Obama Snubs the Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama, the great spiritual leader of millions of Tibetans, is visiting Washington for a week of meetings with Congressional leaders and other political movers and shakers. Those will not include Barack Obama and it is a deliberate snub.

It seems that President Obama feels that appeasing China in hopes of acquiring its cooperation in the Iran and North Korea problems is more important than meeting with the Dalai Lama, something that President Clinton and both Presidents Bush did without too much trouble. This seems to be a shift in attitude on the part of President Obama, who, as Senator Obama, urged a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics to protest China's human rights record.

Communist China invaded and conquered Tibet in 1950 and has ruled it ever since as a province. The Dalai Lama, then a young man, was forced to fleet and has lived in exile for nearly sixty years. China regards the Dalai Lama as illegitimate and a "separatist" for campaigning for human rights and independence for Tibet. China has waged a campaign to discourage world leaders from meeting with the Dalai Lama in an attempt to undercut his credibility.

By caving into China's demands, President Obama once again sends a signal of weakness and an almost obsessive desire to please enemies while snubbing friends. This is not just an immoral strategy, but a counterproductive one. If a tyranny such as China gets the idea that an American President will dance to its tune, it will push that advantage to the limit and beyond. Eventually President Obama must tell the Chinese no. It should have been with the Dalai Lama and not, as it will likely be now, something with a high profile and weightier stakes.

President Obama's snubbing of the Dalai Lama is also politically stupid. If there is one thing that the Hollywood Left and conservatives agree upon is that Chinese rule in Tibet is oppressive and evil. Barack Obama may believe that he can annoy Richard Gere, himself a Buddhist who once famously urged the audience at the Academy Awards to send good vibes to facilitate the liberation of Tibet, and he could be right. On the other hand the spectacle of an American President eager to meet with the likes of Hugo Chavez and Ahmadinejad, but who hides from the Dalai :Lama is not very edifying. It suggests a man who does not realize that one is judged by the company one keeps.

Source: Alex Spillius, the Telegraph, October 5th, 2009