Do They Really Want to Free Tibet?

If you've paid attention to the news at all with the upcoming Beijing Olympics, you've probably seen the protests that have been going on both in China with Tibetan monks and other Tibetans and now the protests here in America (San Francisco, specifically).

Now, I'm fully aware of China's human rights abuses and make no mistake, I'd like to make them accountable for what they have done (and are more than likely still doing). But what does that mean--how do we do that?

A few weeks ago I blogged about Mark Steyn's book, America Alone. He mentions that people have been protesting about freeing Tibet for years. In all seriousness, what has that accomplished? Slapping a bumper sticker on your car or tethering your self to the suspension cables of the Golden Gate bridge (which apparently they are doing) makes a statement, but it doesn't make Tibet any more free.

To those that protest: do you think that China will simply say in response to your protests, "you know, you're right, we shouldn't be doing that and we should free the Tibet people." Really? They won't any listen any more than if during WWII we had pleaded with Hitler to stop persecuting and killing the Jewish people during the Holocaust or with Stalin when he killed millions of his own people.

Rhetoric and protests are fine to do, but those that do that must realize that action must be taken to address the wrong--turning back through the pages of history in our own country, even to the start, did we ask the British crown nicely and they simply let us become our own country? No, we had to fight for our independence. This is what the American military is attempting to do in Iraq (whether you agree whether the war should have been waged or not in agreement with how it is being carried out)--to create a free Iraq.

Are those that protest willing to take a military force in to free Tibet? I don't think that they are--perhaps at most they would advocate a "peacekeeping" force but I doubt they would even go for that. Diplomacy has been tried for years on the human rights issue in China and while abuses may not be as obvious, they are still going on.

So, go on, keep protesting and slap your bumper stickers on your cars and do nothing more--the Olympics will pass and you will go back to what you were doing before the Olympics were approaching.

And Tibet will still not be free.