Try not to smash your face into your keyboard as you read the following sentence: The 2008 Olympics are being threatened by the human rights protest du jour.
|
|
| Richard Gere's cause is noble, but should not hinder the American Olympians. (AP) |
Boycott!
A full-blown campaign hasn't yet begun for the United States to boycott the 2008 Games, but it's coming. You can smell it, like a floating barge of garbage. The Olympic torch passed through the United States on Wednesday and was met with massive protests, with the torch -- an inanimate object, for Chrissakes -- needing its own security. The torch tour already had set off near rioting in London and Paris, and on Friday the International Olympic Committee will discuss ending the flame's international freak show.
With the Games set to begin in four months, leaders of France, Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic already have said they will boycott opening ceremonies. Clinton and Obama are among those urging President Bush to do the same. Meanwhile, in Europe, a boycott of the entire Olympiad -- not just the opening ceremonies -- is being openly discussed. It's a matter of time before that discussion hits this country, with Gere already saying the United States should do it.
Knucklehead.
Let me make this as plain as possible: Tibetans do not come before Americans. Sorry. They just don't. And it's not about numbers, because if it were, the boycott movement would win. China has brutally occupied Tibet for more than 50 years, and by some accounts more than 1.2 million Tibetans have died because of it. There will be roughly 550 members of the 2008 U.S. Olympic team.
If this were a mathematical equation, it would read like this: 1.2 million is greater than 550. Therefore, boycott.
But this isn't a mathematical equation. Our loyalties in this country, now more than ever, must be to our people first. Nothing against the Tibetans. What they've been subjected to is outrageous. It's horrific.
But it's not Amanda Sims' problem. Sims is a college freshman from Santa Rosa, Calif., who wakes before dawn to swim, then goes to class, then returns to the pool for another practice session in the evening. When she was in high school her coaches said she didn't miss a practice. Ever. In four years. That's a streak of more than 1,300 sessions. Why so serious? Because she was in training for the 2008 Olympics.
Gere and anyone who wants to join the boycotting movement needs to knock on Amanda Sims' door tomorrow at 5:15 a.m. -- she'll be awake -- and tell her: Sorry, you've wasted the last 12 years of your life. Tibet needs our help.
Maybe I'd feel differently about this if a U.S. boycott of the 2008 Olympiad would work, but it won't. We've been down this path, and we found it littered with Soviet land mines. In 1980 President Carter led a worldwide boycott of the Moscow Olympics after the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. More than 50 countries joined us -- including China, come to think of it -- and let me tell you how effective that boycott was in 1980:
The Soviets started withdrawing troops from Afghanistan on May 15 ... 1988.
