Boycott Bejing? No Thanks.

27 Mar, 2008 by John Hawkins

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Over at Slate, Anne Applebaum has a column that suggests that the U.S. “Boycott Beijing.”

Now, I think the Chinese are monsters who enslave their own people, are a negative influence around the world, that it was a huge mistake to reward them with an Olympics in the first place, and that what they’re doing to Tibet — among other things — is absolutely wrong.

However, what would we really accomplish by boycotting the Olympics?

If there was some tangible benefit that we could reap from boycotting the Olympics — for example: freeing Tibet, keeping the Chinese from oppressing their own people, keeping them from threatening Taiwan, etc. — I’d say go for it. But, all we’d really end up doing is punishing our own athletes.

So, why should we tell our own athletes that they’re going to have to flush four years of work down the drain because the idiots in charge of the Olympics Committee looked at one of the worst bad actors on the planet, shrugged their shoulders, and decided to give them the Olympics anyway?

Simple answer: we shouldn’t.