America will save the world (?)
I have already introduced you to Bob Rogers in a previous post. I have been reading the amazing journal of his bicycle trip along the Silk Road. An entry from western China caught my attention:How many other oppressed people believe that America will someday rescue them as our role as policemen to the world?
Scary. Really scary.
He is a large Uyghur man of 47. He says he was a boxer and basketball player. He is fat now, in a successful businessman sort of way; proof of prosperity. He orders the Han staff around like the stereotypical Ugly American, though he is a Chinese citizen. However he is not Han,
Being Uyghur is his identity; he knows the bounds of his ethnic identity and chafes at the loss of autonomy at the hands of the Chinese and Russians. "Peejo. peejo!" He waves his arm ordering more beer, and another Uyghur dish, both of which he pushes on us.
He says something else, raises both hands high into the air, lifting up an imaginary something to great heights. "America," he sighs. "America." Then his beatific smiles turns to a snarl, "China!" He turns up a little finger and spits on it, ultimate insult. "China bad." Spit. "America! "his voice softens again,
He frowns again, "Saddam. Bad!" He is showing his solidarity with another small ethnic minority, the Kurdish in northern Iraq. We listen. He of course assumes we agree with him completely.
There is no use trying to communicate that these questions are more complicated than perhaps he sees from his perspective. We smile. I try to drink just enough beer to please him, without getting drunk. I feel sorry for the poor man. He really thinks (he is not alone among Uyghurs) that America will someday restore the Uyghur homeland of western China to them.
Poor man. Even an ego as big as George W. Bush would not consider attacking China. The commercial dragon is awakening, and that is generally good for the world economy; the sleeping dragon of the Chinese military might is not something to be awakened; not for a few million Uyghurs; sheepherders, horse and camel wanderers of the steppes and deserts of China. No, the Uyghurs will be free when they free themselves, and the Han will probably never allow that. They will dominate and eventually overwhelm with sheer population numbers, as they have done to the Tibetans. The dragon sleeps, but is still a dragon none-the-less.
posted by Dave Peyton @ 12:22 PM
2 Comments:
Cool guestbook, interesting information... Keep it UP
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A college professor friend of mine once said something that rang so very true: "The American President can have far more impact on the conditions in a foreign land than he can in America." His claim is that Presidents pay an inordinate amount of attention to foreign affairs because of this phenomenon.
Does this means future Presidents will try to fix the world's problems while ignoring those here at home?
The answer, I fear, is that US Presidents will continue to do what pleases their benefactors, and will fabricate situations meant to justify the actions in support of the outcome desired by those benefactors. Why all this effort to 'free' the Iraqis while many African nations experience horrors on the order of the Holocast? Because there's no profit in fixing anything in Africa. For the same reason, we'll never confront the Chinese over their annexation of Tibet et al.
It's the guys sitting on oil reserves who need to worry, especially if they make it hard for us to get it.
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