team america: -1

the nobel peace prize committee acknowledged even as it announced obama as this year's shocking upset recipient, that it was aspirational award. it was an expression of hope (desperation?), a fervent wish that he will be the change we want to see in the world. (incidentally, gandhi, whose words i am borrowing here and who basically cornered the market in living your principles, never received the peace prize.) i wonder if when they were deciding to award him the prize, the committee members had lofty aspirations for obama's engagement with china on human rights. that might have helped convince them to overlook the chinese human rights activists being considered for the award, the choice of whom this year would have sent a powerful message to china as it celebrated 60 years of CCP suppression. i wonder if those lofty aspirations might have included a joint statement at the end of obama's visit in which "both sides recognized that the united states and china have differences on the issue of human rights". so much for human rights being universal. that's the best our world crusader for peace could do?!? yowza.

as his ever so stage-managed visit in china comes to a close, i find myself wondering whether the nobel peace prize committee has buyer's remorse. indeed, whether we all do. i confess i am deeply disappointed in the president's seeming acquiescence to all of the chinese concerns and his failure to stand up for the very principles - the universal nature of human rights, speaking truth to power, not compromising american principles of justice in the name of political or economic goals, a commitment to the rule of law, openness and candid dialogue, an end to politics as usual - that were the foundation of his campaign.

yet, some will say, obama faces unprecedented challenges and he just needs more time to actualize the above. in other words, the chinese own us. or at least the majority of our debt. so the united states is in a deeply compromised position.* is that sufficient justification to kowtow to both the form and the substance of the chinese arrangement of and priorities for this visit? i wonder what gandhi would say.

i only hope that things can improve from here. i would say it would be difficult for things to worsen, but i don't want to tempt fate. the title of this blog is a nod to the universality of the human condition and my failed attempt to express that idea to chinese university classmates. once upon a lifetime i spent a year at the training school for the chinese foreign service and so was immersed in political conversations about international affairs. one afternoon hanging out by the pingpong tables, i found myself making a pitch for the universal. i was arguing that we are all more alike than we are different, regardless of nationality or race or religion. “we’re all red on the inside,” i explained to blank stares. this image entirely failed. i was talking about blood and trying to speak poetically about our common humanity. my classmates thought that i was talking about communism. team universal: 0. team china: 1. i gave up then and went back to watching the pingpong. i feel as though obama is doing the same now. unfortunately, there's a lot more at stake.


*leaving aside for now the human rights issues that continue to dog us at home which further compromise america's discussion of human rights abroad. perhaps most distressing are those related to the so-called war on terror: guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, the shameful ruling last week undermining our own rule of law and denying maher arar due process: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/nyregion/03arar-web.html?scp=2&sq=maher%20arar&st=cse