I already refuse to watch even a moment of them – and will do my best to tune out even the barest mention of them. This due, of course, to the fact that China’s government is an anti-human, worst-sort-of-culture-of-death imaginable tyranny. But here’s another reason, if you need one – from NRO’s The Corner:
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, issued the following statement in response to the International Olympic Committee’s decision to exclude Iraqi athletes from the Beijing Olympics:
“It is outrageous that the IOC would reject athletes from a democratic Iraq, and at the same time, from Saddam Hussein’s son Uday’s notorious, torture-based Iraqi Olympics team. embrace those from repressive regimes like North Korea, Burma and Sudan. This is the same Olympic organization that embraced the participation of athletes
“Rather than give the world the excitement of seeing Iraq’s athletes further unify their nation across sectarian boundaries in the spirit of Olympic competition, the IOC has chosen to spit in the eye of the athletes and people of this emerging democracy.
“I urge President Bush and the leaders of the free nations participating in the Beijing Olympics to put maximum pressure on the IOC to reverse course. Democratic leaders should not embrace the farce of watching athletes from some of the world’s most brutal regimes being paraded in front of them while athletes from new democracies are spurned.
“First tortured by Uday, and now rejected by the IOC, the athletes of Iraq have suffered enough.”
There is something which continues to outrage – no matter how many times I see it – about bodies staffed with international elites which will grovel to tyrants but have all sorts of objections to imperfect democracies. We can forgive them, of course – cut off as they are from the wellsprings of truth, the global elite often can’t even tell when they are doing a horribly wrong thing…but forgiving them and understanding their sorry plight doesn’t make it any better for the people of Iraq, who have every right to be represented in Beijing if, for instance, the slaves of North Korea are allowed in…
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