A thought on the Olympic torch

I’ve been watching on the news coverage of this Olympic torch brouhaha. Protestors in Europe and America are hell-bent on seeing this thing extinguished. Forgetting about taking sides for a moment—who’s right or wrong, who’s good or bad—I got to wondering today: What is it protestors hope to accomplish? Somehow I just can’t see the Chinese government reacting to these efforts by saying, “You know, this has made us see the error of our ways—we should stop oppressing these people we’ve been oppressing for decades.” Having said this, this doesn’t mean I’m taking the side of the Chinese government or saying that the whole Tibet issue is just some illusion. I’m not taking any side or stance (I actually enjoy sitting on the fence these days on almost any big issue in American current affairs, just so people can’t pin me down to one side or another—Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, pro-life or pro-abortion, pro-war or anti-war, the list goes on…), mainly because, honestly, I don’t know enough about the history of this issue to develop any knowledgeable opinions. (Well, I did see Seven Years in Tibet some time ago, but I doubt a major Hollywood film could be considered a solid basis for reality.)