Blunder?

Last week I heard Professor Ved Nanda talk to the Denver City Club at the Brown Palace Hotel. The City Club meets every Tuesday to listen to some of Denver's finest minds on all sorts of issues. Readers ought to check it out. Guests are welcome, but folks are encouraged to join.

Professor Nanda spoke on the options facing the United States on Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Law Professor Nanda even offered a one page outline on the issues he so logically presented to us. I wish he had offered a quiz on his lecture.

During the question period, I asked Professor Nanda what he thought of the recent slight by the White House which told the Dalai Lama that the White House would not welcome him until President Obama made his trip to China? The White House advisors had said the timing was not right. The visit by the Dalai Lama to the White House would upset China. I had read news reports mentioning that The White House indicated that they were not seeking China's permission to meet with the Dalai Lama. But it sure looked like that to me. Will China call our our loans due? Doubtful.

Professor Nanda thought the Obama White House just made a big blunder. I reminded him that the President's fellow Nobel Prize winner would not hold a grudge and the Dalai Lama had probably already forgiven him for this slight.

Vaclav Havel, former Czech president, summed the White House rebuff of the Dalai Lama quoted in The New York Times as "only a minor compromise. But exactly with these minor compromises start the big and dangerous ones, the real problems."