You might have missed it, but President Bush awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet, the highest civilian honor in the land the land on October 17, 2007.     Of the three networks, only pro-Buddhist ABC even covered it briefly as an “extraordinary scene of pomp in the nations capitol”–one night only on national and local news. Pretty brief clips for such a “national honor.”  Not a peep out of NBC–probably because they wisely feared insulting Beijing right before the Olympics. CBS-nothing that I caught. It was second page news in the LA Times–that was a shocker since they are so PRO DL.       What did catch my attention was ABC’s mention of a “superbug” that had killed three students and sickened 1000’s in nearby Bedford County, Virginia where over 11,000 students stayed home as their schools were being cleaned to prevent the spread of a merca staph infection that they said could be more deadly than AIDS.    Earlier, I did watch the entire thing on a webcast. It was sickeningly sweet and very anti Beijing.     Unfortunately, it did what they wanted to accomplish in two ways–1) Use the US Congressional Platform with the Capitol as a symbolic backdrop to rally their faithful through a global web cast; and 2) Use the USA National platform, with Pelosi and gang wrapping their arms around President Bush to appear as a “united” front to deliver insult after insult to China publicly and thereby unnecessarily provoking their ire. What it does say is more about our neglect and blundering naiveté in intercultural and international affairs.      Almost immediately the PRC made good on its promise to retaliate for the US Governments’ public endorsement of the Dalai Lama whom they view as a “splittist rebel” and subsequently withdrew their support as a major partner from one of the most important and delicate international diplomatic rounds of negotiation with Iran about its development and threatened use of nuclear weapons. So we shot ourselves in the foot again, only this time the consequences will be much worse.      On the very same day as the ceremony no less, President Bush said in a press conference that if we don’t resolve the nuclear issue in Iran we are looking at WWIII. He said. “So I told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested [in preventing a nuclear Iran]… I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously.”     With all due respect, Mr. President-that’s thinking ahead. It might have been prudent to think about that before insulting the second largest global power in the equation.     On Friday, I heard Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Pasadena) call a spade a spade, when he called the President to task for not supporting the bill acknowledging the Armenian Genocide perpetuated by Turkey. He said something to the effect that, “When the President said that we shouldn’t bring up ancient history, why didn’t he just say that about the Dalai Lama. Hey, it happened fifty years ago!     Well, I guess it was politically expedient for him since 75% of all our military gear comes into Iraq through Turkey. Then the immediate backfire! Turkey the very next day rattled its saber about attacking the Kurds in northern Iraq. If Saddam couldn’t completely wipe out the Kurdish people, then will Turkey? (Schiff did vote to award the DL the gold and he did have to politically say something as a large part of his constituency is Armenian, a people who pride themselves on being the First Christian Nation).

    So on the one hand–our Government honors the god-king of Tibet, formerly a paid agent of the CIA—whose worldview is diametrically opposed to our nation’s Judaeo-Christian values, and relegate the Armenian genocide of the First Christian nation, a people near and dear to our heart, to ancient history.

I’d say, “Houston, we have a problem” (Apollo 13).