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Posted on 10/12/2009 7:59:17 PM PDT by Ooh-Ah
The Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibet, was in Washington last week and President Obama did not meet him. "Big mistake," said my Eritrean taxi driver on the way over to hear the Dalai Lama speak at an awards ceremony at Sidney Harman Hall on Wednesday.
What seemed so obvious to my driver was the product of an elaborate rationalization by the Obama administration. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg outlined the new policy of "strategic reassurance" in a speech on September 24. The United States, he said, has struck a "core, if tacit, bargain" with China under which it will "welcome China's arrival as a prosperous and successful power" and China will "reassure" the world that its "development and growing global role will not come at the expense of the security and well-being of others." According to Steinberg, "bolstering that bargain"--which apparently includes snubbing the Dalai Lama--is a "priority."
Rarely does a presidential meeting--or the lack of one--carry so much significance. In his spiritual role, the Dalai Lama has provided solace to those living inside Tibet under conditions of growing repression, militarization, and environmental degradation. Under his leadership, Tibetans in exile have established democratic institutions, including a parliament elected by the Tibetan diaspora, and turned over political functions to a prime minister. "I believe that future generations will consider these changes among the most important achievements of our experience in exile," the Dalai Lama has said.
Chinese Communist authorities fear such developments and the impact they have on Chinese citizens. At Wednesday's event, the Chinese writer Wang Lixiong accepted an award from the International Campaign for Tibet on behalf of some 300 Chinese intellectuals and activists who signed "Twelve Suggestions for Dealing with the Tibetan Situation," in response to the demonstrations of 2008 in Tibet and the mass arrests and trials with which they were met. The mostly ethnic Chinese signers of the document criticized official vilification of the Dalai Lama ("an evil spirit with a human face and the heart of a beast") as reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution and called for dialogue between the People's Republic of China and the Dalai Lama and reconciliation between Tibetans and Chinese.
"Our position," Wang said, "did not arise from choosing camps, it arose from a pursuit of the truth. . . . The fake propaganda and information blackout by the totalitarian power has made it difficult for the majority of the Chinese people to understand the truth about Tibet, and they have no way of knowing" that the Dalai Lama seeks rights and freedoms under Chinese rule, not independence. "Removing this obstacle [to solving the Tibet Question] should be the mission of China's intellectuals, for there is no greater knowledge than the truth."
The implications of this truth are enormous for China. "The racial hatred created by totalitarianism has perversely become a reason used by the totalitarians to reject democracy," Wang said. "This logic of kidnapper and hostage living or dying together is a difficult obstacle to remove along the path to democracy."
By effectively weakening the Dalai Lama, President Obama also weakens Wang and his colleagues and their mission. In the past, only pressure on China has brought results, such as renewed contacts between the Dalai Lama and representatives of the PRC in the late 1990s. President Obama's refusal to meet the Dalai Lama gives cover to other countries--most recently Australia--to succumb to pressure from China, increasing the isolation of the Tibetan leader. In the meantime, Chinese Communist rulers are making plans for the future, hoping to control the selection of the next Dalai Lama, drafting new "guidelines for reincarnation."
On Wednesday, the actor and Tibet supporter Richard Gere called on President Obama to exhibit the same "courage and wisdom" as the Chinese honored at the ceremony. The president can do so by scheduling a meeting with the Dalai Lama, as all his predecessors since George H.W. Bush did. On his upcoming trip to China in late November, the president should speak against Communist propaganda vilifying the Dalai Lama as an 'evil splitist.' Finally, the president should make it a condition of his visit that he be permitted to meet with Wang Lixiong, his wife Woeser--a persecuted Tibetan author--and other signers of the document, including the jailed Liu Xiaobo. This bolstering of individuals who risk so much for democracy and racial tolerance should be President Obama's priority.
Ellen Bork is director for democracy and human rights at the Foreign Policy Initiative.
Looks like that Noble prize is doing what it was meant to do.
From the play Three Faces of Obama:
Psychiatrist
“I want to talk to Leader Obama.
Can he come out to play?”
Child Obama
“No! He doesn’t want to play with you! Now leave me alone!
More than that, it is one more lie on the great heap of lies that is the foundation of this administration. ( I'm thinking Taras Bulba here. ) The reason was given earlier that the Dalai Lama was not being received at the White House because the meeting was scheduled for later. Canceling the later meeting is what passes for finesse in the domain of this craven and pusillanimous president.
If the Dalai Lama wants a meeting with Obama he needs to kill a few thousand inocent children (minimum amount of murders). He then needs to piss and moan about how misunderstood he is.
Then he is a shoe in at the WH.
I wonder what Richard Gere and the rest of h-wood thinks about this.
Obummer shows his a milk toast and takes his orders from China and the house of Saudi.
with the debt as it is, oh he KNOWS who MASSAH is, yesSAH..!
Rule 1 for leftists: Always side with evil.
Gere doesn't get it--Hussein can't do anything requiring courage, doesn't know what that means.All the New Age Progressives with FREE TIBET on their Subaru Forester bumpers who voted for China's rag doll.
Hussein will lick the bloodstained loafers of that sewer rat in Tehran but won't be seen with the Dalai Lama.
Hussein partied to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Beijing's meat grinder, but not the 50th anniversary of Tibet's enslavement.
Hell, the CIA was there fifty years ago fighting for Tibet's freedom from China--think Hussein would be on the right side of that issue?
He's a Communist.
0bama is a coward and a sap.
Hussein supports Zelaya, Chavez, Castro, Ahmadinejad, Qaddafi, Raila Odinga, and offered to negotiate with the Taleban.
But Faux-Prez Lady Gaga shuns His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
One of Hussein's nominees was toasted for praising the Tiananmen Massacre.
Charles Freeman -- Nominated, but not confirmed, as Chairman of the (United States) National Intelligence Council - which is responsible for producing national intelligence estimates for the president and his advisors. Mr. Freeman has a distinguished résumé of long service in both the State and Defense Departments, however, his "distinctive political views and affiliations" include: troubling financial ties to King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia who funds the Middle East Policy Council (formerly the American Arab Affairs Council) which Mr. Freeman heads; organizational support for professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt's lengthy, controversial, and essentially anti-Jewish essay, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"; his stated viewpoint that "the primary reason America confronts a terrorism problem today is "the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation"; praise for the terrorist organization, Hamas, as the only "democratically-elected" government in the Middle East; and, bizarrely, unabashedly siding with the Chinese government over the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989 - Mr. Freeman criticized the Chinese government for being "overly cautious."
This man is delusional about his own humanity
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