I loved to read this about Nancy Pelosi, especially in a time of people gunning for her, thinking she makes for helpless prey. Chickenhearts themselves, they don’t understand true toughness. I didn’t realize Pelosi had been so principled all this time, one of the very few people who decried the US’s delinking of human rights from its other considerations of relations with China.
I say bless her for her courage – far beyond all of the gutless cowards in their high office and the greedheads in business who turned their backs on both the Tibetan and the Chinese people. Pelosi, love you we do … read the full post from the International Campaign for Tibet:
Pelosi, we love you!
So read one of the slogans painted by a group of Chinese on the main gate of Beijing’s propaganda office directed at the Speaker during her China trip this week. It is a sentiment shared by those of us in Washington who advocate for human rights in China and Tibet. After all, it is Pelosi who has been the most outspoken congressional truth-teller of Beijing’s human rights record for the last two decades, Pelosi who brazenly unfurled a democracy banner in Tiananmen Square in 1991, Pelosi who stood against President Clinton’s decision to delink human rights consideration from US trade policy with China and worked against approving permanent normal trade relations with China, Pelosi who not only criticized China’s policies in Tibet but journeyed to Dharamsala to deliver the message from the mountain top, and Pelosi who extended an invitation to President Bush to join her in awarding His Holiness the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal, making possible the first public appearance of a US President standing beside the great Tibetan leader. Ah, yes, and it is Pelosi who insists on referring to her concerns for human rights in China AND Tibet.
Evidently in search of a thesis, the press has drilled down to her pre-travel comments, which focused on her climate change mission and not on human rights. This, some journos say, is indicative of a pulling back on human rights demands on China by the Democratic leadership and the White House so that the US can work more harmoniously with Beijing on other pressing issues. Oh please. Playing the “either-or” game is something out of China’s diplomatic playbook, not ours—the President and his team have more than proven that they can multi-task.
Nancy Pelosi is smart, politically skillful and, now, very powerful—and these assets, married with her compassion and determination, have come together to serve the cause of human rights in China AND Tibet. This tiger can’t change her stripes.
