for full independence."

What? Because the Chinese lack the political maturity to handle their own destiny, we have to feed Taiwan to that Moloch hoping that it will turn into Aphrodite? What kind of argument is this? "I'm sorry honey, you have to marry me, otherwise I might hurt myself." The only possible response to that is: grow up!

This is nothing but a fantasy designed to further justify Beijing's desire to annex a rich prize it has never owned. It's sad that FPIF has chosen to reproduce it here.

Michael Turton
The View from Taiwan
http://michaelturton.blogspot.com

"...many historical, cultural, economic, political, and emotional arguments can be made for why unification with Taiwan lies at the core of China's national interest...". True, but many historical, cultural, economic, political and emotional arguments can also be made as to why separation and independence lie at the core of Taiwan's national interests. To the first poster, Lee Wan Shing: Mao was not a despot per se? A despot is someone who rules with absolute power. I don't see how disasters such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution could have happened without the Great Helmsman being in complete control.

"...don't mess with us as far as Taiwan, Tibet, Xingjiang are concerned." Your comments show exactly why China's intentions are mistrusted throughout Asia. You talk about the humiliations China faced from the Western powers during the latter part of the Qing Dynasty, but what about the humiliations the Chinese forced its neighbors to undergo during the prior centuries? Do the Taiwanese, Tibetans and Uyghurs have any say in their destinies? Or, in the case of Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang, do they have to accept the superiority of the Han Chinese, and watch their cultures become Sinicized? Present-day China is the result of centuries of imperialism, and domination over and intimidation of neighboring countries.

Regarding Taiwan's democracy: to quote Churchill, democracy is an imperfect system, but it's the best one we have. I'll take Taiwan's messy democracy over China's corrupt and authoritarian system.

It's time to respect Taiwan for what it is -- a modern democratic country who only wants to be recognized as such. No one is pointing 1000 missles at Beijing.

Umm, but you didn't answer the question - did you, arn? You're just saying the US isn't that great. But Taiwan isn't the US - it's its own country. To ask the qn another way, why should Taiwan unite with a bully as bad as the US, China?

Answer is that it sees no benefits to do so. The idea in the article that Taiwan should unify with China to help China change is ridiculous! Until China changes to a democracy there would be no real guarantees over Taiwan's future. HK has been promised progressive political reforms, but Beijing has shown itself to be rather unreliable in that department - there are even concerns it's trying to deliberately block any change and stack the deck in its favour.

No, that is not something to offer Taiwan. This is the problem a lot of Chinese have over Taiwan - they think it will sacrifice its independence/ability to rule itself for some "greater Chinese good". No chance!

Firstly, Mao's regime tried to wipe away 5,000 years of culture with the cultural revolution. Second while a majority of the population of Taiwan has some ancestry from China, the shared identity splits at the ancestors departure from their home province. This is anywhere from 0 to a 1,000 years ago.

Your claim that Taiwan and China speak the same language is also false. The languages are similar but they aren't the same. The Taiwanese form of Mandarin was forced upon Taiwan by the ROC government, just like Japanese was when they were the occupiers. Hey, at that time the Japanese considered Taiwan to be part of Japan. Taiwan/China is a repeat of this silly game.

I do agree slightly with your point that you can't rule out re-unification. BUT a re-unification is only a re-unification when both parties agree that it is in their best interests. Otherwise it's an invasion. Taiwan just does not want to be invaded. There are other forms of re-unification that you can't rule out. Economic and cultural re-unification can happen outside politics, and I believe it is happening now.

What nobody talks about but should talk about is motive. China's propaganda about Taiwan is nothing but propaganda. The motive behind it is to make everyone fear the evil across the Taiwan straight. Don't do anything about the evil within! Regimes that operate like this usually end up collapsing and being humiliated. (WWII Germany, Japan, Italy)

Let me spell it out bluntly: The type of "democracy" that America, England, Europe, Taiwan, et al. all represent and promote is a lie of the first order. Citizens of these countries aggressively promote these lies primarily as a propaganda weapon to use against rival nations--not out of some noble concern for universal democratic ideals.

In terms of domestic policy, your "democracy" is merely a moral and political mask for the rule of your national capitalist class; Liberal Democracy is the Dictatorship of Capital in practice if not name.

In fact, all the propagandists here lecturing about "democratic reforms" or "freedom" would do well to attack your own countries' democratic credentials.

In the past several years, all of these imperialist (Western) democracies have increased political repression of immigrants, Arabs, Muslims, and other minorities within their own borders. Every last one. Here are just a few examples:

1. Using the pretext of its phony "War on Terror," America created its fascistic Homeland Security Department and Patriot Act (among other things) that rape the very civil liberties and freedoms that American propagandists deceptively claim to champion around the world. Recently, America's Homeland Security ICE unit has begun a campaign of terror against so-called "illegal immigrants" in the USA, whereby entire families are broken apart as America ethnically cleanses and deports exploited migrant workers from the Land of the Free.

This is not to mention other examples of Western-style Freedom like America's Gitmo gulag at Guantanamo Bay; its Abu Ghraib torture complex in Iraq; or the American CIA's global system of covert prisons and rendition, which has been *actively supported* by England, European powers, and other liberal democracies.

2. In England, the British regime has similarly imposed repressive anti-democratic legislation, rationalized as a response to the suspicious "terrorist" bombings of 7/7. In fact, England is now the world's leader in public surveillance systems and closed circuit monitoring devices!

3. In Europe, anti-immigrant and anti-Arab/Muslim fascism is on the rise as evidenced, for instance, by the recent vitriolic reaction to the Mohammed cartoon controversy and France's state repression of Arab and Muslim youth rebellions in 2005.

The list goes on and on.

4. And finally Taiwan is neither an independent country, nor is it a democracy. Taiwan is an American/Capitalist client state--much like other so-called democracies that the Imperialist West "defends" in the Middle East, Latin America, and Third World. Ultimately, political power resides not in Taipei but in Washington DC or even Tokyo.

Taiwan is the Israel of Asia, and it is designed to serve a similar geopolitical purpose: an unsinkable aircraft carrier to enable the American Empire and its imperialist allies to project military power in the region or even wage "pre-emptive" wars of aggression, justified as "self-defense." Taiwanese "independence" is about the de jure formalization of this client status. And like Israel, Taiwan is politically culpable for the (covert) support it provides to its Anglo-American/Japanese imperial partners.

Inside the American Gulag
http://hnn.us/articles/5649.html

The US Gulag Prison System
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=LEN20060316&articleId=2113

Immigration: A Nation of Colonists--and Race Laws
http://the-fourth-world.blogspot.com/2006/08/immigration-nation-of-colonists-and.html

Britain's Immigrant Holocaust
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=COL20060611&articleId=2627

Towards the EU Police State: EU Criminal Law overrides Member States
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050930&articleId=1021

Look at the examples of Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Middle East, for instance, where America, England, and other supposed democracies have GENOCIDED hundreds of thousands of people UNDER THE PRETEXT OF SPREADING DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY. As usual, Capitalist democracy and freedom are dripping with the blood of millions of Third World people around the world.

Furthermore, the entire American-led "War on Terrorism" is a criminal lie, and in actuality is about expanding the global American Empire and enforcing the West's Unipolar world order that has existed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This expansitionist American agenda has been tacitly admitted by US regime elites and institutions. The American military even has a name for this aggressive USA doctrine: Full Spectrum Dominance. These agendas are the continuation of America's 19th-century Manifest Destiny delusions.

Manifesto for world dictatorship
http://www.smh.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2002/09/22/1032055033082.html

Global Eye -- Dark Passage
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2326.htm

All countries that are opponents of this unipolar "New World Order" (like China) must be brought to heel whether by military assault, by internal balkanization cloaked as "humanitarian" concern for minority groups (like Tibetan, Uighur), or by "regime change" disguised as democracy.

Taiwan of course figures prominently in America's global dominance ambitions viz. China, and Taiwan will play its cynical role ever so faithfully. This is probably one reason why the very issue of Taiwan "independence" is quietly being advanced in the first place, as it serves as a useful geopolitical weapon against China completely unrelated to the rationalizations of self-determination or democracy disingenuously promoted here.

When Americans and their allies talk about "spreading democracy" to China what they really mean is overthrowing the current government and imposing a pro-USA regime that will dutifully support American geopolitical domination in foreign policy and impose Capitalist market reforms favorable to foreign capitalism in domestic policy. One only has to examine the history of the West overthrowing democratically elected governments like Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran, Salvador Allende of Chile, Jean-Betrand Aristide of Haiti, or the failed coup d'etat against Hugo Chavez of Venezuela to see what Capitalist Democracy is truly about--whether for China, Taiwan, or whomever.

It's also revealing that these champions of democracy and self-determination do not apply these principles to the Leader of the Free World, the United States of America, or its allies. Like other putative democracies such as Canada and Australia, America is in reality a Western colonizer nation premised upon the genocide and extermination of indigenous First Nations, the continuing occupation of Mexican land (also called Aztlan), and the coup/annexation of Hawaii.

EL PLAN DE AZTLÁN
http://studentorgs.utexas.edu/mecha/archive/plan.html

Hawai`i: Independent & Sovereign
http://www.hawaii-nation.org/

The Free World's conspicuously selective "concern" for independence and democracy shows that these principles are in fact lies used to advance foreign policy agendas against other states--and NOT an expression of sincere democratic ideals.

Ultimately, the American Empire and its allies represent the preeminent aggressive threat that menaces the planet. The Anglo-American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are but two examples of their expansitionist agenda. Indeed, these American led wars are the political equivalents of the Nazi invasions of Poland and Czechoslovakia, with the September 11th "terrorist" attacks functioning as America's Reichstag Fire.

Yet, the Crusaders for democracy here still spew their propaganda about "defending liberty," in order to disguise the rapacious nature of their own nations and vaunted democratic values. But this mask of freedom can only be maintained for so long before it will be shattered into pieces.

The citizens of imperialist democracies like America and its "coalition partners" will minimize or divert attention from the carnage their nations have sown in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. But these nations fully deserve to be paid back for all the crimes they have committed behind their political deception of "protecting democracy and freedom."

And make no mistake. Their day of judgment will come.

Achtung! Are We the New Nazis? Soldiers, God and Empire
http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/herman/herman3.html

US Imperial Urge Did Not Begin With George Bush
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3283.htm