Richard Hartzell is not the only one making this argument, US holds Taiwan’s sovereignty . . . he’s written about it elsewhere and here it is in the Taipei Times but the 51st State Association which advocates that Taiwan official become a US state uses similar reasoning, albeit they also throw in economic, political, and military security arguments.

I do believe Hartzell is wrong in one issue that ALL military actions in Taiwan during WWII were American . . . weren’t the guys in the Attack Force Zebra operations Australian? I’m not even going to bother to look it up as the argument doesn’t really stand much weight anyway as the US may or may not have had legitiamate territorial claims way back when but those claims were never exercised beyond having military bases here and even so when official recognition status was switched to the PRC rather than the ROC, all bases, embassies, and any right of claim were abandoned. If the US had the rights, the official abandonment of Taiwan at that time would cover such claims. If they weren’t exercised then they would revert to the local inhabitants at some level. Even if the US had a legal right to sovereignty claims over Taiwan, they would never exercise them . . . albeit they might use such claims to try to maintain the status quo. While the voice of the people of Taiwan doesn’t seem to matter much in this big ol’ world, China, Japan, the US, and a whole bunch of other places are deeply affected by what happens here and a few of those folks . . . well, millions of folks, actually . . . would be willing to kill just about everyone else to get their say.

For now, it’s all a game anyway. No one has defacto sovereignty over Taiwan except for the government of Taiwan, regardless of any gameplay with definitions or history. The trick is to keep the game going, everyone happily playing, without anyone getting so pissed they overturn the table and start throwing things that go boom.

Heads up from Chewin’ in the Chung . . . by the way, Karl, jus soli nationality is the principle that a person’s nationality at birth is determined by the place of birth. Just so you know.

Off topic, Karl has a whole slew of good posts up recently that I am tempted to just copy wholesale here but just suggest you go read ’em yourself . . . Spongebob equals Pro-Gay propaganda NOT . . . Academic Porn . . . lots of nekkid people but not rauncy enough to be porn.