US Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) on Tuesday mistakenly listed the U.S. as having 30,000 troops stationed in Taiwan, a country that has not seen an American military presence in over 40 years, leading to widespread criticism on Twitter and from Communist China.
Mainland China claims Taiwan as part of China, and often threatens it with military conquest. Even rumors of a massive US military presence on the island is likely to cause alarm in China.
In the wake of the disastrous collapse of the Afghan government following the rushed withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country, many politicians are arguing that the relatively small force that the U.S. had in place maintained stability in the nation at a comparatively low cost in terms of lives and money.
To illustrate this point, Cornyn took to Twitter on Tuesday to list other current U.S. troop deployments around the world that are much higher than the 2,500 stationed in Afghanistan as recently as two months ago.
Among the countries listed with major troop contingents were South Korea, Germany, Japan, and Taiwan, where he cited 30,000 soldiers in place. However, the U.S. has not stationed troops in Taiwan since 1979, when former President Carter severed diplomatic relations with the country.
Kuomintang, a political party based in Taiwan, responded to Cornyn to dispute the numbers. It posted: "There are not 30,000 US troops in Taiwan! The last U.S. soldier left Taiwan on 3 May 1979."
The erroneous figure was removed from his Twitter feed quickly by Cornyn's team.
(Full story here.)
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