Glenn Hurowitz, author of Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party, has a forceful op-ed in Politico today on Tibet, China, and the imperative for the US to “bring China to its knees” a la Congressman Charlie Wilson’s work to stop the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hurowitz challenges Tibetans to take a stronger stance than the Dalai Lama’s Middle Way in response to Chinese brutality.

Mahatma Gandhi was never as restrained as the Dalai Lama. Whereas the Dalai Lama renounced the goal of independence and even defends China’s right to hold the Beijing Olympics (and said he would like to attend the opening ceremonies), Gandhi moved in the opposite direction during his career. He first advocated for mere autonomy, but then, horrified by the British army’s massacre of hundreds of peaceful Indian protesters at Amritsar, embraced the cause of independence and never backed away until India achieved it. What’s more, he actively sought out confrontation with the British army: His march to the sea, his boycott of imported fabric and his general strikes were in large part intended to provoke a British reaction — and lay bare to the world the cruelty and immorality of the British occupation of India.

I agree with Hurowitz that the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile need to reevaluate the benefits of continuing to seek autonomy at a time when an uprising in Tibet extending more than a month demands freedom. Autonomy has not even produced negotiations – only mere “dialogues” – despite 30 plus years of nonviolence. The brutality the Chinese government has displayed in quashing Tibetan protests, coupled with the international smear campaign the Chinese government has waged against the Dalai Lama and nonviolent Tibetan support groups, should compel the Dalai Lama and the TGIE to demand more, not less, for Tibet.

Hurowitz concludes his piece:

Given the kind of government we’re dealing with, it would be wise to look to Gandhi’s acknowledgments that not every government had the same humanitarian side as the British. Although Gandhi taught that nonviolence was “infinitely superior to violence,” and even suggested that nonviolence could have stopped Nazi atrocities, at other times he admitted that violent resistance to foreign invasion can be appropriate in situations in which peaceful behavior would equal defeat.

“I would risk violence a thousand times rather than risk the emasculation of a whole race,” he wrote. “My method of nonviolence can never lead to loss of strength, but it alone will make it possible, if the nation wills it, to offer disciplined and concerted violence in time of danger.”

To save Tibet from China’s crackdown, the Tibetans will need more than just rhetoric and cheek-turning in the face of a brutal, unfeeling crackdown and ongoing ethnic cleansing — they’ll need real support, real confrontation and a real Charlie Wilson to be their hero. And when that happens, we might just see not only the end of Chinese repression in Tibet but also the end of China’s cruel regime.

I think Hurowitz understates the degree to which the actions by Tibetans inside Tibet in the last month – almost exclusively nonviolent, but in a few instances violent – are in fact an exercise in profound strength of the Tibetan people in the face of Chinese repression. The acts of nonviolent protest, from the display of the Chinese flag to the hoisting of pictures of the Dalai Lama to publicly assembling and singing the national anthem or chanting “Free Tibet” is a quite real confrontation with China’s repressive power. It has lead to thousands of detentions, hundreds of deaths, and an untold number of disappearances. Tibetans are publicly and fearlessly committing acts that they know may be death sentences.

What is missing, as Hurowitz points out, is international leadership to support them in both words and actions. In that regard, Hurowitz is 100% correct. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a handful of US Congressmen have been supportive of Tibet, but I don’t think this is what Hurowitz seeks. Leaving aside the power of outside support for armed resistance in Tibet, unequivocal international condemnation from governments and corporations around the world would strike a massive blow to the Chinese regime. That this has been substituted by a series of press releases and weak-worded requests for China to let international observers into Tibet shows how generally unwilling the international community is to take meaningful action on behalf of the Tibetan people. There is a real leadership gap between the needs of Tibet and what they are receiving in response; this must change if the international community is going to play a positive role in the resolution of China’s occupation of Tibet.