Straight Platform Politics

Noticing The Dalai Lama Snub

The world took note when President Obama decided not to meet with the Dalai Lama when the exiled Tibetan leader visited the U.S. earlier this month. The administration tried to pacify China by not receiving this distinguished Nobel Peace Prize recipient. See previous post

Alison Smale noted in the New York Times (10/14/09) that when interviewing Vaclav Havel, a leader in the non-violent overthrow of communism in Czechoslavakia, he had a question for her. “Was it true, he wanted to know, that President Barack Obama had refused to meet the Dalai Lama in Washington?”

Ms. Smale told the former Czech president that President Obama would meet with the Dalai Lama after the President’s visit to China. His response? “It is only a minor compromise….But exactly with these minor compromises start the big and dangerous ones, the real problems.”

Maureen Dowd, also of The Times, weighed in with this: “The tyro American president got the Nobel for the mere anticipation that he would provide bold moral leadership for the world at the very moment he was caving to Chinese dictators. Awkward.”

Awkward, indeed. The Dalai Lama, the Nobel Peace Prize, and human rights were forced to take a backseat to a dictatorship. And that’s what the world noticed.

Alison Smale, Czechoslavakia, Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama's visit, Maureen Dowd, Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama, Tibet, Vaclav Havel, human rights