Thursday, April 10, 2008

Boycotting the Olympics

There's been a lot of talk lately about boycotting the opening ceremony of the upcoming Olympics in China. A lot of this pressure for boycotting is falling on President Bush, among other world leaders, who has recently indicated that he will still attend the opening ceremonies.

Presidential contenders Obama and Clinton stated a boycott should occur and I don't recall hearing anything from McCain yet.

I have two issues with this whole thing:

1. Do the Olympics need to be politicized? Aren't the problems we have in the world caused by politics? Wouldn't creating more politics to solve the problems created by politics be the same thing as drinking more alcohol to quit drinking alcohol?

2. Our President and potential Presidents seem to be sending mixed messages (except McCain, who has said nothing yet).

Senator Obama/Clinton: The oppression China has on Tibet and the genocide China sustains in Darfur are things America should not stand for, but taking out the oppressive regime and genocide caused by Saddam in Iraq was wrong.

President Bush: We can take out Saddam for the oppression and genocide that was taking place in Iraq, plus Saddam had WMD. But with China, who is itself oppressive and sustains genocide in Darfur all while possessing nuclear weapons, let's do nothing.

What are they thinking? Are they thinking at all?


4 comments:

¡Benjaminista! said...

Boycotts solve nothing. What's interesting--and dangerous--is the degree to which this situation is actually rallying Chinese and Chinese immigrants for their government rather than against it. There was a big rally here in Canada of Chinese-Canadians protesting the protests so to speak.

Intentional Fallacy said...

That's interesting. I wonder if boycotts did occur, would Chinese people who are protesting the protests begin to support what China is doing in Tibet and/or Darfur? I wonder if they support those things right now.

¡Benjaminista! said...

I think the main issue is that they believe Tibetans and Tibetan supporters want to separate China - even though the Dalai Llama has explicitly denied that. It is my impression that there is wide support for actions against Tibetan "radicals" but I'm not sure about Darfur.

Intentional Fallacy said...

By seperating China, do you mean by allowing Tibet to break away or by dividing China up into parts?

If the former, how can you seperate a part of your country that was never yours to begin with? Is that not something Chinese people understand?

If the latter, what is causing them to think that?