Not that it was my letter, but I thought it was pretty much to the point. Amy Goodman should have asked those questions. Saying so says nothing about how the Dalai Lama should have answered.
What's not to the point are all the arguments that Tibetan Buddhism is on the whole corrupted because it comes from Tibet, a feudal theocracy--ie a bad, premodern social arrangement. Jenny put this smear most crisply, when she spoke of those "who fantacize that Tibetan Buddhism is _unrelated_ to its brutal theocracy," (this may not be an exact quotation, but I think it's close) as if the demystifying gesture of saying "Hey, guess what, Tibetan Buddhism comes from a bad place" either (a) clarified what the relation between the religious practices and the social arrangement _were_ (cause-effect? residual social formations? co-enabling institutions?), or (b) meant that Tibetan Buddhism, as received in the US and west, were as a whole corrupt b/c of its putative origins. It seems strange that people should use these arguments, given (rightly) how we respond to dismissals of the left or Marx b/c of crimes that have been committed in their names.
Someone said that, like anyone else, Buddhists should be judged by what they do. As a matter of anecdote, my first Zen teacher only gave monks vows to those committed to social activism. We started a high end industrial bakery in Yonkers, the revenues of which funded social action projects: we bought and renovated a building that served as housing for homeless, single-parent families; we started a job training program at the bakery which sought to work with local men and women; bought an old nunnery turned it into an AIDS hospice. Was all of this properly revolutionary? Maybe not. Do I know Buddhists who wouldn't slow down for you at an intersection? Sure. But why should they on the whole be any different from Marxists or leftists, who, we all know, aren't always even _on task_ when it comes to liberating the world's benighted masses?
Christian