OLYMPICS COMMITTEE AND BEIJING, PEAS IN A POD.

• Author: Zirin, Dave

By the time you read this, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, set for February 4-20, will be underway--unless they've been canceled at the last moment due to the pandemic. But that's probably not going to happen. As we saw in Tokyo last summer, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has never minded the games becoming a global super-spreader event if the alternative is losing ungodly sums of television revenue.

The question is whether these Olympic games should have been canceled anyway, irrespective of COVID-19. The United States and other Western nations faced strong pressure to boycott these winter games, given China's deplorable record on human rights.

The Chinese government has generated international outrage over its treatment of Tibet, its wholesale oppression of the Uyghur Muslims, its labor abuses, and its volatile relationship with Hong Kong. Momentum for a boycott seemed tangible, especially when the Chinese government "disappeared" three-time Chinese Olympic tennis player Peng Shuai after she accused one of China's most powerful politicians of sexual assault. (Peng Shuai reappeared weeks later to deny her own accusations.)

Amid this frightening state of affairs, feckless IOC President Thomas Bach has chosen to do less than nothing, not only ignoring the pleas from human rights organizations, but also whitewashing Peng Shuai's reappearance. He said he had spoken to Peng Shuai and all was well; they had dinner plans upon his arrival in Beijing.

If there was going to be a boycott of these Olympics, the gravitational pull for other nations would have to start with the United States. But alas, the magnetic force in the other direction proved to be too strong. President Joe Biden did cancel the normal diplomatic mission that comes with the Olympics, but that was as far as he would go.

To enact a true boycott would not only require political courage, but it would be like sticking out your chin and begging to be punched by the entire political class, possibly including people in your own party, as well as pollsters and the public.

These kinds of state boycotts are political poison for a number of reasons. First, the only people who truly suffer because of a boycott are the athletes themselves. They become understandably sympathetic figures, and no President wants to be seen as denying athletes their long-sought opportunity to perform the triple axel they've been practicing for years. Jimmy Carter learned this lesson the hard way with...