Word: matsue
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...ready to go to war over Quemoy and Matsu, sitting ducks for the Commies, and strategically zero in the defense of Formosa. We should throw away American lives for these little rocks off the Red Chinese coast...
...speech to the nation on the Formosa Straits situation, President Eisenhower committed the country to the defense of Quemoy and Matsu should negotiations prove fruitless, and declared simultaneously that any such parleys could lead to no agreement "prejudicing" the position of Chiang Kai-Shek. Little else could be said in a public pronouncement, for surely the U.S. could not announce that it would yield to Red China's show of force. But no public pronouncement would have been better than one in which the President hamstrung the country between the militarism of Mao Tse-Tung and the intransigence of Chiang...
...that there would be no repeat of Munich in the present crisis. But the coastal islands three miles off the mainland cannot be compared in strategic or moral importance to what in 1938 was the most democratic and strongest free nation in Central Europe. Military experts have testified that Matsu and besieged Quemoy are not important to the defense of Formosa, which lies about 100 miles further east. They possess significant military value only as offensive bridgeheads...
...present Administration which encouraged Chiang to commit about one third of his forces on the coastal islands after Eisenhower decided to "unleash" the Nationalists in 1953; and now the country is told that because the troops are on Quemoy and Matsu, the islands must be defended. Eisenhower and Dulles have let slip Chiang's leash just enough to allow him to drag us into a possible war--one which might spread and which we might face without allies...
...back into the Munich mood, and the American people too. That's the big issue-whether the world is aroused enough to take a stand. That's what the Chinese and Soviets are taking advantage of. That's the big issue, not Quemoy and Matsu. In the last four years there has been a very marked growth in the quality of appeasement, the idea of not getting involved in other people's fights. It is almost true that the U.S. is the only nation in the world today that is not in that mood...