Boycotting the Olympics

To borrow an Olympic analogy, our approach to influencing China’s human rights record should be one of a marathon, not a 100-yard sprint.

We should, as a community of countries, take several steps from many perspectives to apply pressure to the communist Chinese government. Only through international, multilateral pressures, should we seek to change the deep-seated ways of the Chinese.

This will not occur overnight. It certainly won’t happen by way of a man who has a 30 percent approval rating throughout the world.

How long has the world known that Beijing would host the 2008 games? The world body approved of these years ago. Where was the outrage then? Has the situation of Tibetans changed so dramatically that it warrants such a blunt and clumsy diplomatic move by the leader of the free world?

Why didn’t Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) protest the Olympic torch coming through her city of San Francisco and, as leader of the House, demand that her body pass a resolution objecting to the display of the torch in the U.S.? If this is truly so heinous and inhumane and the message must be unwavering from the mountaintops, then why not exercise every authority that our government has? Why just ask the president to boycott one day of several important events? If ever there were a true case study of political grandstanding, this would be the opening chapter of the book.

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