Dayuhan:

Believe or not, but when somebody builds an argument to make a point, as I did in post #504, you are supposed to respond to the point being made. You are not supposed to pull out individual sentences to create points pleasing to you then address those. Noooo, for that is illegitimate argument.

Now I will admit that my point took two paragraphs to explicate and there are some who would have been confused by that. But you were not. You just created something that wasn't and proceeded. Clever in cocktail parties and the women probably flutter their eyelids or maybe even swoon but of little real value. Please address the point.

If I am ever called upon to teach an English, writing or rhetoric class, I am going to use your comparing the Suez and Panama Canals to the South China Sea, as far as sovereignty and freedom of navigation on the high seas go, as a most perfect example of comparing apples to oranges, or maybe apples to left-handed monkey wrenches. I must cut it out, the students will see it straight away.

You think we should appease the Red Chinese. I don't. You think that will pay in the long run. I think it won't. That is the heart of our disagreement.

You're right, the Red Chinese have no intention of provoking and armed confrontation with Vietnam. Their intention is to get what they want by using the salami strategy Mr. Hakkick outlined thereby avoiding fighting. They are taking a calculated risk though. If they figure wrong and the Vietnamese get their backs up, there will be fighting, even though the Red Chinese didn't intend for it to happen. Armed robbers generally arm themselves because they have no intention of there being a tussle with the victim. Doesn't always work out that way.

If you can't see how the mere existence of the USN and decades and decades of an American policy of seeing that freedom of navigation be preserved upon the high seas is what allows the smaller countries around Red China to even think about resisting, if you can't see that old Sir...there ain't no getting through to you.