Accepting the Challenge

Barack Hussein Obama will evidently meet with the Dalai Lama. The President has not to this point kowtowed as he did last year to Communist Chinese demands that he not meet the religious figure who has tried to secure human rights for Tibetans beleaguered by their Chinese conquerors who have colonized Tibet with Han Chinese expats and enslaved Buddhism's ancestral home of Tibet. If the meeting takes place, observe the atmospherics- they mean everything. Will the confab be a large media event, open broadly to the press corps? This would show Communist China that Obama and by extension the United States are not in fear of the Reds. Will the conversation be discreet with only a limited photo-op? This would suggest Obama does not seek to offend mainland China which does after all hold so much US debt. Or will the Dalai Lama be led in through a back door as Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu was as an insult as if an elite were ushering in (and then out) hired help. The face to face encounter of the leader of one of the world's great religions with the leader of the free world is a good first step, both in securing rights for Tibet but also for showing that Obama is growing a backbone, but how the conference is presented by the White House with spin masters and handlers means so much.