Red Carpet. Camera flashes. Black ties. Fine China. Hollywood celebrities. Colgate smiles. All the bells and whistles you'd expect for a visiting Head of State, albeit dictator, Hu Jintao. Sure, China has oppressed Tibet for decades and the rights of women even longer, but it's hard to bite the hand that feeds you - especially when you are guest for dinner.
The noted Nobel Peace Prize recipient, President Barack Obama, pulled out all the stops for Hu when he served poached lobster, organic greens and apple pie. Obama's little more than obligatory foreign policy comments during his State of the Union address gave indication there will be no tough stance on China, or even a clear substantive plan on how to reduce our dependency on and ties to a nation that serves as a sort of global Fannie Mae.
Rolling out the proverbial red carpet to tyrannical leaders is not new to the administration's foreign policy, but it doesn't make sense that another "hu" - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - was not given the same treatment last year - but treated like "an unsavory Third World dictator." Netanyahu's seemingly "invisible" White House visit was devoid the pomp and circumstance with no state dinner, no press conference and no photo op.
The visit was backward; completely opposite of what is intuitive concerning our relationship with Israel. Sort of like the antique comic book series "Bizzaro World," where everything is backwards and society is ruled by the Bizzaro Code: "Us do opposite of all Earthly things." [Sic] "Obama administration do opposite of smart foreign policy." [Sic]
Certainly humor is good for the soul, but unfortunately the rest of us are forced to live in the real world, and it's not funny anymore.
Given the perfect opportunity to stand strong against China's human rights infractions during the Hu press conference, Obama genuflected by his rationalization that "We come from very different cultures." Eating dogs is cultural. Alleged charges by human rights organizations of human organ harvesting, intolerance and punishment for organized dissent, torture, forced labor, no religious or personal freedom, forced abortions, political psychiatry, reverse racism to name a few is not cultural "“ it's communism in all its glory.
The failure to call evil for what it is "“ is to deny the existence of inherent evil in the world and instead believe that an errant social system will eventually evolve into a better form of itself. During the press conference, Obama's statement, "China is at a different stage of development than we are" was curious in that the suggestion was, America is evolving into a little China "“ or maybe China is becoming westernized.
Bizzaro.
Standing paralyzed and distinctly silent in the presence of evil is cowardly and dangerous. Speaking at Harvard University in 1978, Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned of the impending danger to a society when leaders begin to feel a "kinship" with communism and justify "communism's crimes." Solzhenitsyn questioned, "Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?"
History teaches us that the "end" of freedom is a slow process when liberalism leads to radicalism and radicalism to socialism. And communism naturally follows socialism. Karl Marx described this evolution process when he said "communism is naturalized humanism."
During his speech, Solzhenitsyn said any alliance with China was "a doomed alliance with Evil" that might grant America temporary respite until "a later date China with its billion people would turn around armed with American weapons, America itself would fall prey to a genocide similar to the one perpetrated in Cambodia."
China has been aggressive in trying to unseat the United States as the lone superpower in recent years by launching 15 satellites into space in 2010, the apparent manufacturing of a J-20 stealth fighter, reinforcing their naval capability with new Jin-class ballistic-missile submarines and the creation of cyber "information warfare units."
No worry, Jintao promises China is not a military threat to the U.S.
Hu's he trying to kid?
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©2011 Susan Stamper Brown. Susan's column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate. For info contact Cari Dawson Bartley. E-mail [email protected], (800) 696-7561
Susan is a motivational speaker and military advocate and can be reached at [email protected] her website www.susanstamperbrown.com and Facebook.