Chiefs of Staff Calling for Major Change

Brandon Friedman at VetVoice calls attention to recent comments by Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen that both speak to the military reaching a breaking point because of Iraq, one that threatens its ability to exist as an all-volunteer force. Friedman sees this as a major push by the Chiefs of Staff to get the Bush administration to recognize that there is a dire need for policy change in Iraq.

In less than a week now, the Army Vice Chief of Staff and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have both expressed to Congress and the President that there are simply no more troops available to keep up the current pace of operations. And they’ve both implied that the “All-Volunteer Force” has reached the limits of its capability. I’d call that a pattern. And I’d also call it the first step toward giving the civilian leadership the ultimatum it apparently needs hear.

These comments are a not-so-subtle challenge from the military to President Bush and the Congress: Either get us the fuck out of here, or send help.

I wonder if the Bush administration will listen to these concerns or if, like the economy, they will simply pass the problem along to their successor without implementing the solutions proposed by independent experts. Knowing what we know about the Bush administration and their lack of concern for what people in the military have to say about their poor strategic vision, I would be shocked if they take this not-so-subtle prodding to heart and scale back our presence in Iraq to preserve the health of our military and the safety of our nation.

Japanese Royal Family Likely Skippin Olympics

Via commenter news4vip, It looks like Japan’s royal family will not be attending the Beijing Olympics. While there are other underlying factors for this decision, including China exporting tainted food to Japan, it appears that China’s violent crackdown in Tibet has been the deciding factor in the government’s decision not to ask the royal family to go to Beijing.

Japan’s Emperor Akihito and other members of the royal family are unlikely to attend the Beijing Olympics amid concerns here about China’s crackdown in Tibet and other issues, a report said Wednesday.

The Japanese government thinks it is not a good time for a rare royal visit because of the unrest in Tibet, a recent health scare over Chinese-made “gyoza” dumplings and a spat over disputed gas fields, the Sankei daily said.

“We were planning not to ask royals to go even before the gyoza incident (surfaced in January). It is all the more true now that the Tibetan unrest occurred,” it quoted an unnamed government official as saying.

Rebiya Kadeer in the WaPo

Uighur activist and former political prisoner Rebiya Kadeer has an op-ed in today’s Washington Post expressing the Uighur peoples’ solidarity with Tibetans in their pursuit for freedom. East Turkestan, like Tibet, is under a military occupation by China and Uighurs live under intense oppression at the hands of China. Worse, East Turkestan has never received the same international attention as Tibet. Kadeer should be a household name for her principled leadership through nonviolence; despite her peoples’ largely anonymous struggle, Kadeer has been a great ally to Tibetans and she shows it in this piece.

Kadeer writes:

Because of our shared experience under the Chinese regime, Uighurs stand in solidarity with the Tibetan people and support their legitimate aspirations for genuine autonomy. The Chinese government’s fierce repression of religious expression, its intolerance for any expression of discontent, its discriminatory economic policies and its support for the movement of migrants have linked Tibet and East Turkestan and have led to the tremendous social tensions in both regions. To Beijing, any Tibetan or Uighur who is unhappy with China’s harsh rule is a “separatist.” Uighurs are also labeled “terrorists.”
…
The Olympic torch arrived in Beijing yesterday, and at the end of June it will be carried through Tibet, to the top of Mount Everest and through the streets of Lhasa. From there the flame will be carried to the cities of East Turkestan, including Kashgar, a center of traditional Uighur culture, and Urumqi, the regional capital. China calls the torch relay a “journey of harmony,” hoping the unifying spirit of the Olympics will disguise the reality of its brutal rule.

But true harmony can never be achieved as long as the Communist Party enforces policies of cultural assimilation and political persecution in Tibet and East Turkestan. If China wishes to become a responsible member of the international community, its government must engage in a meaningful dialogue that addresses the sources of discontent in Tibet and East Turkestan.

Read her whole piece, which includes some basic background on China’s oppression in East Turkestan and the Uighur struggle for independence from Chinese rule.

Laughed Out of the Room

Starting on March 10th, Tibetans around Tibet, often lead by monks and nuns, staged peaceful protests. Chinese security forces responded by cracking down on monasteries and nunneries, initially around Lhasa but elsewhere as well. In response, on March 14th, riots took place in Lhasa. There have been continual acts of protest – almost entirely non-violent – since then, but the Chinese government has repeatedly claimed that they have “evidence” that the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile orchestrated the uprising, both violent and non-violent. More recently, China has been putting forward statements from a monk who they say was an agent provocateur for the TGIE. Despite weeks of insisting they have evidence to support their claims, the Chinese government has never produced evidence that the TGIE or the Dalai Lama instigated an uprising from exile, nor have they held press conferences or produced the monk referred to in statements to answer questions about how he allegedly incited the uprising. In short, China’s statements are as proven as my statement that Hu Jintao and Jacques Rogge like to bugger goats together under a full moon (which is true, according to a goat handler who has confessed to me that he provided the goats for Hu and Rogge’s evenings of bestiality).

The latest unsubstantiated charge coming out of China is that Tibetan monks, under the guidance of the Dalai Lama, were preparing suicide squads with equipped with tens of thousands of sticks of dynamite and other small arms, which had been hidden in Lhasa. I’ve read a lot of press accounts, both in American politics and foreign news, where the journalist is dealing with spurious claims, but this Associated Press story of China’s latest made up shit evidence against the Dalai Lama is as close as I’ve ever seen an article come to the written equivalent of laughing the subject out of the room and down the hall amidst a hail of boos. The article refutes China’s claims as spurious not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six separate times:

The Tibetan government-in-exile swiftly denied the charge, and the Bush administration rushed to the Tibetan Buddhist leader’s defense, calling him “a man of peace.”

“There is absolutely no indication that he wants to do anything other than have a dialogue with China on how to discuss the serious issues there,” State Department spokesman Tom Casey said…

“Tibetan exiles are 100 percent committed to nonviolence. There is no question of suicide attacks,” Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the government-in-exile in Dharmsala, India, said Tuesday. “But we fear that Chinese might masquerade as Tibetans and plan such attacks to give bad publicity to Tibetans.”

Experts on terrorism and security risks facing Beijing and the Olympics have not cited any Tibet group as a threat…

“There is no evidence of support for any kind of violence against China or Chinese,” said Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet expert at Westminster University in London….

Andrew Fischer, a fellow at the London School of Economics who researches Chinese development policies in Tibetan areas of China, dismissed Wu’s warnings as “completely ridiculous.”

I wonder what it’s like to be called a liar by six different sources in one article.

I think that this is far more for domestic consumption than to get international approval for their violent, murderous crackdown in Tibet. These sorts of unsubstantiated claims foment nationalism and we’re already seeing a serious uptick in Han Chinese nationalist sentiments against Tibet. I can’t possibly believe that the Chinese government thinks the world will buy their lies about Tibetan monk suicide squads sent on missions by the Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Tibet Caucus

Via Mikel Dunham, Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) have formed the Tibet Caucus in Congress and have invited their colleagues to join them. Here’s the text of the Dear Colleague letter Abercrombie and Rohrabacher:

Dear Colleague,

In 1941-1951, the newly established Chinese Communist regime sent military troops to occupy Tibet. Since then, Tibet has been under active Beijing rule. The occupation of Tibet by the Peoples Republic of China’s (PRC) has been disastrous for the Tibetan people. Most monasteries, religious structures and other aspects of Tibetan Buddhism and culture were either totally destroyed or damaged. There are reports that over 1 million Tibetans died during the first 30 years of PRC rule. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has mercilessly repressed policital dissent and religious freedom of Tibet.

In 1959, at the age of 24, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, fled Tibet, under threat of imprisonment and execution, and went into exile in India with a group of his followers. He remains there today, along with a Tibetan refugee community of tens of thousands, and he is still widely regarded as the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, their foremost advocate, and a figure of international stature. He has stated his willingness to accept cultural autonomy for Tibet under the Chinese Constitution. He has also been willing to negotiate with Beijing and has advanced a number of very moderate proposals regarding Tibet’s future status. The Communist regime, however has only met this attempt at accommodation with stiff opposition, and is currently instigating yet another crackdown in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics.

Congress has stood strongly by the Tibetan people as they bravely struggled for their rights. In 1991 the Congress passed a resolution stating that Tibet is an occupied country. We cannot stand silently by and watch as another wave of brutality and oppression sweeps across the country by the Beijing regime. We urge you to join the Tibetan Caucus to uphold the rights of the Tibetan people and give a voice to those that the Chinese regime has silenced.

Hopefully there’s a good enrollment in the new Tibet Caucus.

Chinese Ultra-Nationalism Showing Itself Online

Lhasa Rising at Tibet Will Be Free runs through a spoof copy of The People’s Daily that is circulating widely in China now that includes jokes about the murder of the Dalai Lama, an earthquake killing everyone in Japan, China testing a nuclear weapon in San Francisco, China accidentally bombing the Pentagon, and China re-absorbing Taiwan. LR writes:

Ultra-nationalism doesn’t spring about in a vacuum (Rwanda, Bosnia, etc. – they were all state-incited).  The Chinese government needs to start acting as a responsible member of the world community, not like a genocidal and thuggish clique.  Unfortunately when it comes to Tibet, it seems that Beijing reverts to barbarism.

Go read the full post – there’s nothing funny about this “spoof” and given Beijing’s intense internet censorship, this “spoof” seems to at least be tacitly approved of by the Chinese government.

A Limited World of Ideas

I can’t decide if this quote, from a piece on Obama’s rhetoric, is monumentally depressing or incredibly patronizing.

“If you’re an unemployed steelworker, a former coal miner, you want to know about job training, who pays your health care,” Dr. Madonna said. “Obama’s speeches are uplifting but without much specificity, and that’s a tough sell for working people who don’t live in a world of ideas.”

I suppose it can be both.

Don’t Back Down

Today’s Wall Street Journal includes a piece by Siobhan Gorman that reports that Bush is pushing Congressional Dems to come to the negotiating table on FISA and that he’s willing to make some concessions from his previous hard-line of retroactive immunity and expanded executive powers.

Over the two-week spring recess, administration officials contacted Democratic leaders to suggest they were open to compromise on updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “We definitely want to get it done,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. “We’ve had some initial conversations with Congress about the need to get FISA reform done quickly.” He added that Mr. Bush still prefers the Senate measure, which the White House negotiated with Senate Democrats.

In addition to rejecting immunity for companies, House Democrats want tougher judicial oversight of any eavesdropping effort. People familiar with the matter said the White House has floated ideas to find common ground but hasn’t offered a formal compromise proposal. Officials in both parties said judicial oversight might be an easier area for the administration to make concessions.

The White House’s more conciliatory posture reflects a recognition that the Bush administration’s leverage on national-security matters has slipped since this past summer, a top Republican congressional aide said. “There’s a recognition that if they’re actually going to get a product they can support, there’s going to have to be some new level of engagement,” the aide said.

It would be a profound mistake with repercussions lasting long, long past the expiration of President Bush’s term in office if congressional Democrats took this olive branch and negotiated FISA legislation that was acceptable to the Bush administration. The Bush administration want to negotiate now because they know that unless they get Democrats to deal with them now, they won’t get anything from Congress. This is a recognition that Democrats have been able to stall their push for retroactive immunity since last October and there is no resolution satisfactory to the Bush administration in sight.

For once, Democrats have power. Negotiating a “compromise” with Bush now would undercut the little power we have accrued in our efforts to defend the rule of law. There can be no compromise when it comes to expanding executive powers under this President, nor can their be a compromise when it comes to actions that strike against the rule of law.

Democrats must sit on their hands now and not extend them to President Bush. They should wait out the end of his term, then flex muscle in January 2009 under a Democratic president. If McCain is elected, that’s when we should be forced to consider negotiations. But to do it now just because Bush is asking nicely would be pure folly.