When last we saw New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, he was engaged in some serious wankery by asking his Chinese readers to submit comments to him about what they think about what’s going on in Tibet, but made no similar request for input from Tibetans. Yesterday the column based on input from readers ran in the Times. I’m just getting to it now because it’s been a busy few days for me, but I think it merits a thorough examination.

Kristof’s most salient point – and one most reminiscent of journalism free of personal prejudices – comes in the second paragraph. Kristof writes:

It would be convenient if we could simply denounce the crackdown in Tibet as the unpopular action of a dictatorial government. But it wasn’t. It was the popular action of a dictatorial government, and many ordinary Chinese think the government acted too wimpishly, showing far too much restraint toward “thugs” and “rioters.”

As I and others have been saying repeatedly, Chinese nationalism is a major factor in China’s response. There has been a real push from the Han Chinese population in mainland China for stronger responses and harsher rhetoric, something that the CCP has been all-too willing to oblige and foment in return. Unfortunately after this insight, Kristof engages in armchair punditry of the worst sort, by diminishing the hardships Tibetans suffer under and seeking to appease powerful Chinese interests, all in the name of Serious consideration of the matters at hand.

First is the Olympic wankery:

The best answer is: Postpone the decision until the last minute so as to extort every last ounce of good behavior possible out of the Chinese government — on Darfur as well as Tibet. But at the end of the day, if there have been no further abuses, President Bush should attend — for staying away would only inflame Chinese nationalism and make Beijing more obdurate.

Ah yes, we continue to do nothing in the hopes that by doing nothing, we will suddenly force China to do something. Which they haven’t. And then, when we concede we must do something, we should do nothing, because otherwise China will behave even worse. I’m not sure Tibetans, Uighurs, Falun Gong practioners, or Han Chinese dissidents can survive such a Serious and Thoughtful prescription offered by Kristof.

No worries, Kristof has a way of making his Serious Plan even more Thoughtful:

If President Bush attends the ceremonies, however, he should balance that with a day trip to a Tibetan area. Such a visit would underscore American concern, even if the Chinese trot out fake monks to express fake contentment with fake freedom.

Yes, the mere act of forcing the Chinese to put on another Theresienstadt-esq dog and pony show would be a Very Serious way to show America’s concern. I can see the Chinese quaking in their boots at the thought of such a hard-hitting investigation lead by President Bush.

Moving on, Kristof offers this gem:

The Dalai Lama is the last, best hope for reaching an agreement that would resolve the dispute over Tibet forever.

Um, Nick. The Dalai Lama is also the first, best hope for reaching an agreement. See, the Dalai Lama was the leader of Tibet in 1949 when it was invaded by Mao’s army. He was the leader of Tibet for 10 years of Chinese occupation, during which time his representatives negotiated the infamous “17 Point Agreement” under duress (an agreement which, nonetheless, has never been honored by the PRC). In 1959, the Dalai Lama, seeing the Agreement not being followed and no hope for China to ever treat Tibet well, rejected it and went into exile. Since the 1970s the Dalai Lama has pursued autonomy over independence. China has never sat down to the negotiating table with him, despite repeated entreaties by the world community. Quite simply, the Dalai Lama has never been the obstacle to resolution – it has always been the Chinese government. And given that China’s strategy vis a vis Tibet is to wait until HHDL dies so they can push a puppet onto the Tibetan people, I don’t think China is concerned about the Dalai Lama being the “last, best hope.” Lastly, it is painfully offensive for Kristof to presume to know what the Tibetan people will seek in their leadership when the Dalai Lama dies. The Dalai Lama is the first hope for Tibetans to find freedom, but if he dies with that dream unfulfilled, I assure Mr. Kristof that it will survive in subsequent Tibetan leaders, be they secular or religious.

Kristof goes on to broker his own resolution to the Tibet question, something that I am fairly certain not a single Tibetan in exile or inside Tibet has ever asked him to do:

The outlines of an agreement would be simple. The Dalai Lama would return to Tibet as a spiritual leader, and Tibetans would be permitted to possess his picture and revere him, while he would unequivocally accept Chinese sovereignty. Monasteries would have much greater religious freedom, and Han Chinese migration to Tibet would be limited. The Dalai Lama would also accept that the Tibetan region encompasses only what is now labeled Tibet on the maps, not the much larger region of historic Tibet that he has continued to claim.

Boy, that is simple. Tibetans get spiritual autonomy in exchange for a massive reduction in the size of their country and no future for independence in their land. That is, in exchange for the basic human right of religious freedom, Kristof contends Tibetans must give up their human right of self-determination while still accepting some form of Chinese settlement in Tibet. For Kristof, the benefits are all on China’s side:

With such an arrangement, China could resolve the problem of Tibet, improve its international image, reassure Taiwan and rectify a 50-year-old policy of repression that has catastrophically failed.

Honestly Nick, go fuck yourself. This is a question of basic human freedoms and human rights. China’s national image has nothing – nothing – to do with human rights. There is no internationally recognized right to save face or to be well regarded by other countries. There are, on the other hand, international treaties recognizing a peoples right to free speech, free religion, and self-determination. There are also international laws prohibiting one country from invading another and occupying it, while committing genocide on the local population. But we can forget all of that if we can just find a way to trade an improved international image for China with one basic right for Tibetans. If anything is clear over the last 50 years, it’s that Tibetans are not a people whose aspirations can be reduced to their faith. Tibetans want freedom, plain and simple. The implication that the only thing they care about is getting to pray before a picture of the Dalai Lama is nothing more than a racist infantilization.

Kristof’s tour of anti-Tibetan wankery takes a turn towards libel further on in the column:

After the Dalai Lama dies, there will be no one to hold Tibetans back, and more militant organizers in the Tibetan Youth Congress and other organizations will turn to violence, and perhaps terrorism.

The Tibetan Youth Congress is not a “militant organiz[ation]”. There is no evidence that Kristof can point to support his claim. Likewise there is no evidence that TYC or any other Tibetan organization would turn to “terrorism.” Tibetans have been, in all likelihood, the most consistently nonviolent independence movement in modern history. The casual suggestion that a major Tibetan support group operating in exile is a militant organization is quite simply beyond the pale. TYC is an organization that supports Tibetan independence and their activists are in many ways the backbone of the globe independence movement. But “militant”? Please. TYC’s militancy extends primarily to their commitment to nonviolence as a means of gaining independence. They have used hunger strikes on a number of occasions to raise awareness of Tibet, but how could this possibly make them “militant”? Kristof is talking out of his ass and he’s libeling a respectable organization in so doing.

Kristof ends his column with two paragraphs that again reveal his inability to address the Tibet situation in a moral or thoughtful way:

The only other Tibetan who could fill that vacuum is the Panchen Lama, the No. 2 Tibetan leader, who turns 19 later this month. But the Chinese government kidnapped the Panchen Lama when he was 6 years old and apparently has kept him under house arrest ever since.

Americans sometimes think that the Tibetan resentments are just about political and religious freedom. They’re much more complicated than that. Tibetan anger is also fueled by the success of Han Chinese shop owners, who are often better educated and more entrepreneurial. So Tibetans seek solace in monasteries or bars, and the economic gap widens and provokes even more frustration — which the spotlight of the Olympics gives them a chance to express.

Kristof has just described a number of monumental transgressions by China against Tibet. The kidnapping of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the six year old Panchen Lama, is glossed over. The Panchen Lama was, until recently, the world’s youngest political prisoner. No one has ever seen or heard from him since he was kidnapped, yet Kristof makes no moral judgment about this gross offense to the rule of law and the most basic standards of human behavior by the Chinese government. In fact, kidnapped cannot be the right word. China disappeared the Panchen Lama.

Kristof follows that with an amplification of the problems Tibetans in Tibet face at the hands of China’s occupation. The economic situation for Tibetans is disastrous, though it’s not as balanced in its genesis as Kristof depicts it. Chinese policies limit the amount of education Tibetans can receive. Chinese settlers are given preference in all facets of economic life over Tibetans. Tibet is commodified as a tourist attraction for Chinese tourists, and then Tibetans are shut out of profiting from this industry, other than through bars, night clubs, and brothels. Kristof again writes of this tragedy, but refuses to make a moral assessment of what China and the Chinese occupation is doing to Tibetans. He can only give Tibetans credit for recognizing the world will pay attention to them now because of the Olympics. Quite simply, Kristof is morally corrupt when it comes to Tibet and China. I would hope his editors at the Times prohibit Kristof from writing any more columns on Tibet until he develops a moral compass that is capable of telling him that it is acceptable to outraged at cultural, economic, and physical genocide. And the disappearing of six year old children is objectionable, too, yet Kristof is incapable of casting aspersions on Beijing when it comes to their atrocities in Tibet.

It’s remarkable to me that Kristof can be such a passionate, ardent advocate on behalf of Darfur and yet engage in such equivocation and apologism for China when it comes to Tibet. What makes Kristof’s advocacy for Darfur admirable is what makes his dismissiveness towards Tibet so infuriating: he is a true Sinophile, he is married to a Chinese woman, and he frequently writes from China. This hasn’t corrupted his moral compass when it comes to Darfur, but as soon as he touches Tibet, he seems to forget that there are universal standards for human behavior and morality. Kristof embraces the worst tendencies of opinion writers seeking Serious solutions to problems that are both patently offensive on their face and done in bad faith in the absence of morality.

I don’t know what Nick Kristof’s goals were for writing this column. In the traditional opinion journalist way, he presented a Very Serious discussion of Tibet that succeeded in preaching inaction, proposing a solution to the Tibet question predicated on an infantilized version of Tibetans and Tibetans conceding basic human rights, libeled a major nonviolent Tibetan support group, and failed to pass moral judgment on China’s disappearance of a six year old child. This piece does nothing to stop China’s crackdown in Tibet. It exists as a monument to the mindset promoted by Kristof (and in recent years by his colleague Tom Friedman vis a vis Iraq) that by thinking hard and wishing hard, but doing nothing and taking no responsibility for their words, opinion journalists can sleep well knowing they are Deeply Serious People who confront Hard issues without fear. Sadly, this mindset will go down in the annals of history as one that lead to more war, more violence, more suffering, and a propensity for inaction by those with the power to do something in the face of moral imperatives that has marked the early 21st century.