A New, Appalling Milestone in Clinton’s Contemptible ‘Coddling of Dictators’

(Washington D.C.): The Clinton
Administration is plumbing new depths in
its unctuous appeasement of Communist
China: It has invited the principal
military architect of the massacre
of an estimated 3,700 students, workers
and ordinary citizens in Tiananmen Square
on the night of 3-4 June 1989 to spend
ten days of feting by the Pentagon and
shopping for militarily relevant U.S.
technology.

During his visit, General Chi
Hoatian — who held the
equivalent rank of Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff during the brutal
crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators
seven and one-half years ago — will
reportedly be accorded a full-honors
cordon involving a 21-gun salute and
walking review of troops at the Pentagon.
He will also visit five military
installations and one of the Nation’s
nuclear weapons laboratories (the U.S.
Military Academy at West Point, the Navy
base at Norfolk, Maxwell Air Force Base
in Alabama, Fort Hood in Texas, Sandia
National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New
Mexico and ending his tour at the
headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Command
in Hawaii). A highlight of Gen. Chi’s
excursion is expected to be a “staff
ride” through the Gettysburg
battlefield, one of America’s most
hallowed sites, in the company of
Secretary of Defense William Perry — a
prime-mover behind the Clinton policy of
appeasing Beijing.

Crimes Against Humanity

According to an important and
well-researched op.ed. article in today’s
Washington Times ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-C_124at1″>see the attached)
by William C. Tripplett II, formerly
Chief Republican Counsel to the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee: “[General
Chi] was in operational control and
responsible for the detailed planning of
the assault on Beijing.” He
cites Time Magazine, which noted
as far back as 1989 that, “as
Chief of Staff, Chi bears major
responsibility for the violence unleashed
on Beijing’s citizenry by his
troops.”

The Tripplett piece goes on to
describe in some detail the massing and
deployment of troops under General Chi’s
command — and the intense political
indoctrination of the young peasant
soldiers involved in the run-up to the
assault — to ensure that the democratic
ferment in the Square was ruthlessly
liquidated. Incredibly, when
asked if his Department had any
reservations about hosting an individual
who had unleashed tanks and troops to cut
down unarmed civilians, the Pentagon’s
Press Spokesman Ken Bacon had the
temerity to respond: “The answer to
the question is ‘No.'” What
is more, the Washington Times reports
that the Central Intelligence Agency’s
official biography of General Chi fails
to make any mention of his
direct involvement in the Tiananmen
crackdown ⁽¹⁾.

In addition, as Mark Yost notes in the
attached
op.ed. published in today’s Wall
Street Journal, Gen. Chi is
presiding over sales of weapons of mass
destruction and other military technology
to many of the world’s most dangerous
nations. These include
transactions involving nuclear, chemical,
and biological technologies and missile
systems with which they might be
delivered by states like Iran, Iraq and
Syria. Such sales stand to make
the General’s responsibility for
genocidal slaughter at Tiananmen Square
pale by comparison.

The Bottom Line

The Casey Institute of the
Center for Security Policy regards the
official treatment in prospect for
General Chi to be morally repugnant as
well as strategically shortsighted.
By transforming American military
personnel into props for the General’s
visit, the Clinton Administration is once
again demeaning our men and women in
uniform and associating the United States
with a preeminent enemy of human freedom.
In fact, it is almost as though the
Pentagon and White House had conspired to
offend as many sensibilities and values
of the American people as possible in
configuring this sordid event.

As an organization concerned with the
nexus between traditional national
security policy and the emerging
international financial, economic, energy
and technology portfolios, the
Casey Institute believes that the
Administration’s appeasement of Beijing
is also indefensible on the grounds on
which it is primarily justified — i.e.,
to curry favorable trade relations.
The attached
editorial in this week’s New
Republic elegantly underscores this
point.

– 30 –

1. This is,
unfortunately, but one of a number of
indications of the politicization of
intelligence under the Clinton
Administration. See It Walks
Like A Duck…: Questions Persist That
Clinton C.I.A.’s Missile Threat Estimate
Was Politically Motivated ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-D_122″>No. 96-D 122, 4
December 1996).