Posted on: Thursday, July 12, 2001

Editorial
Politics, Olympics shouldn't be mixed

On balance, the Bush administration has made the right choice in remaining neutral in the selection of a site for the 2008 Olympics.

Its stated reason is correct, if not forthcoming: The U.S. government has no say in site selection. It's a decision that will be made by the International Olympic Committee tomorrow in Moscow.

Of the committee's 123 voting members, four are Americans and three, representing one-fifth of the world's population, are from China. More than half are European. Thus there is no direct way that Washington could influence the decision.

But we have important indirect influence, and the United States arguably has a duty to promote freedom and the rule of law wherever it can. An American boycott, called by President Carter after the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, made an important point and certainly damaged the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Yet that mixture of politics and sports is today largely remembered as an unfortunate choice.

People who agree that China's human rights performance is abysmal disagree over whether denial of the 2008 Games would improve that record. Opposing views are presented elsewhere on this page.

Some say giving China the Games rewards and encourages bad behavior. Look what the Olympics did for Hitler, they say.

But the Olympics wasn't televised worldwide for days at a time in the 1930s, others say. Look what the Olympics did for South Korea and Mexico.

Giving 1.2 billion people an ugly resentment is dangerous, they add, pointing to the unusual popular fervor among Chinese to win the Games. If China is awarded the Games, they remind, the threat of a boycott would to a limited extent keep the Chinese leadership on seven years' probation from egregious activity.

Would giving China the Olympics make it a benign democracy? That's asking a lot of a sports event, however massive. It will give China's leading troglodytes an undeserved boost, but they're about to pass from the scene anyway. And it is likely to nudge the country toward more progressive thinking as its enthusiastic population opens wide to an onslaught of Western visitors.