What If the Chinese Killed the Dalai Lama with a Drone Strike?

[unhappycamper]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/02/22-11



His holiness the Dalai Lama. Is might be absurd to consider the hypothetical, but then again, what has become the reality of US policy, like the extrajudicial killing a US teenager, would have also once been decried as absurd.

What If the Chinese Killed the Dalai Lama with a Drone Strike?
by Tom Gallagher
Published on Friday, February 22, 2013 by Common Dreams

On the same day we learned of the Obama Administration’s intent to dig in its heels and refuse to share its standards for drone strike targeting with the U.S. Senate, we also learned that China had considered becoming the second nation to launch a drone-based missile strike against one of its enemies on foreign soil. Had it happened as contemplated, the attack in Myanmar would certainly have made waves in Washington. The nature of the “target” would not have been very controversial though, in that Burmese national Naw Kham is a “drug lord” blamed for the killing of 13 Chinese sailors who refused to pay protection money while working on the Mekong River in 2011. (China decided against the strike and instead captured him in Laos last April and subsequently sentenced him to death.)

But what if China decided that the Dalai Lama were a legitimate “target”?

Absurd? Well, yes and no. Yes, it’s not going to happen. Obviously assassinating the Dalai Lama would be rightly denounced as an atrocity in every capital around the world and I don’t for a moment mean to suggest that the Chinese Government would actually consider it. But would it be absurd in the sense that it would somehow be beyond the pale of world standards for drone-based assassination, that is to say, the standards of the one country that has done this – the U.S.? Well, no.

From official Beijing’s point of view, the Dalai Lama is an enemy of the Chinese state, a secessionist whose remarks, according to the official Xinhua news agency “remind us of the cruel Nazis during the Second World War” in advocating policies that would expel Han Chinese from Tibet, which China deems an integral part of the country. Of course, when it comes to comparing any imagined Chinese action with real life American policy, we are at something of a loss, in that, as we’ve been reminded over the course of the Senate hearings on John Brennan’s appointment as CIA Director, President Obama maintains his right to assassinate without telling us on what basis he does so.

[Peregrine]

1. Let's say that China never seized Tibet

Would this incarnation of the Dalai Lama be the same worldly and thoughtful man? Or would he have been like all of the previous incarnations of the Dalai Lama. Most of the claims of the Chinese were actually true. Tibet was a theocracy and either banned or oppressed other religions. They did try to drive the Han Chinese (even before China was forcing resettlement into Tibet) and even eradicate their existence within Tibet's boarders. If you actually look at the Tibet leadership you would think you were at the Vatican.

There is a new book out (don't remember the name) comparing the western idea and practice of Buddhism and the eastern idea and practice. They don't match.

PS: I support the idea of Tibet being independent and not the Chinese invasion. But I would also campaign against its theocracy and brutality.