Livingston dubbed Romney “very foolish” for wading into diplomatic issues such as this, especially when “he really didn’t have really any facts yesterday about what was going on… What happens in the U.S. embassy in China should be within the hands of the officials on the ground and the State Department,” Livingston said. “It should not be a political issue here in the U.S.” – Abby Huntsman: Romney’s Chen Guangcheng Criticism Was ‘Very Foolish’
THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION got very lucky this week.
After more than a week of high-level diplomacy over the fate of the blind activist Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese government was widely seen as making a major concession on Friday by agreeing to allow Mr. Chen to apply to leave for the United States. – For China, a Dissident in Exile Is One Less Headache Back Home
It was an impossibly difficult situation that would have been a bitch for any administration regardless of political affiliation.
However, I will never understand why officials in the U.S. embassy in China, including Ambassador Locke, let Chen leave the U.S. embassy, because there was absolutely no way for the U.S. to guarantee Chen’s safety once he did. It’s unfathomable that this was allowed to develop with Secy. Clinton due in China with Secy. Geithner. It couldn’t have been a worse moment or one fraught with more international peril. Diplomacy is made for these situations and you simply don’t allow a clearly unhealthy human rights activist under overwhelming stress to have the power to control a situation like this. Of course, you cannot force him to stay, but as diplomats your job is to make him understand the obvious danger he’d be in if he was to leave. You stall, continue to work on alternatives, or whatever options might be possible, anything other than let him walk out and hand the power to the Chinese.
That Mitt Romney chose to weigh in on an internationally sensitive situation when he obviously didn’t have enough facts, because no one did, raises questions about his foreign policy maturity and depth of understanding, beyond the economic, something I’ve doubted from the start.
The Administration got extremely lucky when the Chinese made a self-interested concession Friday, which looks like it will lead to Chen going into exile.
At this point, it looks like the Chinese unwittingly saved us from ourselves, while also getting rid of their meddlesome human rights star. This was a close one.
This definitely seems to be the current, conventional, mainstream criticism, but I honestly don’t get it. Once Chen was satisfied with the negotiated deal and wanted to leave the embassy, he was asked many, many times by progressively senior diplomats if he was absolutely sure in his desire to go. I suppose at that point we should have kidnapped him?
You beat me to it . How was it “our” decision to make whether he stayed in the embassy or not? Once he insisted on leaving, what choice did we have but to “let” him go? Someone help me out here.
If a peasant from the Chinese countryside travels to Beijing to lodge a protest with the government ( which is a guaranteed right in China ) he or she is summarily kidnapped off the street by government affiliated militias and deposited into an underground prison. Peasants in the countryside who refuse to knuckle under to the demands of local authorities are in due time beaten, tortured, raped and hounded to death. It would be safe to say that Mr. Chen’s future, if he remains in China, is dim. It is for this reason that American officials should have convinced him to leave while he was under their control. Sometime in the future Mr. Chen will disappear and the government will of course deny any knowledge of his whereabouts. Thankfully, Secretary Clinton, come November, will also disappear; taking with her a state department devoid of any real accomplishment.
“If a peasant from the Chinese countryside travels to Beijing to lodge a protest with the government ( which is a guaranteed right in China ) he or she is summarily kidnapped off the street by government affiliated militias and deposited into an underground prison. Peasants in the countryside who refuse to knuckle under to the demands of local authorities are in due time beaten, tortured, raped and hounded to death. ”
I assume your unimpeachable sources inside the Peoples Republic of China provided the documented proof of this right?
I mean it’s not like this guy was whisked off the street to GITMO and waterboarde…OOOPS, freedom tickled for a couple of years till he died or committed suicide?
At this point in history for this country to say SQUAT to anyone about Human Rights is so beyond ironic it staggers the mind!
“Thankfully, Secretary Clinton, come November, will also disappear”
Only if she decides to retire skippy, only if she decides to retire.
I realize I never worked at a ” Collage ” as you did, but the right of the Chinese people to petition their government leaders in person has been documented and is a tradition in the People’s Republic.
1.”I realize I never worked at a ” Collage ” as you did, ”
To bad, you clearly would have benefited from it.
“but the right of the Chinese people to petition their government leaders in person has been documented and is a tradition in the People’s Republic.”
Oh no question about that…it’s the REST of the savage fairy tale you pulled outta yer butt that I questioned.
Which savage fairy tale are you referring too?