Newspaper Page Text
Olympic Politics
Spelman Spotlight March 28. 1980 Page 5
By Charles Griffin
The furor over the Moscow
Olympic Games leaves the world
sorely divided. The President and
many other Americans feel we
should not go to Moscow as long
as the Soviets are holding
Afghanistan. Allied governments
around the world are expressing
similar sentiments.
But the International Olympic
Committee (IOC) is firmly against
cancelling the games or moving
the site. And the IOC member for
each nation—including the
U.S.—is firmly against such ac
tion. They have to be. They are
honorbound to ignore any
pressure of any sort to change,
harm or stop the games.
IOC members are chosen for
life and they are carefully
screened. They are not chosen as
representatives of their coun
tries, but to be delegates to their
countries to guide the Olympic
movement within their countries.
Each Olympic committee in a
country must be composed or
representatives of the governing
bodies of each sport represented
in the games. Each of these sports
must have an international
federation with representatives
from each country’s sport
federation or governing body.
And every member is sworn to
abide by the rules of the IOC.
They must be totally independent
and autonomous and resist com
mercial, religious or political in
fluence.
They cannot do other than say
no to the President—their first
duty is to the games, not to their
countries.
Reality is another matter.
Western nations and non
OHUWfus
MISHA, THE Mosaw
OLYMPICS BEAR'
V.
communist nations do not
generally attempt any sort or con
trol over their sports to the
degree that communist nations
do.
If the games were being held in
America and the Soviets wanted
to show their displeasure over an
action of ours by boycotting the
games, you can be sure that the
committees under their control
would immediately kowtow and
withdraw their support for the
games.
The very idea of amateur com
petition is alien to the communist
nations. Where we have a clear
demarcation between
professional and amateur
athletics—professionals get paid,
amateurs don’t—the communist
countries operate on a non-profit
basis and have no clear demar
cation.
The rules of the IOC state that
each athlete must have a basic
occupation designed to ensure
his present and future livelihood
that he does not receive and
never has received any
remuneration for participation in
sport.
Of course, many athletes have •
devoted their school years and
the period just after college to at
taining mastery of some sport,
winning a medal in the Olympics,
and living off commercials
thereafter. But they were lear
ning something else while in
school and they had to support
themselves afterward or depend
on public or parental help to con
tinue training.
The same is not true in the
USSR. There an athlete is com
pletely supported by the state as
long as he or she can compete
and win. They live and eat better
than the general populace. They
receive allowances for luxury
items when on tour in foreign
areas. They become coaches of
their sport if they retire
honorably. Their bodies are ex
perimental playgrounds for
Soviet scientists searching for
ways to build better Russians
through better chemistry.
In international events,
Eastern European and Soviet
judges have visibly favored
Moscow games or, better,
drawing participants away from
the games to another site is the
very best means at hand to
humiliate them.
We must recognize that the
OIC cannot go along with the
boycott or a change in location.
Undoubtedly there will be an
Olympiad in Moscow, but the
only participants should be
Soviet client states and the IOC.
America should sponsor an
alternate Olympiad without IOC
sanction using every incentive to
lure other nations to attend. A
neutral site should be chosen,
perhaps Egypt. The rules of the
IOC should be rigidly adhered to
even though the members of the
IOC now living will never accept
any of the records established
We must do this thing knowing
full well that the Olympic games
may never be the same. We
should have denied Soviet teams
entry to the winter games as well.
We cannot, in good conscience,
accept the Soviets as equals if
they continue to act like sharks in
a feeding frenzy.
We must use every economic,
athletes from their own countries political or emotional resource
when getting a gold medal we have to humiliate and censure
becomes a point of international the USSR. Our government
prestige.
To the Soviets, there is a great
deal of national prestige in being
the best athletes in a given field,
or in winning more gold than any
other team. We do the same
thing, but we don’t put our hearts
and souls into it—and we don’t
retire losing coaches and athletes
to the north slope of Alaska.
My point, at long last, is that
the Soviets see the games as a
means to show political
superiority. If our government is
to attempt a demonstration
against Soviet aggression short of
going to war, boycotting the
should actively seek to un
dermine and destroy the Soviet
government.
Boycotting the games, refusing
television coverage of their
games, and withdrawing
economic support from the IOC
and the committees accepting the
Moscow Olympiad is akin to the
rich kid on the block getting mad
and taking his ball away making it
impossible for the others to play.
But it is a move that must be done
and it should be just the first step
in a new aggressive policy to
progressively destroy the
megalomaniac oligarchy of the
USSR.
Powerplay In Afghanistan
By Charles Griffin
No one in Washington made
more than a peep when Soviet-
backed politicos began playing
switchies with the Afghani gov
ernment. No one had any reason
to, since we had long ago ceded
any true interest in the area. It
was at Russia’s back door, it was
humble, and it had nothing that
anyone wanted.
In fact, it would be more
trouble than it was worth as a
client state. Afghans are a surly,
independent lot composed of
tribes owing little fealty to a
national ideal. If they had no one
else to war with, they generally
fight among themselves. You
could say they are the Irish of
south Asia.
Even now, the soothsayers of
the national press are predicting
poor Afghanistan will fall—not
easily—but that it will become
another puppet state of the
USSR. Power, as she is played by
the Russians, is considered un
beatable. But American generals
thought superior arms could
bring about a favorable decision
in Vietnam. American power was
thought to be unbeatable.
Perhaps the Russians will find
they have bitten off more than
they can comfortably chew.
The question is: Why did the
USSR decide to invade
Afghanisttan at this time? Having
once made Afghanistan a client
state, all they needed to do was
sit back, wait for the dust to settle
on the next coup d’ etat, and offer
the new government slightly
more than they offered to the
previous one.
Most analysts seem to think the
religious revolution in Iran
sparked the current troubles in
Afghanistan. They then claim
that the Russians feared the
religious fervor would spread to
their Moslem population and
proceeded to stamp out the fire
before it spread across the bor
der.
There may be some truth to
that claim, but it is a minor theme
in the Soviet symphony. It is
power and the demonstration of
power that are important. With
Iran in turmoil and the U.S.
caught with its pants down, what
better time to exhibit power that
is understood by every Arab, by
every Kurd, by every Persian, by
every Turk, by every Pakistani,
and every Indian.
As long as the U.S. will send a
dollar of aid, the inhabitants of
the mideast and south Asia will
condem and squeak about Soviet
intervention. But none will over
tly do anything about it. Hell, the
new government of India is prac
tically condoning the invasion of
Afghanistan. Yes, they will all
take the dollar, for whatever it is
worth, but they will bow when
the bear strides by.
Russia began conquering
Moslem tribes a long time ago.
They usually did it tribe by tribe.
Whether czarist or communist,
the Russians have nibbled their
way southward toward the warm-
water, year-round port they have
always craved. Their technique
has always been to subvert their
immediate neighbor and absorb
the neighbor if possible.
With Iran stumbling and
Pakistan under a repressive
military government, creating
more border with either became
a strategic necessity. Whichever
falls first will fall into the arms of
the bear. Perhaps both will.
One bite and Afghanistan is
consumed. Iran and Pakistan are
warned: Put not your faith in the
U.S. Trust not the power of oil.
Your soul may be Allah’s, but
your ass belongs to the bear.
As I have said before,
President Carter does not un
derstand the game of power as it
is played in the mideast. He
punished the Soviets by cutting
off our grain shipments and the
sale of new technology to them,
and with the threat of an Olympic
boycott.
But there is a point when you
can’t turn the other cheek. Force
must be met with force—or
cleverness. Carter has the means
to contain the USSR at hand. It
has been offered twice within a
year.
A military alliance with China
and joint exercises in a friendly
third country such as (currently)
Pakistan, would be unmistakable
evidence that we have been
pushed far enough. An increase
of aid, arms, and instruction to
Egypt combined with a naval
blockade of Iran and/or a cap
ture of the oil fields would put the
OPEC nations and the USSR on
notice that we no longer intend to
be a pushover.
However, I am engaged in
See AFGHANISTAN p. 10
