The enemy now is a highly industrialized international trading nation whose import/export numbers can be affected by what 5 billion non-PRC Chinese actually do to assist Tibet regain freedom and sovereignty. Consider this: no "government" is about to get involved, as there is no nation, particularly the USA, strong enough morally, spiritually, militarily, politically or, most critically, economically to resist China.

But we "common" folks do have those powers. There are 5 billion of us (including you) non-Chinese (PRC) on the planet. If each of us spends $10/month less on "Made in China" stuff, the economic impact on China will be tremendous, and sudden. Economic power = military power. Cripple the one, and the other has no punch or staying ability. Don't count on any "government" to do much at all. It's up to each and every one of us, you and me included, to weaken China's stranglehold on Tibet.

Tucano Fulano

Big Bear, CA

My lunch-time musings five years after the Bush Administation's ill-conceived invasion of Iraq picked the scab off the long-festering ethnic and sectarian violence in Iraq--that pithy definition of insanity: doing the same thing over-and-over and expecting a different result. I wasn't aware until hearing today that General Petraeus was there at the start and is there now, with a couple more stars on his epaulets. Could this guy be crazy? Tom Hayden has swayed me to believe that, yes, he and some he commands could very well be crazy. Wasn't it Wesley Fischel that led MSU's program in Vietnam? I was there '67-'71 and read about him in Ramparts.

Tom Hardenbergh

Bath, MI

Given that the Bushies seem to be doing whatever they want with Congress or the American people hardly stepping in, Nixon would most likely be green with envy in his grave.

Nicholas Rosen

Great Falls, VA