This summer, President George W. Bush will smile while jaunting up the stairs to Air Force One - his laughable presidency all but over - with not a care in the world.
For 13 hours, he'll lie on a couch in the airplane, drink pomegranate-flavored water and watch reruns of Texas Rangers games from the glory days of Nolan Ryan and Jose Canseco.
Eventually, he'll land in Beijing, China, for the 2008 Summer Olympics. He'll pose and smile for photos with great Chinese leaders.
You'll definitely read about it in the newspaper, and so will people just like you all over the world; and you'll probably feel pretty good when you do. Like a bottle of cheap gin the whole globe can pass around, the Olympics somehow make it okay to forget for a little while.
This is helpful for most of us, but somewhat unfortunate for the Tibetan people, whose struggle against occupation has gone on for nearly 60 years.
In 1951, the Chinese government annexed Tibet and declared it part of China. In 1959, an uprising resulted in the expulsion of the Dalai Lama; since that time he has run a "government in exile" based in India and become a martyr of sorts for global political rights.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government has worked to eliminate Tibetan culture and to turn their beautiful homeland into a fun place for you and I to vacation. By all accounts, incidentally, it is an incredibly interesting place to vacation.
Anyway, a generation later, as a reward for Chinese progress and a concession that China has established itself as a modern global player, it gets to host the Olympics!
Irony in such high doses should be fatal.
On March 10, in honor of the 49th anniversary of China's great experiment in the abuse of state sovereignty, Tibetan monks began to protest en masse the continued demonization of the Dalai Lama and China's efforts to ethnically cleanse Tibetans.
China, for its part, has pledged to "resolutely crush" those people. Within days, it launched a fresh military campaign in the region. It kicked out journalists and declared no quarter on religious figures in a saga that's eerily similar to the Burma debacle in 2007.
The plan, clearly, is to put this to rest with all haste. If they can quell the unrest well in advance of the games, we'll all go back to complaining about the air quality in Beijing and debating the best kind of mask to wear when we visit.
But we shouldn't be having those discussions anyway; the mass riots in Tibet this week make an already strong case even stronger that China shouldn't have been awarded the Olympic Games in the first place.
The Olympics are supposed to be a symbol of peace, harmony and unity. States host the Olympics because they can send such a message.
If we sent the Olympic games to any other state that shows such blatant disregard for fundamental human rights, there would be an international uproar.
So why China?
Well, why not? If they're going to develop so efficiently and be declared so important to everyone's future, why not give them a chance to show the world what modern China can do?
The Chinese government was quick to recognize this and seize the public relations opportunity; it has been touting its selection for years and declaring to the world China's status as a real-life superpower. The government sees the games as a way to promote ill-gotten Chinese progress to the whole world in one of the most neutral, legitimizing mediums in existence.
But they know that if they don't succeed in doing so - if we're all so focused on the violence in Tibet that we forget to enjoy ourselves or marvel at modern China - the Chinese government will look like a bunch of snakes. Extraordinarily market-oriented snakes, to be sure, but snakes nonetheless.
That's why they're going to "resolutely crush" the problem.
Of course, the Chinese people are not personally liable for this crackdown by their government. And no one can claim the United States to be some sort of angelic superpower either.
But China's government is different, in this case, because it is only beginning to emerge as the next global superpower. We're having discussions around the world about the role China can take as one of the new "power players" - many are calling it the next real countermeasure to the United States.
This is why the 2008 Summer Olympics have suddenly taken on such incredible political importance. Even as these "new power" conversation take place, we can't ignore the fact that China has serious work to do. The Tibet protests illustrate that point starkly. China's infrastructure has come at a horrible toll; and while it can't be discounted in the global order, there is no reason to reward its political abuses now or ever.
The spotlight on the 2008 games is turning a brighter shade of red by the day, and a peaceful resolution is nowhere in sight.
Bush isn't ready to condemn the Chinese this summer, and every country will still send athletes. That doesn't mean we can forget what's happening this summer outside of seemingly-modern, seemingly-perfect Beijing.
The bar has to be raised in the future.
Chuck Lippstreu is a senior international studies major.
Reach him at chucklippstreu@dailynebraskan.com.
