U.S. should boycott Beijing Olympics

What a stupid idea by both Bill Richardson and by Kevin Blackistone in the Politico.

About a year before it was to host the 1988 Summer Games, South Korea's authoritarian government acquiesced to popular demands for democratic elections. A former general, Roh Tae-woo, was voted president. Thus was ushered in what has become a steady transformation of a longtime repressive government.

A little more than a year from its first hosting of the Summer Games, change isn't coming along so swimmingly in China.

Here is a fundamental difference between China and South Korea--South Korea had a history, albeit a short one, with democratic govenrments. China--not so much.

Look, a boycott is not going to change the Chinese minds any more than the American boycott of the Moscow games in 1980 for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Balckstone then talks about the link between sport and politics:

Maybe there would have been a hue and cry six years ago against China's Olympic candidacy had it then been linked to genocide. It did lose the bidding in 1993 for the 2000 Olympics in part because of the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, which was yet another reminder of the entanglement of sports and politics, especially with the Olympics. Olympians have been the pawns since they first swaddled themselves in national colors.

The most recent games -- not just 1972, 1968 and 1936, most famously -- were colored by politics. The Bush reelection campaign was accused of hijacking the Athens Games in 2004 with an ad that claimed its war on terror was responsible for athletes from Iraq and Afghanistan being able to participate. Australia went on the apology at the 2000 games in Sydney as its star, sprinter Cathy Freeman, represented the Aboriginal natives historically discriminated against there. The 1996 Games in Atlanta saw the Palestinian Authority participate.

Look, just because sport has become politicized doesn't mean the United States should extend that connection by boycotting the Beijing games.

Does China have a long way to go on its human rights record? Sure, but is boycotting the games going to fix that? No. But what will change it is the money spent in Beijing by the hundreds of thousandas of visitors and the billions of dollars that will be spent there. Capitalism and repressive governments don't mix for every long and the hard reality for the Beijing regime is that once tasted, people don't leave capitalism behind.