The Red Carpet -- Clinton in China: Kowtowing Before His Donors
Manchester Union Leader
June 25, 1998 EDITORIAL
Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
Editorial - June 25, 1998
The Red Carpet -- Clinton in China: Kowtowing Before His Donors
Later today, William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States of America, will stand at attention in Tiananmen Square. He will be flanked by the Communist leaders of one of the most repressive, blood-stained regimes in history as the People's Liberation Army passes in review. It is not impossible that some of the tanks on parade will be the same ones under whose tracks pro-democracy demonstrators were crushed in 1989.
Doubtless many Americans, a majority judging by recent polls, find the prospects of this spectacle deeply repulsive. Mr. Clinton could have gone to China, of course, but declined to accede to the potent symbolism of a ceremonial greeting in Tiananmen Square. But this would have offended his Communist hosts, Mr. Clinton protested, lamely justifying this craven act of cowardice. Apparently, Mr. Clinton, who frets over bruising the feelings of Communist murderers, doesn't mind offending millions of Americans who are appalled by this.
It is not entirely inappropriate, however, for Mr. Clinton to be welcomed to China by the PLA, especially as the Chinese military was the source of some of his campaign contributions. Put this down as the President paying a courtesy call on some of his donors.
When the President sits down at the negotiating table in Beijing and looks across at some of his campaign contributors, he will do so in the full knowledge that these men meddled in this country's political life, tried to purchase influence at the highest levels of our government, at best, or attempted to influence the outcome of an American election at worst. None of this, apparently, disturbs the President.
Is this unnecessary, inappropriate junket a pay back? This possibility cannot be ruled out. Is the President of the United States being blackmailed by the Communist Chinese? Here again, this hideous possibility cannot be ignored.
We now know that illegal campaign contributions flowed into the Clinton-Gore campaign from top officials in the Chinese Communist government and military and from Asian financial interests with economic ties to Beijing. And there is growing evidence that the foreign money which flowed into the Clinton-Gore campaign and the Democrat Party may have resulted from a deliberate, premeditated scheme to milk foreign sources for contributions.
Is there more to this? Are the Communists using the threat to disclose more damaging information about the Clinton-China connection to influence the President? Again, the campaign finance scandal raises this possibility.
Then again, it may be that the President simply is willing to play the stooge for the big Wall Street interests for whom trade with China trumps all other moral, national security and strategic considerations. The same Bill Clinton who savaged George Bush in 1992 for sacrificing America's principles on the altar of the China trade now has become the chief pitchman for business as usual with the butchers of Beijing.
Doubtless Mr. Clinton will meet with a few token dissidents while he is in China in carefully stage-managed and tightly controlled photos-ops that the Communists will grudgingly tolerate between gala banquets and champagne toasts. And the President undoubtedly will mumble some platitudes about freedom, democracy and human rights.
But such token gestures will shrivel to nothingness compared with the powerful symbolism of the American President saluting the tanks in Tiananmen Square. In the old Chinese proverb, this picture, flashed around the world, will be worth a thousand words. This, surely, will mark the nadir of the execrable Clinton presidency and a moment of national humiliation for America.
-Richard Lessner
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