On the Right - On the Road to Mandalay.(Chinese human rights abuses and the 2008 Olympics)(Brief Article)(Column)

NEW YORK, JULY 13

From this quarter there was no call made on the Bush administration to heave into the Olympic Games question, seeking to obstruct the selection of Peking for the 2008 site. The problem for the United States was now as the problem had been for nine years on another theater: Do we take official action to protest China's violation of human rights-or do we take unofficial action?

Novitiates should remind themselves that we went through exactly the same question when the Soviet Union applied for the role as host for 1980. In the late '70s, we heard the identical things we hear today, and the naysayers were as persuasive as they were in the last few months against Peking. Most frequently, back then, the Olympics of 1936 were brought up. That was the year in which Adolf Hitler strutted his stuff in Berlin and handed Leni Riefenstahl the material for the great movie drama featuring German athleticism and, however indirectly, racial purity.

Outstanding among the critics of Olympics-in-Berlin was Sir Arnold Lunn, the British mountaineer, essayist, historian, and athlete (he invented the slalom). His arguments have not grown old, and are eloquently put forward today by, e.g., the editors of The Weekly Standard. They are that every means by which nations can objectify their displeasure with human-rights abuses should be taken. You rule out war against a country that denies human rights, especially if that country has nuclear weapons. Having done that, apply every other pressure you can think of. And denying sponsorship of the Olympic Games is one such. Hitler lusted for them, so did Brezhnev, so does Jiang Zemin. Inasmuch as the United States was not a member of the committee that made the decision, all we could have done was use our (considerable, but not irresistible) influence. Would we have lightened the burden of those in China who suffer?

Probably not, because saying no on the Olympic question wasn't ...