President Bush has many people in this country wondering whether he places diplomacy above the lives of those who fight for liberty.

Last week, the U.S. Senate failed to override the president's veto of legislation that would legally protect Chinese students from deportation. Bush is correct when he says a law will not carry any more weight than an executive order, which he promised to implement. But that logic proves faulty upon closer examination.

The bill's failure leaves discretionary power completely up to the executive branch. Bush's record on post-Tiananmen Chinese affairs has been less than pristine, peppered with covert visits by top officials to mend the threads of international relations.

The president also does not see that a strong statement might show the Chinese gerontocracy how much this country disapproves of the bloodbath in Tiananmen Square last June.

Bush argues that the diplomatic balance might be broken with such a strong statement. To be sure, senior Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping has threatened diplomatic retribution if the United States "interferes with China's internal affairs."

But the legislation Bush vetoed is not interference. It is a statement from a country that -- apparently hypocritically -- defends freedom and those who fight and die for it. Is it not the right thing to emphatically support such beliefs through legislation?

Bush had no majority in Congress. The House overwhelmingly passed the proposed safe haven bill, and the Senate approved the bill 62-37 -- only four votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto.

It would seem Congress' opinion is clear.

Yet Bush, who courted senior congressional representatives like Pennsylvania Sen. John Heinz to prevent the override of his veto, continues undaunted in his now-irrevocable sneer at the Chinese student population of the United States.

Chinese students across the nation said the veto merely encourages Beijing to further its crackdown, with results beyond speculation.

So now President Bush may well have more Chinese blood on his hands during the 1990s.