※ 這篇本來國內媒體也有引述
但似乎和原文有所出入
Washington Post 所以直接貼原文
Wednesday, December 10, 2003; Page A30
FOR THE PAST several weeks, Taiwan and China have been exchanging
rhetorical broadsides about how the island's political future might be
decided. Taiwan's democratically elected president, Chen Shui-bian, has
been hinting that maybe his people should make a democratic choice about
whether to unite with China or become independent. Beijing's Communist
dictators have replied with bellicose threats to settle the matter by
force, no matter the price. Yesterday President Bush essentially placed
the United States on the side of the dictators who promise war, rather
than the democrats whose threat is a ballot box. His gift to visiting
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was to condemn "the comments and actions made
by the leader of Taiwan" while ignoring the sanguinary rhetoric of the
man standing next to him. Mr. Bush had his reasons for doing so -- above
all to avoid one more foreign policy crisis during an election year. But
in avoiding a headache for himself, he demonstrated again how malleable
is his commitment to the defense of freedom as a guiding principle of U.S.
policy.
Democracy is not always pretty or pure, of course, and Taiwan provides
no exception. Mr. Chen has started talking about independence and
promoting referendums because he is locked in a reelection battle. Trail-
ing in the polls, he seems to think he can win by producing the same
dynamic that helped him four years ago, when China's threats and missile
firings in the Taiwan Strait touched off a backlash among voters. Though
Mr. Chen favors independence, most Taiwanese do not: Polls show they
prefer to maintain the status quo indefinitely. So Mr. Chen cleverly
proposes to hold a referendum on his own election day next March asking
his citizens not to decide on Taiwan's status but simply to call on
China to remove the 500 missiles it has positioned in range of Taiwan
and to renounce the use of force. It is, perhaps, a cynical electoral
ploy -- something known to occur in other democratic countries -- but it
poses no threat to China.
Beijing's new Communist leaders, including Mr. Wen, would be wise to
embrace Mr. Chen's demands. Without such steps, they will have no chance
of persuading Taiwan's 23 million people to accept unification with the
mainland. Instead they have fallen back on the sort of primitive threats
that ought to cause other democracies to rally to Taiwan's defense. Last
week one general predicted an "abyss of war" if Mr. Chen pressed his
independence agenda, and in case that was considered a bluff, spelled
out the price that he said China was ready to pay, from cancellation of
the 2008 Olympics to mass casualties. "We will not sit by and do nothing
when faced with provocative activities," Mr. Wen blustered in an interview
with The Post last month.
It's bad enough that the world's largest dictatorship might consider
a nonbinding referendum opposing the use of force to be a provocation
justifying war. But for the United States to accept such totalitarian
logic is inexcusable. Mr. Bush says his policy is to oppose any unilateral
change in the status quo by either side and to observe the "one China"
policy of previous administrations. Aides say Beijing has been told
that the use of force is unacceptable. But Mr. Bush didn't say that.
Instead he swallowed Beijing's argument that Mr. Chen's referendum is
somehow intolerable, and he dispatched a senior aide to Taipei to insist
that no vote be held. A president who believed his own promise to "favor
freedom" would have said yesterday that China's "comments and actions" --
from invasion threats to missile deployments -- were of considerably
greater concern than a proposed exercise in voting booths.
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Mais oui, je t'aime, lui dit la fleur. Tu n'en a rien su, par ma faute.
Cela n'a aucune importance. Mais tu as ete aussi sot que moi.
Tache d'etre heureux... Laisse ce globe tranquille. Je n'en veux plus.
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