Hillary Clinton is urging President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Games, which is comical, considering she never has felt compelled to boycott China’s donations to her political campaign.
Nor did she urge her husband to boycott China’s donations while he was president.
Of course, symbolic gestures are all the rage because of China’s recent crackdown in Tibet.
These feeble gestures do not amount to much, besides allowing the preening protesters to feel good about themselves.
The U.S. boycott of the Moscow Games in 1980 and the Soviet Union’s boycott of the Los Angeles Games four years later prompted no political change and merely punished the athletes. What dispatched the Soviet Union to the dust bin of history was former President Reagan’s raising the arms ante and the Iron Curtain collapsing under the weight of its debt.
The Olympic flame protesters demonstrating against China’s human rights record in Tibet undoubtedly feel morally superior than the rest of us.
They can shout their slogans, wave their placards and return to the safety of their homes in good spirits without achieving one darn thing.
Free Tibet? Free North Korea, too.
China’s insensitivity to Tibetans and anyone else who has an urge to disagree with the Communist regime is hardly news.
That the International Olympic Committee awarded the Summer Games to Beijing in 2001 is evidence of an out-of-touch governing body, so steeped in the art of diplomacy that it would not know evil if evil bit it on its nose.
The IOC is so full of itself that it probably believes its propaganda. Yet what has the IOC ever achieved in fostering goodwill among competing nations that act out of self-interest? It only has allowed its considerable stage to be used as an instrument to advance whatever a host country is peddling. It is the game that nations play away from the venues. And the IOC plays its games as well because it pays well.
The protesters, professional or otherwise, are gravitating to the Olympic flame like moths to light. Demonstrators have disrupted the Olympic flame route in London, Paris and San Francisco, as if the liberal dens of London, Paris and San Francisco are part of the Tibetan problem.
Other than yelling loudly or causing a civil disturbance, many of these protesters are against the hard stuff that produces genuine change, such as the ouster of Saddam Hussein, a mass murderer who stifled dissent in all kinds of creative and permanent ways.
A few of the addle-minded also have suggested boycotting the Beijing Games, as if penalizing the athletes who trained four years for this one moment in the spotlight somehow would show the Chinese the error of their ways.
There is nothing more fleeting than Olympic fame. Most of the athletes who win gold medals and briefly become household names soon return to their anonymous existence. To deny them this one shot at glory is a selfish political position that would have no effect on the intended target.
But that does not dissuade the high-minded from seeking to punish China.
They might as well implore Americans to boycott General Tso’s chicken for all the good an Olympic boycott would do.
If boycott we must, why not boycott China’s cheap goods sitting on America’s store shelves?
The IOC is now rethinking the global torch relay because of the protests. One committee member said this is possibly the last time the flame will have a global route. Instead, the IOC will return to the torch traveling from Olympia, Greece, to the host country.
If that does not work, the IOC always can stick the torch on a bus to keep it out of harm’s way, as French authorities were forced to do in Paris.
Predictably, Chinese authorities are not happy about the protests, if not frustrated. Their solution to dissent is often a bullet to the brain.
You could ask the families of the dead Tibetans.
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