Senator Ted Cruz: President Obama Must Not Fear Diplomatic Provocation

Source: Time | September 12, 2016 | Ted Cruz

The Chinese regime is unafraid of doing so—and America has a way to fight back

President Obama has returned from the final visit to Asia of his administration—a trip in which protocol breaches grabbed the headlines. In an unprecedented display of bad manners, when Mr. Obama arrived in Hangzhou for the G20 meeting, the Chinese authorities did not provide the standard red-carpeted staircase so that he could depart Air Force One in a dignified fashion. They then employed strong-arm tactics to try to control the movements of the American press all the while quarreling with senior members of the President’s delegation. Undeterred, Mr. Obama announced that in coordination with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he intends to use executive fiat to try to shackle the United States to the wide-ranging United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—without submitting it to the Senate for ratification, instead choosing to impinge American sovereignty.

One thing President Obama did not find time to do on his trip to China, however, was meet with Liu Xiaobo, the eminent author, academic and political activist who succeeded Mr. Obama as the Nobel Peace Laureate in 2010, and who happens to be the only living Peace Prize winner currently in prison.

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The Sakharov case is a worthy model for the sort of support the United States government could be showing for Dr. Liu today, and Congress took the first step in February when the Senate passed the legislation that I introduced to rename International Plaza in front of the PRC Embassy “Liu Xiaobo Plaza.” Swift passage by the House could have it on President Obama’s desk this month. He should sign the legislation and then follow up by naming December 28th, Liu’s birthday, “National Liu Xiaobo Day.”

Unfortunately, President Obama’s administration insists that such steps are too provocative and that they know better how to get political prisoners released. In fact, astonishingly, Mr. Obama has threatened to veto the Plaza legislation in deference to the PRC’s objections.

The proof is, as they say, in the pudding. Two years after Congress and President Reagan worked in tandem to draw attention to Sakharov’s plight—and make crystal clear which side America was on—Mikhail Gorbachev released him. Six years after Liu Xiaobo was awarded his Nobel Prize, he is still in jail as the American president remains silent.

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