The Tibetans want independence; the Chinese are cracking heads and shutting down communications in Tibet. What's the argument in favor of letting China put on a show as if it were a free nation?
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The United States only gives a shit about human rights violations when doing so furthers our own interests.
Thaks for that Freddie, taking the time to again show us all how deeply you care, and are willing to stand up and speak truth to power. Brave, brave Freddie.
I think the real answer is only slightly less disappointing - we need to be friends with China, on both the economic and security fronts.
It kind of sucks, but you just can't be (read: start out) as idealistic about foreigh affairs as you can about domestic affairs.
Know what else sucks? My typing and lack of proofreading.
Thank you. Tip your waitress.
Remember how Jimmy Carter was ridiculed for boycotting the USSR Olympics? I think if the right suggested it, it might fly but if it is a liberal idea, then it would go down in history just like the USSR boycott.
The first question has to be: what are we trying to accomplish here? And then: what is the best way to do that? A boycott might be the best approach. Or ti might not.
For example, a boycott of the Berlin Olympics in the 1930s would have been no where as effective as what actually happened: a black American runner leaving the Nazi athletes in the dust, which made a mockery of their ideology. I'm not sure whether there is a similar opening here. But I'd certainly like to see something beyond a knee-jerk boycott proposal considered.
Michael F:
Actually, there's a significant number on the right who hate the Chinese regime - Godless, church-surpressing, abortion-mandating communists, etc. - and would be delighted to embarrass it.
There would be no end to such a game of boycotting and it would provoke retaliation (remember that the Moscow boycott was followed by the LA boycott).
An upcoming winter olympics will be in Russia, which at this point is neither free nor democratic. And unlike Beijing, Moscow seems to claim the right to reach all the way to LONDON to attack and even kill political opponents. So hey, I guess we could make a good guess to boycott that olympics, too.
In the end, you just have to decide whether it's worthwhile to have these global sports festivals, even if it means participation from some unsavory countries.
When did I say it was brave? It's just true, and frankly, pretty banal. Look at the history of this country, and it's undeniable, even to conservative scholars of American foreign policy. And I didn't even say that it was wrong, either. I'm just saying that that's the way it is. What possible evidence can you provide to the contrary?
I mean, really, at this point the invective against me is just weird. Just strange, really. I said something that doesn't even challenge the Gordon Gecko conservatism that's so rigorously enforced around here, and I get slammed. I kind of don't understand it. Not that it makes me feel like I should go away; quite the opposite, actually.
once, we thought it good policy to boycott South Africa,
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3260201,00.html
http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=south+african+apartheid+boycott
Eriver,
I'm pretty sure Freddie's accurate positive judgment about how the US really doesn't give a shit when people are murdered unless it furthers the US' interests has no bearing on whether the individual known as "Freddie" actually cares. As I read it, Freddie is not the United States.
The IOC is being played for chumps again. They put the Olympics in 1936 Berlin, 1980 Moscow, and now 2008 Beijing. The Olympic ideal is supposed to be "fair play", but fair play counts for nothing in places like that. Letting the Chinese Communists bask in an approving international spotlight for their interest in "fair play" is a sick joke. What's it going to take for the Olympics to finally lose their credibility? Pyongyang in 2016?
@JBD
Stop spouting that Guardian/Times propaganda. When was the last election in China?
@ ALL
The flaw in the Olympic system is its enshrinement of the Nation-State as the most representative unit of human expression. It will continue to find itself in the current position as long as the games are set up as such. They should have trials open to all regardless of citizenship.
The GAMES ARE POLITICAL. Boycotts are allowed.
A far better approach would be if the athletes themselves engaged in all manner of subversive tactics. I've heard it suggested that the athletes shave their heads in solidarity with Tibetan monks. Can you imagine the apoplectic fits the Chinese would go into if wave after wave of athlete representing various nations entered the arean with shaved heads? What if there was some symbol for Tibet the athletes wore on the medal podium? What if during press conferences, the athletes consciously mentioned the plight of Tibet? The possibilities for mischief are endless.
Finally, what is this insistence by the US government that we walk on eggshells around the Chinese? Both parties do it despite, the fact that the American people have no love for China, and that China is a competitor both militarily and for resources. When did America become so afraid? We need to strangle Chinese designs for economic and military success in the crib.
So, we're allowed to do business with China, but we should screw our best athletes who've spent years preparing for this event? Phooey. Boycotting the Olympics was one of James Earl Carter's crappiest ideas, and that's saying a lot.
Uhh, because Communists almost always get free pass in America, regardless of what they do or how many they kill?
And Carter's boycott of the Olympics was ridiculed because it might have been the one time he actually did something in the face of a dictator besides wring his hands. This is the same guy who was told by Brezhnev they wouldn't invade and then was surprised when they did. Once again, Carter got rolled.
The Tibetans want independence; the Chinese are cracking heads and shutting down communications in Tibet.
With Google's acquiescence, of course.
Minturn, you had me, then you lost me, buddy. Athletes shaving their heads and otherwise showing solidarity with Tibet--great idea!
But then: "We need to strangle Chinese designs for economic and military success in the crib."
Say, what? A goodly chunk of the world's population lives in China. The world will be safer and more decent if those people have something to eat, and a stake in peace and prosperity.
Why not? Because it a) won't help, 2) might hurt, and iii) will make us look like a bunch of hypocrites when China asks us how those Guantanamo trials are working out.
You know how I'm going to boycott the Chinese Olympics? The same way I boycott every Olympics: by not watching them because they bore me to death.
In an ideal world, the Olympics would not be divided into national teams and would always be held in Athens.
I see no reason to punish athletes who have dedicated their lives to Olympic competition- and for most of those there is only one Olympic Games in which they are in their prime.
If one wants to make a political statement in support of Tibetan rebels, then find another way to accomplish it.
By "we" do you mean the USOC, or the viewing public? USOC shouldn't -- the qualifying athletes deserve to compete.
I love the shaved heads idea though. Maybe the USOC can make a Tibetan monk robe part of the uniform for medal ceremonies. That and surgical masks to filter the particulate mater in the air.
An organized consumer protest would be a good idea. Alas there's not much I can do as I don't have a Nielsen box on my TV. Nor do I often eat at McDonalds or drink much Coke.
I’m sure the Afghans would be enthusiastic supporters. Look how well it worked out for them.
I’d rather they where cracking down on North Korea … but when you’re looking at a cracked timer on top of a pile old sweating dynamite you learn to be … circumspect. Even when you’re partly responsible for creating the situation. Especially when you’re partly responsible for creating the situation.
Personally, I’ve had problems with most of the reasons for China’s invasion of Tibet.
On the first hand, it’s not even a decent invasion route, on the second hand, its arable land is negligible. But on the gripping hand, from a meme perspective, the leaders of China are more sacred of Tibet then they are of Capitalism and American ideas of Democracy and Human Rights.
Freddie,
It's because your statement is like if someone just posted here "Barack Obama's middle name is Hussein!"
Yes, okay, it's just true, and frankly banal. It's also meaningless and uninformative, unless you try to extrapolate meaning from it - like "ooh, Hussein, that's like Saddam Hussein, and all those nasty Arabs we heard about. Is he secretly an evil terrorist Muslim from Iraqistan?"
At that point we have strayed far from the original statement, but what was the point of the statement if not to imply that?
So yes, the United States doesn't "give a shit", because the United States isn't a person with feelings and shit to give. If you really meant "most people in the US don't care about human rights", that's a much more debatable statement, and also one of questionable significance. Short of the "Care Bear Stare!" stuff Megan was mocking here a few months back, it doesn't *matter* if "most" Americans give a shit about something. What matters is what the US government actually does about it. And history has shown plenty of disconnects between those two.
Geoff-
The American public doesn't give a shit. If they did, you would see more politicans condemning the plight of the Palestians. As long as its 'our' guys doing the raping, murdering, and massacring, then its all good in the hood.
Since when did the Olympics become exclusively a free nation event? How are we to measure free nations? Can the US still be considered free for a brutal and repressive put down when the south tried to cede? Oh but theres a time limit. How long then?
Protests do not equate to a referendum on independence.
If we take the government in exile of/for Tibet seriously I wonder how many still recognize the authority of Taiwan over PRC.
Disagree. Most Americans I know personally care much more about iPods, food, and Britney Spears than about congressional procedure and health care regulation. But when I turn on CSPAN...
How much you see politicians condemning stuff is, in fact, a pretty poor barometer for "what the American public cares about"
As much as we believe in the Holy Spirit of Democracy, Americans *caring* about world hunger or AIDS in Africa or human rights violation doesn't actually cure those problems. If you really want something to get done, you should put more interest into the actual actions and implementations of the problem solvers than the "caring" of the public.
Yes, okay, it's just true, and frankly banal. It's also meaningless and uninformative, unless you try to extrapolate meaning from it - like "ooh, Hussein, that's like Saddam Hussein, and all those nasty Arabs we heard about. Is he secretly an evil terrorist Muslim from Iraqistan?"
Can you please think about this for a second? Megan asked a direct question. I provided a direct answer. Is that so hard to understand? The American government, and largely the American people, are apathetic about foreign human rights violations, when those violations don't affect Americans directly. That is born out again and again and again. Megan asked a simple question, I provided a simple answer. Maybe you should put aside your "I hate liberals" reading glasses for two minutes and ask whether to blame me for responding to a simple, two sentence blog post in kind.
Human rights cannot exist without open societies. Olympic boycotts are nothing more than a form of isolation, and isolating China does nothing to make it more open.
Attempting to publicly shame nasty regimes doesn't work, largely because those in charge of the regimes have no shame in the first place. Boycotts and such can join withholding aid to and outlawing migration and trade with rogue states as ideas best thrown in the dustbin.
LCL
Freddie,
I'm not bashing liberals or for that matter conservatives. If you want to argue about "reading glasses", re-read my posts and tell me which part had anything to do with liberals or conservatives?
I was arguing that your response was clearly meant to carry negative value, despite technically being just a simple statement of "fact" (just like the BHO example). This analysis is apolitical.
And your response doesn't actually answer either of her questions. Some reasonable answers were given by other posters, things like "it would just lead to escalation" or "disengagement makes things worse".
But to the questions: "Why shouldn't we boycott...?" and "What's the argument in favor...?" - "Americans don't give a shit..." is not an answer. It is, at best, an attempt to call the original questions irrelevant.
Why not just append a template comment to all further blog posts - "Americans don't give a shit about banking regulations."
"Americans don't give a shit about the EMH"
etc...
The boycott game will eventually put everyone else's cities off limits for everyone. So why not just built permanent facilities for the Olympic games in Olympia and let it go? And make all the contestants sacrfice to Zeus like good civilized people.
I agree with ostap - a boycott accomplishes little more than ruining the dreams of American athletes. Almost any other display by the US as a nation has to be better than stomping on our men and women who have sweated for years, hoping for what may be their only chance at an Olympic medal. Just like the Carter's boycott, what will really happen is that host country will win more medals and look even better because some of the best competition got stuck at home.
Let the athletes compete. And _unofficially_ let them know that they have free rein for individual displays of anger at China and solidarity for Tibet. Shaved heads, t-shirts, hand gestures, whatever. Heck, communist nations seem to be big fans of those big coordinated displays - have our athletes during the opening ceremonies all line up and at a particularly sensitive moment hold colored cards over their heads that as a group show something like the Dalai Lama's face. Mock China, but let Americans win as many medals as they possibly can. Nothing will hurt the Chinese government more than hearing the Star Spangled Banner over and over again.
But to the questions: "Why shouldn't we boycott...?" and "What's the argument in favor...?" - "Americans don't give a shit..." is not an answer. It is, at best, an attempt to call the original questions irrelevant.
No. Actually, it is an answer. The argument for "letting" the Chinese put on a show of being a free nation is that the people of the United States don't particularly care if the Chinese do, and our policy will reflect the will of the people. See? How's this for a template: respond to an argument with one of your own, rather than questioning the legitimacy of what you imagine is my intent in arguing. You're simply attempting to leverage an attack on me without, you know, having a real dispute with what I'm saying. If you think that the American people really are deeply animated against the Chinese crackdown on Tibet, argue so. But stop with this navel-gazing bullshit about how my argument is "apolitical" or "has negative value". All you're doing, or attempting to do, is legitimize argument you don't like.
de-legitimize, that is.
I should know better than to get in comment fights like this. [sigh]
I wasn't calling your argument "apolitical" - that refers to my argument, which you tried to label as "I hate liberals", when it actually has nothing at all to do with liberals.
And I don't really see why you label my observation that you're making a negative value judgment as "navel gazing".
As for "our policy will reflect the will of the people", I know I don't really believe that, and I didn't think you did either. I'm sure everyone here can think of a few areas where US government policy doesn't actually reflect the will of its people. But if you really do believe otherwise, then at least it's not disingenuous.
The 1936 Games in Berlin are remembered for Jesse Owens' humiliation of Hitler's sick dictatorship of the "master race." Had we boycotted those Games, his show would have gone on anyway, and our athletes wouldn't have been there to spoil it.
Of course, in Beijing our athletes are all going to keel over from the smog.
The argument for "letting" the Chinese put on a show of being a free nation is that the people of the United States don't particularly care if the Chinese do, and our policy will reflect the will of the people.
Freddie, that's not an argument (i.e., a normative statement) it's an explanation (i.e., a positive statement).
Our gracious hostess is asking, at bottom, why she should support or oppose a boycott. She is not asking for an explanation of why the USOC or USG will/will not impose such a policy.
Your comment is aimed at the latter, not the former, and is thus unresponsive to the question.
Arguments to practicality are now forbidden in the land of blog?
Freddie, what do you think the question in the original post is? I see it as being a principled one: "Should I, personally, as a matter of principle, support or oppose a boycott given how awful China is?"
I'd say a practical argument ("The American people don't want a boycott") is silly in response to that. Who cares what the American people want? I don't normally take a poll when I'm making up my own mind about something.
The practical argument you make would make sense if the question were something like "Should the USOC pull out of the 2008 Olympics?" Then the will of the people becomes quite relevant.
Because boycotts are collective actions and require public support to work. And if the question is "why shouldn't we boycott the Olympics," then a major answer is that very few nations if any seem determined to do so. And while I recognize the large difference between an American boycott and, say, a French one, you're still left with a failure to change much of anything. And I would argue that the kind of real pressure on China that could be brought about through the opening that an Olympic boycott would create is unsustainable without a real, grassroots movement of the American public. A boycott shouldn't be a one time symbol, but the beginning of tangible movements by American interests to produce Chinese change. But that's only going to happen with an engaged and committed American populace. Better, I think, to allow American athletes to participate, and participate in the kind of brotherhood and internationalism that the Games ostensibly represent.
Ah, Freddie, now that is a strong practical argument with the potential to appeal to someone who has a principled wish to spit on China.
It's also a mite more thorough (and less inflammatory) than your first post on the subject, and it is certainly asking a lot for your reader to get from one to the other without your help.
True. I was in a bad mood, and in my defense, I thought it was appropriate in response considering the length and tenor of MegArdle's post. I could have said something a little more constructive.
I do think that my comment is getting, say, a little more scrutiny than anyone elses. So far I've been told that I think I'm being brave in making it, which isn't true. That it isn't the case, and there are examples, like American resistance to South African apartheid, that disprove it. That it's so obvious and banal that making it is apolitical and negative. That it doesn't answer the question, or that it only attacks the question as irrelevant. And finally that my post is has only practical or positive value, and not normative or moral value.
So my question is, could it possibly be that there's just a little personal resentment fueling this fire?
I would boycott the Olympics, but since I haven't actually watched the Olympics since the 1980s I doubt anyone would notice I was doing it.
Well, speaking for myself, I was trying to explain why you were getting so much negative attention: because it seemed like you weren't actually answering the question, just seizing the opportunity to say something negative about the US.
If someone asks "What's the argument for the war on drugs?" and my response is "Because Republicans don't give a shit about poor blacks," well, I could stitch an argument together about the electoral preferences of wealthy coke-snorting suburbanites isolated from the effects of the Drug War and so on, but I'd expect to take a little heat for the abridged version.
Maybe it's personal animosity too, I don't know.
Yes, but Rob, the US populace's opinions towards a potential Olympic boycott is massively more relevant to the issue than Republican's feelings towards black people is relevant for a discussion off the drug war. But then, you knew that.
Also whats amazing is how much grief I'm taking considering the people I'm arguing with don't dispute the factual accuracy of what I'm saying.
But, no. The personal animosity here is of the "maybe" variety.
Agreed, the best response that our athletes can make to the PRC’s policies is to kick their asses in every event.
Also whats amazing is how much grief I'm taking considering the people I'm arguing with don't dispute the factual accuracy of what I'm saying.
What I have been trying repeatedly to explain is that they (and I) failed to see its relevance to the question. It therefore looked like a bizarre and totally out-of-place swipe at the US, truthful or not.
Your subsequent explanation has clarified your meaning considerably, so I'd be surprised if you got too much more grief.
Doesn't China own a lot of our debt? Isn't that dangerous?
We are primarily a money loving people, not a freedom loving people. Boycotting the Soviet Union, Cuba, Burma and Zimbabwe was easy because there is no financial pain involved.
Reagan found it extremely difficult to sanction South Africa because South Africa had gold and lots of it.
Hu Jintao and his cronies know that every Western politician goes to Beijing, makes the usual noises about human rights and Tibet, then sits down to sign lucrative deals.
It is silly to suggest a boycott of the Olympic games when American technology (Cisco) is being used to set up an police state infrastructure in China.
From what I recall the problem with individual nations boycotting the Olympics is it didn't accomplish anything. It doesn't really hurt the Olympic host, Olympics are often money losers for their city anyway, and aids the host country in winning more medals that they can then crow about.
What makes more sense, I think, would be boycotts by TV networks and sponsors. Winners of each day can be listed on network websites, or even on the news ticker, while they refuse to show pictures or coverage of any event. This might not change anything either, but I think it would make more sense. China wants this to showcase themselves to the world so not showing it seems a more logical punishment.
An argument against this could maybe be the "Jesse Owens factor." If we'd ignored the Berlin Olympics his moment would have also been ignored. Possibly ignoring the Olympics would mean ignoring any successes "Chinese Taipei" (Taiwan) will have at the Beijing Olympics. But I think it'd probably be worth it as I don't think such victories will have the same importance as Owens. Still I'm going to root for Taiwan, even though I don't plan to watch it this year. (And unlike others here I've always watched the Olympics)
Boycotting sport will always be the soft option and expression of guilt by those who want the least disruption to their lives. The sad truth is that no government or world citizen has the stomach to do what is needed, so the guilty outpouring expressed by a call to boycott a sporting event is really just an appeasement of the collective persons’ shame and moral indignation.
As the cry for a boycott grows louder, so does the feeling of self recrimination. For so many years they have done nothing. Now when the atrocities are most blatant people still resist doing anything that would cause them an inconvenience or risk.
How many protests or calls are there for boycotting the purchase of Chinese goods, not giving Chinese travel access to other countries, stopping the transfer of money in or out of China, and people around the world setting up a continuous protest outside every Chinese Embassy?
This would be a real expression of outrage but it does not happen and people live their lie ‘believing’ that calling for a sport boycott is doing something meaningful. When challenged on their logic and how meaningless their gesture they become indignant and ‘morally’ outraged that a sporting event should not be boycotted to show their disapproval.
When the sport event has come and gone and the atrocities continue how silent those anti-sport protesters as they bury their heads in the sand and buy another item ‘Made in China’.