On arguments and more on Tibet

I suppose in a way I cannot claim surprise at the reaction to my post, On random thoughts. After all I wrote that: [this post will] say something that I know some of my readers will have strong objections to, I think the civilized world ought to boycott the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer. I have thought at length about what I wrote and I am not backing down, to the contrary, it was a well written post that I believe a number of people read and misunderstood.

I'd like to point out that in the couple paragraphs I wrote about Tibet I contrasted the government of the People's Republic of China with the Bush Administration. As anyone who is a regular reader of my blog is no doubt only too well aware my views on America on complex and many dimensioned.

Let me be completely blunt. What is going on in Tibet is complicated, its ugly, there are no winners in this, as Isaac Asimov said, violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. I am confident that I am being exposed to something that amounts to western propaganda but I am even more confident that reports coming from the Eastern (i.e. Chinese) media are even more slanted and one sided. Ultimately this propaganda is leading to strong emotions and ill considered thoughts.

I am reminded of a line from the movie 13 Days where John McCone as played by Peter White states: "Bobby [RFK] sometimes there is only one right choice and you thank God when it's so clear." The fact is that is not true, almost always, even the example I just cited, McCone was advocating a sneak attack on Cuba to remove the Nuclear MRBMs the Soviets had placed on that Island in October of 1962.

On the other hand this blind acceptance that what we read in the paper, or watch on T.V. is the unadulterated truth is a criminal waste of a wonderfully sophisticated and fantastic instrument known as the human mind.

So do I believe that boycotting the games is a good thing? Yes absolutely, the people of China are not going to suffer or gain from an Olympics in the long term and the civilized World owes it to the government of China to say, this treatment of your own citizens, it is not acceptable, we won't tolerate it any longer.

Does this attitude represent a contradiction from past policies of our governments? Yes it does, and that's just life, its long past time for people to realize that no matter what we do, there will be some sort of reaction. We say nothing and the Olympics go on, ultimately the people of Tibet will hate us and possibly follow in the path of Osama Bin Laden. Just as we enabled the Shah of Iran then Saddam Hussein then the House of Saud, which as we know lead to the rise of Al Qaeda, our silent consent emboldens the rulers of China which I fear will ultimately lead to the same blow back we have seen already.

No matter what we do, there will be blow back, our break from our own ideals, by our complacency and sometimes by our design has landed us in this Catch-22. But if at least - to use the words of JFK - we say, let the word ring forth from this time and this place that no longer will we stand ideally by and allow our ideals to be sacrificed for the all mighty dollar, at least then when the blow back comes, we know it came for being true to our principals and not because we were intellectually or morally lazy.

This will, I hope be the last posting on this particular subject. I know I have angered some people and that's not a bad thing, when it is put to a constructive end. Go write a comment, or start a whole blog. Tell my why you think I am completely wrong, use well thought out ideals, sleep on your thoughts, put them together well so that in the end I must submit to your superior logic. But do not allow your emotions to cloud your judgment or cramp your writing, overly agitated thoughts make for bad writing.