Boycott the Olympics? But What About My Dreams?

It is important to note right off the bat that Clinton did not call for a boycott of the Olympics. Much of the boohooing and jeering from the headline-only-reading blogizens is that Clinton is demanding that Bush take the drastic-yet-worthless move of pulling our athletes from the competition ruining their lives for nothing more than a stern fingerpointing at Hu Jintao. Unless I failed to read the story properly (check for yourself here, but when you check please read more than the misleading headline and read [for godssake] the opening sentence) she has merely stated that she thinks the president should boycott the opening ceremonies.

Many would claim that that this is just a symbolic gesture that doesn’t mean anything and will lead nowhere but to offending our growing trade partner, China..and of course ruining the Olympics (woe upon woe!). Sure, a handshake, a cold shoulder, raising your voice when angry, being late to a meeting discussing irrelevant topics are all symbolic gestures but they do indicate a certain amount of satisfaction or dissatisfaction both to the recipient of that symbol and to those who witness it. That is the stuff of diplomacy. Much of diplomacy has always been about showing up to the right parties, having your name next to the right people at the right time, shunning those that attempt to act outside the system. Diplomacy…as a distinct way of convincing people to do what you want them to do without forcing them to through brute force…is an art that pulls its power from psychology and sociology, as well as rational and intellectual appeals. Furthermore this sort of symbolic communication can be timed for the utmost efficacy.

There’s a lot of money in the Olympics. Perhaps more importantly there is a lot of prestige that comes with being granted the Olympics–prestige that is, in part, related to the Olympics mission: promoting transnational brotherhood through the power of sport. And roll your eyes if you must, but the Olympics have repeatedly proven themselves to be an important venue for stating things of importance. And country’s will go extremely far to protect the glittering image that got them awarded the Olympics to start with.

China, for example has spent billions (billions) preparing for the coming tide of visitors from all all over the world. They have tightened several laws and loosened some others.

For another example, look to Mexico in 1968. Not the black-fisted salute, although that image is important not because it happened, or because it happened at a sporting event, but because it happened at the Olympics. I’m talking about the student protests a few months before the summer Olympics games that were thought to be so embarrassing for the Mexican government that the government arranged to have the protesters massacred. A move that, while horrible and dramatic, did significantly quiet the amount of domestic protest in Mexico during the games. I’m not condoning the massacre of dissidents (what a grandly self-destructive move that would be). I’m citing it as an example of the extremes that governments will go through in an attempt to not sully their reputations at Olympic time. Turns out that student massacres are bad way to not have your reputation sullied but that is neither here nor there at the moment.

After admitting that I’m a reader of Daniel Drezner’s blog, it would probably be wrong of me to not credit him for saying first what I’m about to say. Basically Clinton’s proposal is limited in scope, designed to draw attention to China’s extreme violations of human rights (and its clear vision that there are no such things as human rights) without entering into an all-or-nothing pact that would hurt American businesses, American athletes, or our burgeoning relationship with a major world power that over the last 20 years or so has made significant improvements in the human rights area, to say nothing of their increasing importance in American foreign policy interests like the six-party talks with North Korea.

It is possible, even, as Drezner points out, to make this statement even more important by acting in conjunction with the leader’s of Germany, France, and ideally some developing nations as well. Furthermore, it is possible that Bush could use the threat of a boycott to illicit some immediate concessions from China, specifically on the Darfur front, if Bush can convince France and Germany not to go through with their possible and planned boycotts respectively.

The alternative is to do nothing and that seems to be the consensus of many. That, since we won’t change China overnight with a symbolic boycott of the opening ceremonies we might as well do nothing at all, after all, why risk offending a country that holds so much of our debt and has such strategic value as an ally and trading partner? Well, that recommendation denies how much has diplomacy goes on with China every day. China did not wake up one morning and decide to be America’s trading partner. Nor did America simply wake up one morning and decide to be China’s. That series of agreements was the result of a series of diplomatic tits for tats–China agreeing to certain policy constraints to gain access to America’s markets and America promising to, among other things, cool the hot rhetoric we have historically aimed at China. Basically, the threat of an Olympic boycott is exactly the kind of thing we have done with every reluctant ally-in-waiting. Only the effect of such a move today is amplified because of our trade relations and because of the Olympics.

To do nothing with Hu Jintao still listed as one of the top 20 human rights violators is really to condone that activity. There is no two ways about it. That is not to say that a boycott of the opening ceremonies is the only way to make a statement, there are plenty of things that can be done, and likely will be, but an opening ceremony boycott would not be the knife in China’s the back as many would like to paint it…nor would it destroy the dreams of our hard-working athletes or ruin the Olympics. As a matter of fact, I would think that a lot of the athletes participating in this year’s games are just as distraught as some of those recommending a boycott–although conflicting personal and professional interests will keep them from saying so for the moment. An acknowledgment from the president that America will participate in the games in a spirit of brotherhood through sportsmanship but does not condone the ruthlessness of the PRC might help alleviate some of the guilt that they are feeling for participating in such a grand money-making event for the Chinese dictatorship.

Bush’s Dictator Dance Card is Full to Bursting

Last Thursday I ranted against President Bush’s admonishment of Barack Obama over whether the latter, as president, should have sit-down talks with North Korea, Cuba, or Iran. What I said specifically was that Bush was a pandering, hypocritical ass, or words to that effect. Without getting into the rightness or wrongness of sitting down with the world’s dictators I offer this.

Each year various publications rank the world’s worst dictators and with little variation those lists match up one to the other. About 70 countries are ruled by dictators. The day before I posted about Bush lecturing Obama on proper US foreign policy standards, I showed a picture of George Bush playing dress-up with number 20 on the 2007 list, Vladimir Putin, the rabidly anti-deomcratic president of Russia (soon to be anti-democratic prime minister after his self-appointed successor is “elected.”)

Following is George Bush standing next to, smiling, and–in one instance–apparently frolicking with various members of other leaders from the top 20 of 2007’s worst dictators list. Numbered for your convenience.

For the record Castro doesn’t even make the top 20.

With so many dance partners our lame duck leader is sure to get a little tired…but don’t worry, he has C. Rice to dance when he don’t want to.

Those Oh so Moral Republicans!

One of the most fascinating topics in political philosophy that I’ve run across is the concept of “dirty hands.” While the basic scenario is important, it is off topic for me today. What is important to me is the fundamental issue at work: politics is dirty and there is absolutely no way to perform well in politics and remain clean. Not every action in politics is dirty and that which is dirty is not always equally dirty. And by dirty I don’t necessarily mean illegal.

At the very least there is, as Machiavelli pointed out, a fundamental separation between values within the world of politics and values within the realm of traditional ethics (I’m being general but I am speaking specifically of Christian values, although any teleological normative system is fine, even non-religious ones…although, in my opinion they are easier to work around.).

The Christian God is pretty straightforward on 1) not killing, 2) not lying, 3) not working on some official holy day of rest and a few other things. The Jesus version of the Christian God is pretty straightforward on being peaceful, forgiving another’s trespasses, picking out the plank in our own eye before noting the splinter in our brothers eye, rich people not being able to get into heaven, being humble in all things, and forgoing personal excesses of wealth.

However, a president (and for that matter congresspeople) have to be ready to send troops into battle. A flick of the pen and self-serving theologians can say that God meant “no killing of innocents” although that is not what the law says and, in this instance, I’m a strict constructivist. But even that rewriting of God’s law doesn’t quite work. “Collateral damage” is factored in to every bomb drop and house raid. The president not only knows that ordering an attack will cause civilian (innocent) death, but approximately how many will die. He knows that many of them are children who have not yet been corrupted by the ideologies of their parents (if we assume that the others are somehow “guilty”of something because of their beliefs.)

The same self-serving theologian could argue that the Old Testament God, the one from which the commandment against killing arrived was pro-war and therefore only meant something like “no killing of one of your own” (since the Old Testament wars were almost only wars against opposing religious groups). But that doesn’t explain our firebombing of Dresden, the Revolutionary War against Britain, the Civil War against the South, and all the “small wars” that took place throughout the very Catholic Latin America (keeping in mind I’m not including the “clearly guilty” and atheist communists we fought against, but rather all the “collateral damage” including the CIA-admitted genocide in Nicaragua.) Even locally, how far removed from the commandment against murder is he when the president allows Americans to die if by “one of your own” God meant to define the restriction in terms of citizenship? Certainly God recognized that there were both sins of commission, like putting a Titan missile into a madrassa, and sins of omission, like failing to properly repair the levees outside New Orleans and failing to put a person in charge of FEMA with some emergency management experience.

God does not let you into heaven based on a balance of good and bad acts. It’s not God’s up there with a spreadsheet tallying lives saved against lives wasted. “You killed or were responsible for the deaths of 3 million Mr. Bush, but, thankfully, but since you upheld 10% of your promise for African aid, you saved maybe, 100,000. But you didn’t go into Darfur like you should have which caused the death of 300,000, but you did…” Even a good president who actually used the power of his office to save lives around the world would have a hard time accounting for the millions of deaths from all the unstopped (or actively supported) dictators of the world. And clearly a president can’t be judged on counterfactuals like, “You didn’t bomb Beijing” which would be as good as saying “You didn’t blow up the planet.” I mean, neither did I, and I didn’t cause the deaths of a 1.5 million Iraqi children through ten years of international sanctions.

So presidents murder and they spend a great deal of time not preventing murders that they have the power to stop. There are political reasons of course. We have this thing called “sovereignty”and this related things called “self-determination.” These things are two political concepts, the belief in which prevents presidents from sending in the Army and Marines to stop every genocide it hears about. But, my understanding is God doesn’t care about our made up laws. There is only God’s law, and a good Christian president would have to disobey international law to follow God’s law.

So just in terms of this one commandment, we have to assume that presidents don’t make good Christians and vice versa. And that leads us to two related points. 1) Any president that claims they can balance being a good Christian and being a good president is a liar or they are stupid. In either case, I don’t want them to be my leader. and 2) Since all presidents are going to have to murder people, I feel like I should elect the guy (or gal) who is going to murder the least people…and stop the most worldwide atrocities.

So how does one make that determination? First I think we have to determine at least some of the important ways that people die as a result of the political decisions of our elected leaders.

Right off the bat (and probably because I’m thinking religiously for the moment), there is the death penalty and abortion. There’s also the deaths related to poverty–preventable illnesses like malnutrition, diarrhea, dehdryation. There is, of course, cancer, heart disease, and automobile accidents which, in no particular order, are the top three killers in the country. There is also murder. And suicide.

Internationally the big killers are the poverty diseases: malnutrition, dehydration, diarrhea–like those that afflict the American poor–but also measles, mumps, malaria, tuberculosis, and a handful of others, nearly all of which we have treatments for. There is of course HIV/AIDS. There are the big-name genocides like those in Darfur and there are big-name human rights abuses like the dowry deaths in India, public decapitations in Saudi Arabia, and the constant disappearances of dissidents in China and Russia. The biggest worldwide killer right now after the poverty-related diseases are the peripheral deaths related to civil wars like the one in the Congo.

Oh! And there is the small matter of those two wars we are fighting which is not only causing the deaths of hundreds of thousand of civilians, it is also killing thousands of Americans to boot. In addition to those Americans killed directly in the war (about 3500) the NY Times has found 121 homicides committed by soldiers that have returned from one of the two conflicts and (probably) 102 Afghanistan/Iraq-related suicides which, as far as I’m concerned are casualties of war as well.

And, while there is no commandment against torture, I have to say that, at the very least, those people who are tortured to death should count as murdered–as should those three “detainees” in Guantanamo who finally succeeded in killing themselves last June.

So, if I have to choose my future president based purely off a standard of not increasing the tally of murdered innocents and with the possibility that he or she might actually try to do something to save those already condemned to death by the current state of the world, am I going to vote for a Republican or a Democrat? Well, those Republican are against abortion, and that sounds pretty Christian…

It sure is hard. Which guy was it that said we should “double the size of Guantanamo?” was that Obama? No. Which candidates are running in support of the war? Which candidates are preventing stem cell research to help cure cancer? Which side, Republicans or Democrats have had more effect fighting crime by reducing poverty? Which candidates are talking about extending health coverage to the uninsured so that people can stop dying of malnutrition in the richest country in the world?

Oh yeah, the atheist, secular demons in the DNC. But don’t forget, they are pro-choice and in the grand scheme of things…ach…you get it by now.

There’s lots of ways to murder in the world, how is that Republicans have gotten the stranglehold on morality by fighting against just one of them?

So Long, Suharto

It is perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of the second half of the 20th Century that Indonesia remained an abysmally small, weak nation with no US allies within striking distance. Because, if Indonesia had had the ability to strike out against one of our allies, we might have developed the wherewithal to hack him and his followers to pieces like he did to so many of his own people. Instead Suharto lived large off of American and British paychecks and died comfortably. Most people in this country will never know, and many that do will forget, that he was one of the century’s worst dictators, slaughtering over a million of his own people. Many of his victims were communist activists who’s names appeared on lists given to him by the CIA.

But if he had launched an attack against a different dictator, with more money, or access to more raw materials, with a separate and perhaps more public relationship with the US, if that had been the case, then whichever great and glorious “war president” was in office at the time could have proclaimed that in honor of “democracy” and “freedom” and “decency” and “God” that Suharto should be overthrown. He could have been tried for the war crimes he certainly committed and he could have swung from the gallows as a word of warning to future dictators. He could have faced, that is, the same fate as once US ally Saddam Hussein after invading Kuwait.

Instead, after his death yesterday the White House presented a paean to the ex-dictator and mass murderer lauding him for his 30 years of “service” to Indonesia and his genius at improving the Indonesian economy.

Yes, it is true, when you slaughter a million people, you will raise your per capita earnings.

Even the much-vilified Muslim news outlet Aljazeera had very little good to say of the Muslim dictator:

Between half a million to a million people were killed as the army organized Muslim groups and ordinary citizens to take their revenge on the Indonesian Communist Party.

Hundreds of thousands of others were jailed, killed or simply disappeared as Suharto cracked down on opponents and stamped Indonesia’s rule on territories as far apart as Aceh in the west Timor and Papua in the east.

With the blood of as many as one and a half million people on his hands, and allegedly billions of dollars of state funds in his bank accounts, the wily former dictator has never faced court or had to account for his actions.

I’m not saying I advocate the death penalty, even for total pissant bastards like Suharto. I’m just saying that he was allowed to die peacefully and now serves as an example that with the right friends crime does pay. Suharto, along with Pinochet and Trujillo and several others, is proof that America does not go to war to “defend democracy” or “fight for freedom.” Even under the twisted logic of Communist containment, for what world were we fighting if winning against Communism meant that people like Suharto would get rich from American banks and businessmen and be permitted to kill 1.5 million of his own people?

And the American government can’t, even after his death, find the nerve to remember him as he was–a disgrace to humanity, hacked to pieces by machetes for eternity in Hell in the imaginations of every living Indonesian. America’s obsequious eulogy is as disgusting as it is shameful. I don’t blame you Ambassador Cameron Hume, you were doing your job in piling accolades on the corpse that rightfully deserves to be ripped apart and trampled on by the living victims of his 30 year raping and pillaging of the land he “served.” I blame the petty tyrant that gave you the instruction to do it.