TAKE THE CARTER OPTION:

The question for the United States, of course, is whether it should conduct business as usual--whether its athletes should compete in Beijing, its businesses should sponsor, and its officials should attend--and, in this way, provide an implicit seal of approval for giving an odious regime its day in the sun.

Beijing is holding at least a million Muslim Uighurs in concentration camps in the Xinjiang region and--along with other forms of torture that the Trump and Biden administrations labeled as "genocide"--is conducting a campaign of mass sterilization, coerced birth control, and punishment for "illegal births."

More broadly, the regime is tightening its control of the media, internet, and other vehicles of communication; continuing to persecute the Falun Gong and other minorities while suppressing human rights in Tibet and Inner Mongolia; attacking activists, dissidents, journalists, and defense lawyers; destroying churches and other religious institutions; and curtailing freedom in a once-democratic Hong Kong.

Ideally, the IOC would move the games, even if that delayed their February start. Legally, the IOC could withdraw because, (1) due to China's handling of coronavirus pandemic and reluctance to come clean about it, Beijing isn't necessarily safe for athletes, or (2) due to China's human-rights abuses, it is violating the Olympic Charter. With the IOC reluctant to confront China on such grounds, that almost certainly won't happen.

In another high-profile option, more than 180 human-rights groups urged a boycott just as America boycotted the Moscow games in 1980 after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

Tweet   @brothersjudd