So we hear the Dalai Lama very happy with his meeting with Barack Obama, but one would never know from the president of the United States himself. Obama refused to be seen publicly with the leader of the persecuted Tibetan people.
What a stark contrast in our president’s treatment of world leaders. While Saudi kings and Japanese emperors get exaggerated, genuflecting bows to their own astonishment and our national discomfort, the Dalai Lama gets brushed off at the White House.
In the course of human history there are very few consequential figures who instantly personify the best in human character. We all know the great peacemakers and teachers: Jesus Christ, Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, Confucius, and more recently Mahatma Gandhi. In 2010 there is no person alive on earth who better stands for Hope than the Dalai Lama himself.
And yet like Peter denying Christ three times, our President Barack Obama has denied a public audience with the Dalai Lama twice already. The first was in 2009 where he inexplicably refused to even meet with the spiritual leader. The second was February 19th at the White House when the president met privately with the Dalai Lama but refused to be seen publicly with him.
Like Peter afraid of the Romans, our president is apparently afraid of offending the communist Chinese. They don’t like the Dalai Lama because he speaks democratic truth to power. He speaks an inconvenient truth for it apparently puts our president in an awkward position. He campaigned on a promise of improving relations with the communist Chinese, a goal that has proven elusive despite the great deference he has afforded the totalitarian regime.
In 2009 Obama gave into pressures from the communists by refusing to meet with this great leader of Hope for his Tibetan people. This year he made a very public point of representing that the meeting wasn’t really a meeting after all. It is a matter of having one’s bread and eating it too. Obama met with him on the one hand, but then he didn’t meet with him on camera, in front of reporters or the American people.
No photographers. No video. No reporters. The Nobel Peace Prize winner left the world’s great peacemaker to fend for himself in front of the press corps as you can see in the video below. Go figure the nuance. Read more here and here and here.
So as an eternally peaceful man, we should not be surprised at all that the Dalai Lama ‘very happy’ with his meeting with Obama. He has been happy all his life. If only the reverse were true we would have principled leaders of our own to be proud of again.
Reader comments are invited but please first see the video below.
Obama – Dalai Lama Video
Photo: Luca Galuzzi – www.galuzzi.it
February 19th, 2010 at 2:22 am
this is a very bad way to deal with china
china has a superiority complex already when dealing with the west, it is not good to kow tow to them
china is not our friend and never will be.
February 23rd, 2010 at 9:24 pm
LOL lisab. What is the good way to deal with China then? Borrow hundreds of billions of dollars and then not pay attention to what they say? If the US had any sense of morality or pride, 2 traits that we constantly parade around the world with, we wouldn’t have borrowed money from a country that’s “not our friend” in the first place. Maybe you’d like our economy to go into deeper sh1t and lose your job as well.
Try to use your head next time, if you owe someone money and don’t deal with them with care, what would happen to you? They have the right to feel superior, but it seems that fact doesn’t get through your thick and biased skull.
Obama is doing the right thing, he’s standing by his morals while not pissing off our creditors too much and make it worse for our economy. Be glad he met with the DL in the first place. He cannot do much more. Get out of your bubble and use logic for once, and think about our country’s situation, and the advantage China has over us, or soon we’ll all be singing Mao songs in our schools thanks to people like you. Doing whatever you wanted while not caring what any other country thinks no long works now.
February 23rd, 2010 at 11:05 pm
Obsilord – the economic issue with China is a co-dependency. Yes we owe China money (shamefully), but a great deal of their revenue comes from the sale of products made in China in the United States. Who else buys their products to the degree that Americans do? Check out the ‘Made in China’ labels at Wal-Mart.