Annals of Appeasement: Russia Awarded 2014 Winter Games
Filed under: Eastern Europe
It would not be at all difficult to argue that, because he may have been the second-greatest Republican president of this century, Bill Clinton was the worst Democratic president in American history. Just cursory thoughts about his presidency (abolishing welfare, balancing the budget, presiding over the dot.com explosion/implosion, handing both houses of Congress to the Republicans, taking the Democratic party into impeachment proceedings, being succeeded by a two-term Republican, etc.) ought to strike horror into the heart of any true blue Democrat.
But in the same way, it's quite possible we'll come to see George W. Bush as the best Democrat and worst Republican president of all time. Dubya seems to be seeking to match FDR stride for stride, first copying Roosevelt's sellout to Stalin at Yalta by inviting the dictator Vladimir Putin to munch on lobster at the family compound in Maine and then copying Roosevelt's presiding over the conduct of the hallowed Olympic Games in Nazi Germany. He's already handed back both houses of Congress to the Democrats (despite Clinton's best efforts) and mired the nation in a nasty conflict in Iraq.
Last weekend, it was announced that the 2014 winter games would be held in -- of all places -- the beach resort town of Sochi, famous in Russia for palm trees.
The IOC rejected Austria and South Korea, two nations with far more stable and progressive economies than Russia (to say nothing of host cities that are far more moutainous, snowy and wintry), and chose to place the games right in the throes of one of the world's worst hotspots. The region is beseiged by Chechen terrorists and an ongoing territorial feud between Russia and Georgia which threatens to break out into a shooting war at any moment. That's to say nothing of Russia's wanton legacy of crude human rights abuses in the area, with repeated convictions before the European Court for Human Rights, or the wisdom of handing the Olympics to a third-world economy plagued by massive corruption and disease that can't even get the male average adult lifespan above 60. It's not to mention Russia's shocking recent legacy of violent racist attacks on foreigners, many of whom would appear in Russia as tourists if the country can somehow manage to get the games off the ground (choosing the country's most southern city to host the winter olympics is hardly the hallmark of a good beginning). And on top of all that, it's to ignore how the crude dictatorial thugs in the Kremlin will use this occasion, just as the Politburo tried to use Russia's hosting of the 1980 summer games, as cover for increasing their chokehold on democracy.
We've seen all this craziness before, of course, with the Berlin games of 1936, so its disturbing to be on such familiar ground once again (another German city, Munich, was the location of choice for Chamberlain's sellout of Eastern Europe, another part of the appeasement axis that was supposed to bring us "peace in our time"). It's true, of course, that Nazi Germany didn't last a decade after hosting the games, so one might argue that giving them to Russia is an important step towards its downfall. But then again, a rather bloody war prestaged that downfall, likely not something we'd want to repeat. Then too, the USSR didn't last a decade after it hosted the summer games in 1980, either. The whole thing might be a good omen, a wonderful opportunity for the world to put Russia under the microscope and expose its true outrages even to the Russian people themselves (just as Jesse Owens made Munich blow up in Hitler's face) But the USSR only went down after a massive cold war including an arms race that terrorized the planet.
So it's hard to be sanguine, especially since we hardly see leaders like Ronald Reagan coming forward, willing and able to lead us in a new confrontation. We must make it our business now to find them and empower them, before we find outselves in a wholly unprecedented situation.
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