Pictures of Children excited about the Beijing Olympics---The official mascots for Beijing 2008 and children painting the official mascots on a mural. Elementary school children have been participating in numerous activities during the last year in anticipation of the Beijing Olympic games.There has been some saying that the USA & the free world should Boycott the Olympics, others such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA says that President Bush should Boycott the Opening Ceremonies---I believe they are all wrong.
The 1956 Olympic Games were the first ones boycotted by the Netherlands, Spain & Switzerland because of repression of the Hungarian uprising by the Soviet Union, additionally Cambodia, Egypt, Iraq & Lebanon boycotted the games due to the Suez Canal crisis. I remember when Jimmy Carter ordered that the United States would not participate in the 1980 Moscow Olympics to protest the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan---those who were hurt were the athletes, the games went on without the United States and 64 other countries.
While Ronald Reagan initially supported the 1980 boycott after some reflection he said, "...I then thought of terms of shouldn't this decision be made by the free American citizens, the Olympic Committee, the athletes themselves? I went through a stage of thinking in which I said it wasn't so much of their not participating, as I said, shouldn't we, since the Olympics traditionally were born in and exist on the basis of trying to provide peace between nations..."
Though one does want to draw attention to global, political and human rights issues, boycotts are ineffective and only serve to create bitterness between nations, alienating others, thereby establishing artificial barriers when the national pride of a global neighbor is damaged.
