Rummy in Beijing: Ammunition for Future America-Bashers

"Every society has to be vigilant against another type of great wall that can be a burden on man's talents and is borne from fear of them — a wall that limits speech, information or choices," Mr. Rumsfeld told a group of about 30 students at the Central Party School. "Yet history teaches us that it is impossible, in practical terms, to isolate any people for long. Eventually, information seeps through."

As reported by Bill Gertz, Donald Rumsfeld is in Beijing. He is there because in times of peace, governments must make efforts to interact, get to know each other, and work out compromises.

However, if ever there is a showdown between China and the United States, future cynics will be able to build a whole case against the hypocritical American warmongers on the basis of one or two run-of-the-mill state visits (in which a lot of concern and similarly-sounding from-the-gut language was expressed), while conveniently ignoring the far greater range of super-friendly visits from tolerant and understanding European pacifists — a number of which concerned, you will remember, attempts to reestablish arms sales to Beijing.

Update: It didn't take long to confirm my prediction…