VN contra China

[Peter_Donahoe@notes.rbs.org]

From: Peter Donahoe@RBS on 03/21/97 08:04 AM


  Dear Sonnet:  I think maybe you are being a little too harsh in
  this part of your 3/20/97 post regarding China:

       Why the WEST expect a free democratic China?  Why they help
       Tibet and they do not help Kurdistan or Native Idians in
       South America? If you do a little analysis, then you'll
       understand that the economical laws play a fundamental rule
       in Modern World. (Morality, ethics, etc. are only West's
       propagande.  Don't believe them!)

  1)  Few if any in the West expect a free or democratic China,
  except perhaps in our dreams.  Most of the West is puzzled by,
  afraid and uncertain of China.  Images of students shot and
  crushed by tanks, and recent missile firings and naval maneuvers
  near Taiwan are all very real to the West.

  2)  Few in West are doing anything at all to help Tibet.  They
  have no actual national or security interest for doing so.  They
  also just don't know HOW to help Tibet.  Short of military
  intervention, only massive, universal, international long-term
  economic sanctions offer any hope of influencing Chinese policy
  toward Tibet - that is still unlikely to succeed, and leaves the
  West criticized by many nations for meddling in Chinese internal
  affairs.

  3)  I honestly don't know enough about Kurdistan to know what
  you are referencing.  If you mean the conflicts between the
  Kurds and both the Iraqi and Turkish governments then again, it
  is easy to criticize the West's INaction - but offering a moral
  and practical course of action is difficult.  The Kurds are a
  nation with no country.  That CAN be blamed on Europeans who
  died long ago.  But what can Europeans in 1997 do about a
  multinational ethnic conflict in Asia?

  4)  Native Indians in South America today are treated much the
  same (and often worse) than were the Indians of North America.
  Again, what would have the Western nations do about it?  (Now
  here I CAN think of several moral and practical ways to help
  them...  but I want your ideas first, if you will).

  5)  Never dismiss the morality and ethics preached by the West.
  That's harmful.  That makes it easy for the West to be fat,
  lazy, and hypocritical.  Instead, challenge us at every turn to
  LIVE UP TO and honor that morality and those ethics.
  Challenging us on it sometimes stirs us to action, and change.
  This worked for Gandhi, and it worked for Dr. Martin Luther
  King, Jr.  It's worked for more people and in more places than I
  can list.

  Wasn't it Gandhi who said Western morality and ethics were our
  great vulnerability?  Probably he was speaking of the British.
  But his point was that we value those so much that confronting
  us and revealing our own hypocrisy truly could be a more
  powerful weapon than a gun.



  Challenge the West on its hypocrisy, and kick our asses if need
  be, Sonnet, but don't dismiss us.  :-)

  Pete