The Dalai Lama Speaks Out On U.S. Foreign Policy

[Roland99]

His Holiness The Dalai Lama Speaks Out On U.S. Foreign Policy, Against the Invasion of Iraq and 9/11

Last week the Dalai Lama spoke in New York on the last stop of a U.S. tour where he met with Tibetan exiles in several cities and pressed the Tibetan cause in Washington.

The New York Times headline was: “Dalai Lama Says Terror May Need a Violent Reply.” The Times said the Dalai Lama believed “it might be necessary to fight terrorists with violence and that it was ‘too early to say’ whether the Iraq war is a mistake.”

The next day the Dalai Lama’s representative sent a letter to the Times in response. It said that the Times “gives the misleading impression his holiness is endorsing violence as a way to confront terrorism, I am sure, as many of your readers are aware, his Holiness always advocated nonviolence as the most effective method of dealing with conflict. More specifically, with regard to the war on Iraq his Holiness has publicly issued a statement expressing his opposition to war as the momentum was building towards an invasion” .

On Tuesday, the town hall in New York Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman had the rare opportunity to be part of the dialogue with the Dalai Lama with Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation magazine and actor and activist Susan Sarandon.

Full transcript:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/25/1443250&mode=thread&tid=13#transcript