By PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
Blaming China for the unforced eras of the US government is not classy, but it is a classic distraction
technique. The Trump administration has been self-centered,
clumsy and careless in responding to the Coronavirus pandemic. Even with the
significant lead time gained from watching the viral disease ravage Wuhan
months before American cities were similarly stricken, the US government
dithered. Trump has shown himself indifferent to unprecedented suffering.
The White House response has been not only been slow,
doltish and truculent, but outright counterproductive. Dismissive of experts to
the point of being anti-science, uncooperative with local leaders to the point
of stoking regional division, Trump’s scatter-brained response to the pandemic
has been indefensible.
“Don’t defend Trump…attack China,” urges an
internal memo distributed to US Republicans running for election. “Push for
sanctions on China for its role in spreading this pandemic.”
This is the advice of the "Corona Big Book" --the brainchild of Brett O’Donnell, a Machiavellian strategic advisor
to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton. Released on
April 17, 2020, the toxic talking points have infected Fox News, Sunday talk
shows, Senator Cotton’s press releases, state department policy pronouncements
and presidential tweets.
“Attack China” is a dangerous man-made viral campaign leaked from an
unregulated political laboratory that puts partisan politics above domestic
well-being and international peace. The hatred and prejudice implicit in the “Corona
Big Book” constitute a flagrant neo-McCarthyism. Innuendo, fabrications and scare
tactics are spoon-fed to Republicans seeking to extend their tenuous grip on power.
Enter Mike Pompeo, provincial congressman, former spy chief and now the
nation’s foremost diplomat who openly admits that “lying, cheating, and
stealing” are integral tools of statecraft.
Trump’s recent outburst of intemperate comments about China, including his
provocative use of the derogatory term “China virus” and verbal digs blaming China
for letting it “out” of the lab echo the “big book” line coming from Pompeo’s
office.
But Pompeo has gotten tangled up in a web of his own lies, contradicting
himself in TV interviews, saying the virus was from a lab but not from a lab, man-made
but not man-made, and then petulantly claiming that “China
has a history of infecting the world and they have a history of running
substandard laboratories.”
Trump’s China “experts” Michael Pillsbury, Peter Navarro and Matt
Pottinger are working in parallel with Pompeo to punish, humiliate and isolate
the very country they are allegedly expert in. Their bigoted and incendiary anti-China
rhetoric puts ordinary Asian Americans at risk. Pillsbury alludes to
inscrutably secret Chinese plans while Navarro claims on TV that the two countries
are at war because Shanghai Disneyland is now open and the one near his home in
Anaheim is closed. Trump abruptly ends a White House news conference, refusing
to answer the question of a Chinese-American journalist with a withering
put-down, telling her to “ask China.”
The blanket stigmatization of China shows signs of interagency
coordination, signaling a shift in Trump foreign policy, which, until recently,
had been obsessed mostly with trade matters.
Aware that relentlessly hitting on China has distinct racial overtones,
especially when coming from a cabal of bullies and powerful white men, Deputy
National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger was trotted out to give a short video
presentation in Chinese about the May 4 tradition. Given his previous
experience in China as a journalist, he does a competent job of reading
Romanized mandarin for the camera, but he has an ax to grind and is no expert
in history.
On the sidelines, there is Trump whisperer Steve Bannon, who has paired up
with anti-Beijing tycoon on-the-run, Guo Wengui, to stir trouble. Bannon was an
early advocate of the conspiratorial idea that Covid-19, which he calls the “CCP Virus,” is war by
other means.
Another fount of support for a harsh policy on China is right-wing cult
Falun Gong, which publishes the Epoch Times with the semi-clandestine
support of the US government. The cult promotes a pro-Trump political line that
is in almost total alignment with Pompeo’s crusade against China, except,
perhaps, for its eccentric opposition to interracial dating and homosexuality.
Pompeo’s Chinese counterparts have largely shown restraint in the face
of US provocation and have made reasonable pleas to cool the hot rhetoric. Ambassador
Cui Tiankai firmly maintains that disputes about the origin and spread of the virus
are best left to scientists.
The execrable election-year blame game in the US should be exposed for
what it is—a sordid spectacle designed to divide and conquer a confused
electorate. Pompeo’s neo-know-nothing “attack China” campaign is a cheap
provocation based on half-truths, innuendo and lies, a contagion of bad ideas
that is best contained before it spirals out of control.
https://ko-fi.com/philcunningham
