War on evil on Sep 23, 2004

Accusations are fanning the flames of hatred

By Ku Er-teh

Now that the US Republican Convention has been brought to a close, the hordes of protesters who came into New York City for the event have finally left. Even so, on the weekends you can still see groups of protesters clustering around Central Park and railway stations handing out fliers and accosting the occasional passersby.

They are not calling for independence for either Tibet or Taiwan, or demanding Taiwanese entry into the UN. Nor are they exiled student leaders from the Tiananmen Square Massacre. They are members of Falun Gong, all too eager to talk to anyone who'll listen about their teachings. However, their hatred boils over at any mention of the Chinese leadership -- former president Jiang Zemin in particular.

It was Jiang, after all, who branded Falun Gong an evil religious sect and persecuted its practitioners. Who knows if Jiang acted on practical political considerations or if he genuinely believed the group to be evil. But having declared a holy war against the group, the hatred will not be easily dispelled.

By accusing others of being evil, one is affirming that one's own standpoint and set of values are correct, in an absolute sense. In the most recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine there appeared an article on "The World's Most Dangerous Ideas," for which the magazine solicited the opinions of many experts, including Eric Hobsbawn, Martha Nussbaum, Francis Fukuyama and Robert Wright. Among their answers, several were related to having an exaggerated view of one's own opinions. Wright believes that the most dangerous notion is starting a "war on evil," referring to US President George W. Bush's war on terror. He believes that when you lump all of your enemies under the common banner of "evil," you lose the ability to distinguish one from the other.

By seeing everything in terms of the polar opposites of good and evil, you commit yourself to following a scorched-earth policy. In so doing, you deny yourself the opportunity to understand your opponent's point of view, thus losing the ability to remove the cause of conflict between yourself and others.

This is a problem not just for the US, but also for Beijing in its anti-Falun Gong stance. At the beginning of the crackdown by Beijing, China Central Television (CCTV) aired a long program showing the "evil face" of Falun Gong. Watching this program as a third-party observer, you might say that some of the suspicions and criticisms that the Chinese authorities have of Falun Gong may have been well founded.

However, as soon as they were declared to be unconditionally evil, Beijing lost the ability to discuss the issue in a rational manner.

Falun Gong members have compared Jiang to Adolf Hitler. This is a comparison that has also been recently made in reference to President Chen Shui-bian by opposition supporters abroad. The last election was followed by a stream of references to Hitler, populism and the Weimar Republic. Some of these were even made by seasoned thinkers.

However, being concerned about the retardation of democracy and a return of dictatorship is something entirely different from accusing a political leader of being another Hitler, who was a symbol of evil and a murderer, with the deaths of millions of people on his hands. Likening a politician who enjoys the support of half the electorate to such a figure is tantamount to wanting to start a "civil war against evil." This war would be brutal, all-inclusive and very difficult to resolve.

If political groups or their leaders have any sense of responsibility, they should be careful not to fan the flames of discontent with their words.

Ku Er-teh is a freelance writer.

Defense ministry pushes legislators to expand budget

NATIONAL DEFENSE: The ministry said current funds do not cover weapons or maintaining troops and that a shortfall had to be filled to maintain security

By Ko Shu-ling
STAFF REPORTER , WITH CNA

Taiwan's defense budget must be expanded as expenditure will exceed the proposed NT$1.67 trillion (US$49.35 billion) budget over the next five years, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday.

In the ministry's latest national defense buildup assessment report submitted to the Legislative Yuan yesterday for approval, it was argued that the defense budget had to be increased due to the need to acquire advanced weapons to beef up the country's self-defense capabilities and maintain the strength of the armed forces.

The Executive Yuan's annual budget proposal for national defense, if passed by the Legislative Yuan, would still be about NT$380 billion (US$11.2 billion) short of the NT$1.29 trillion regular budget the Executive Yuan has approved, the report indicated.

In addition, an extra NT$242 billion will be required in the following five years for the procurement of advanced weapon systems from the US -- including eight diesel-powered submarines, 12 P-3C anti-submarine aircraft and six PAC-3 Patriot anti-missile batteries -- which is not included in the NT$1.67 trillion budget plan for regular yearly defense expenditures, the ministry said.

Financing for the procurement of the submarines, anti-submarine aircraft and anti-missile batteries has been arranged through a planned NT$610.8 billion special arms procurement budget. The passage of the special budget would make up the shortfall.

Minister of National Defense Lee Jye said a day earlier that if the NT$610.8 billion special budget can be passed by the Legislative Yuan and carried out smoothly, the military strength of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait will remain roughly balanced for the next three decades. Otherwise, he said, China will be able to attack Taiwan in two to three years.

On the planned arms purchase from the US, the Executive Yuan yesterday said that it does not rule out the possibility of holding public discussions similar to the just-concluded Youth National Affairs Conference to discuss sensitive issues such as weapons procurement.

"Our stance on arms procurement is clear," Cabinet Spokesman Chen Chi-mai quoted Premier Yu Shyi-kun as saying during a press conference held after the weekly closed-door Cabinet meeting yesterday morning.

"That is, it requires rational discussion and open debate to decide the necessity of such a plan and the reasonable amount of money to spend on it," Chen said.

Although a consensus reached in such public debates would not be legally binding, Chen said that it would serve as a pivotal reference during the government's decision-making process.

Yu made the remarks during the Cabinet meeting, after a briefing on the conference presented by National Youth Commission Chairwoman Cheng Li-chun . The conference, held for the first time between Sept. 17 and Sept. 19, is to become an annual event.

Keyser case shows blurred relations

Although he was expected to take over the chairmanship of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), Donald Keyser, a former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, has suddenly been charged with secretly flying to Taiwan and passing documents to Taiwanese intelligence agents.

Since the case itself is extremely complex and the outside world knows little about it, local media have begun to sensationalize the personal relationship between Keyser and Isabella Cheng, an intelligence agent from the National Security Bureau. Some outlets revealed much about Cheng's private life, and have even begun to pry into the life of her new husband, Chris Cockel. This forced Cockel plead with Taiwanese reporters in Washington to confirm their reports before running them, while complaining that the media's insinuation that his wife is having an affair with Keyser is unsubstantiated.

Cheng's husband is a journalist and Washington correspondent for The China Post. Ironically, he himself has now attracted the spotlight of the sensationalist reports from his unprofessional colleagues.

Meanwhile, some of the pro-China media have seized the chance and labelled Keyser as pro-Taiwan by citing anonymous sources. They even reported that during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to the US last November, Keyser in fact wrote a draft proposal for President George W. Bush in an attempt to influence his speech, to prevent Bush from speaking negatively of Taiwan. They also reported that Bush was angry when he read the proposal and promptly threw it in a trash can.

This eye witness-style report strongly suggests that Keyser is a spy for Taiwan. Suspicious reporting of this kind also tells us that Bush -- the leader of the world's most powerful country -- deals with important documents such as drafts from the State Department by simply throwing them away. If this story is true, then the spies that the US really has to watch out for are those working as White House janitors.

There is still much that remains unknown about this whole incident, but based on the testimony of his colleagues, Keyser has been a steadfast moderate on the Taiwan issue, favoring neither the [pro-China] red team nor the [pro-Taiwan] blue team in the US. As such, we find it hard to believe that Keyser would slip up at a time when his career is at its peak and he is looking forward to retirement. Further, there is no information available that proves Keyser has passed any secret documents to intelligence agents here.

From a pro-Taiwan perspective, we naturally think that the more supportive of Taiwan US officials are, the better. Taiwan and the US do not have formal diplomatic relations, but have a deep and substantive friendship. Both countries follow the rule of law, and the exchanges between their respective officials should also be confined by the law.

But since the relationship between officials from both countries relies heavily on mutual understanding and empathy, the line between legal and illegal practices is often vague. Difficulties are inevitable between Taiwan and the US -- two allies that maintain a relationship without official relations.

The Keyser case underlines the confused nature of the boundaries of the relationship between the US and Taiwan, which is often so unclear that even the most experienced diplomat can occasionally transgress them.