Olympic Politics

During tonight's Democratic primary debate on CNN, the candidates were asked what they would do to stop the Darfur genocide. Bill Richardson was the first to answer, saying that among other things, he would threaten to boycott the 2008 Olympics in China, because the Chinese acquire much of their oil from Sudan. To threaten to boycott the Olympics, he argues, would send China a message to stop funding genocide.

The US has made the mistake of an Olympic boycott before. When Jimmy Carter had the US sit out the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, he not only cheated our own athletes, but he undermined the very meaning of the Olympic Games themselves.

The Olympics were first held in Greece in 776 BC, and they continued almost without interruption for the next millennium. In an age when warfare among city-states was the rule rather than the exception, the Olympic Games provided a rare break in the bloodshed: a time when Greeks put down the spear and the shield, picked up the javelin and the discus, and came together - not to fight, but to compete.

The Olympics were thus about putting aside political and geographical differences. And that is the spirit of the modern games as well - and in more than just theory. For instance, the US participated in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, when Germany was under Nazi control. What would have happened if FDR had decided to have America sit out? Jesse Owens never would have been able to embarrass the Nazis by proving that for all their talk about being the master race, they certainly weren't the masters of the footrace.

And one must consider the athletes themselves. These people dedicate their lives to a sport, in order that every four years they have a shot at personal glory, national recognition, and international victory. It is unfair to deny them their dreams, and to render their daily efforts moot, in the name of a squabble about international trade.

And what better way to stick it to a country than to enter the games and beat them on their own turf? Look at not only Jesse Owens, but at the famous 1980 Winter Olympics hockey finals, when the USA beat the USSR in a surprise upset. That victory was huge. What further victories could we have won if Carter had let us trounce the Russkies in the summer games as well? Gold medals speak louder than boycotts.

Sitting out the games was a bad idea in 1980, and it remains a bad idea. Bill Richardson has visited the Darfur region; he should have less petty and more efficacious proposals for a solution.