No Time For Protests

I agree pretty strongly with Steve Clemons on this:

And now Hillary Clinton has called for President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies of the games in Beijing in response as a rebuke for not stopping the violent clashes in Tibet and not using its leverage with Sudan to stop genocide in Darfur.

This stance by Hillary Clinton is as wrong-headed as her vote on the Kyl-Lieberman IRGC amendment calling for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to be classified as a terrorist organization and as nationally self-wounding as her vote on the 2002 Iraq War Resolution.

Hillary Clinton is not out of bounds in advocating for other nations to look into their souls and to call for adherence to basic human rights conventions. She is not wrong to speak about human rights in every speech she gives and to speak to advocates of liberalism and choice who have been incarcerated in China, in Egypt, in Burma, or wherever else there are political prisoners.

But she is out of bounds and reckless when calling for the weight of the presidency to be used to punish another nation at an event which is drawing China into the blue chip end of the international order, into global institution building and stakeholding, and which is stroking China’s national pride at a key point in its ascendancy as a self-realized important power.

Hillary Clinton’s call for boycotting the opening ceremonies is an example of a simple-minded, binary approach to US-China relations.

Apparently, she has been led to believe that if Bush is absent at the ceremonies that China will help us on Sudan or allow Tibet a track to political autonomy or independence. This is wrong and naïve. China will do neither – and if anything, we will embarrass those in the China establishment who are advocates of deal-making with America and proponents of responsible global stakeholding, which has been the course we have seen China on.

As the cool kids say, read the whole thing.