Does Chen want to get off the hook that bad?

Earlier last week, President Chen said he was suing U.S. President Barack Obama and his Secretary of Defense Robert Gates for failure to continue placing Taiwan under U.S. military occupation. Actually, he asked an American lawyer, Jonathan Levy, to file a petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces for a writ of certiorari, which is issued by a superior court to call up records of the proceeding in an inferior court to prove that the islands of Taiwan and Penghu still belong to Uncle Sam, who should have a military or civil government to rule it.

There may seem to be some point to the Chen claim. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's troops came to reoccupy Taiwan under General Order No. 1 of General Douglas A. MacArthur, supreme commander of the Allied forces in Asia and the Pacific.

Chiang doubled as Allied commander-in-chief of the India-Burma-China theater then. He duly obeyed the order of the five-star general, who also ruled Japan until he was fired by President Harry S. Truman, shortly after the People's Liberation Army entered the Korean War.

　　Chen claimed that an American military government has existed since October 25, 1945 when Chiang's representative accepted the instruments of surrender in Taipei from General Rikichi Ando, commander-in-chief of the Japanese forces in Taiwan and concurrently governor-general of what was referred to in the Cairo Declaration of 1943 as Formosa and the Pescadores. Incidentally, that day used to be celebrated as a national holiday to mark Taiwan's retrocession to the Republic of China before Chen was elected president in 2000.

Then, later last week, President Chen announced he wasn't initiating any litigation against Obama, who has just received this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Well, he had to do so, for the American military appellate court turned down the Chen petition, declaring it doesn't have jurisdiction over the case brought by the former president. According to Levy, all Chen wanted was to “pray” that Obama as commander-in-chief would order his proxy in Taiwan, who is President Ma Ying-jeou, to order the Taiwan High Court to release him from Tucheng.

In the petition he made to the court of appeals in Washington, D.C., President Chen claims he was an agent of the U.S. military government for eight years from 2000 to 2008. He stated he received orders from the American Institute in Taiwan to rule on its behalf. He insisted his employer is duty-bound to bail him out of his current predicament. He was convicted of corruption and sentenced to life in prison on September 11. He is appealing, albeit he has been detained since December 30 last year.

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