by WorldTribune Staff, April 25, 2024
Is the takeover of the United States by a foreign power being obscured by an ongoing civil war within?
During a recent House Oversight Committee hearing, Chairman James Comer indicated criminal referrals could be coming in the Biden impeachment inquiry. This incensed Maryland Democrat committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin, and a shouting match ensued.
Legacy media played up the Comer-Raskin theatrics more than the important testimony that was given.
The hearing was about Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence in the United States. Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine officer and former U.S. diplomat and author of the book “When China Attacks: A Warning To America”, testified at the hearing.
In an April 24 op-ed for Fox News Digital, Newsham covers what he said at the hearing as well as what he didn’t get to say due to the brouhaha.
“Bottom line: America no longer enjoys the protection of ‘distance’ that our strategic community has taken for granted for centuries. The last time the American mainland faced a serious invasion by a foreign power was the War of 1812,” Newsham wrote. “The CCP has systematically taken away that advantage through a multifront political warfare campaign against us.”
Most obvious is the CCP’s “cyber penetration of America and Americans,” Newsham noted. “Communists sitting in China are in our critical infrastructure, communications systems, cars, health care, genetic data and schools. China’s 2015 hacking of OPM gave extremely personal files on 22 million Americans holding security clearances.”
“The same Americans who were furious about a Chinese spy balloon floating over their heads have Chinese spy apps loaded on their phones, sitting in their pockets,” he added.
The fact that Chinese-origin fentanyl has killed tens of, if not hundreds of, thousands of Americans also proves that distance doesn’t protect the U.S. from China’s “devastating chemical warfare either,” Newsham added. “Beijing could stop it if it wants. But why should it? It is weakening its greatest enemy, and we aren’t doing anything about it.”
On the economic front, the CCP “in a targeted way, has been destroying our manufacturing and other commercial sectors, including ones critical for defense, like shipbuilding and critical minerals,” Newsham wrote. “We’ve lost millions of jobs over the last 20 years, hundreds of billions in revenue a year, and are dependent on China for everything from pharmaceuticals to components in F-35s.”
To start fighting back, Newsham noted, “the U.S. government needs to relearn political warfare and someone needs to be responsible for the political warfare effort – and its success or failure. Currently, nobody is. And, at a minimum, we should implement a reciprocity standard. We can’t buy land near a military base in China. They shouldn’t be able to buy land near ours.”
China’s brutal human rights abuses should be a constant issue, Newsham noted. “Oppressing people is necessary for the survival of the CCP system. Everyone should know that. And we should protect all people of Chinese descent in the U.S. from intimidation by CCP agents.”
Those are the topics Newsham was able to address during the Oversight hearing.
If the hearing hadn’t gone off the rails, Newsham said he would have noted that “Ukraine is important and if Putin ‘wins,’ you can bet China will be emboldened.”
But as a basic miliary principle, if you focus on one front and ignore other important fronts – particularly “behind your front lines” – you lose.
On the border, Newsham would have told the committee that “our wide-open borders are setting us up for defeat. Theatrics about Ukraine are just that, theatrics, if the borders are being ignored. Through the fentanyl pouring across our border, the Chinese have killed more Americans than Putin has killed Ukrainians.”
Newsham continued:
“The CCP has been conducting political war from the time of their founding – and against us for at least 50 years. For the CCP, Ukraine is a side-show. It’ll take advantage of it, but its attack on us won’t stop. Until we do something about it.
“But if asked how serious Congress is about taking on the Chinese threat, I’d have to say ‘some of them are. But only some of them.’ And if a young Marine asked me if it is worth dying for America? ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ The only people who should be happy about the theatrics at that hearing are in Beijing.”