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Sage
Grass & Cedars
Gold medal for terrorism?
by Darrell Thompson
It seemed to me that the summer Olympics of 2004 approached with less anticipation than usual.
In past Olympics, it was always interesting to see which country could win the most medals. This was especially true back in the days when the Soviet Union and East Germany had such powerful teams. Even then a boycott by the United States one year and by the Soviet Union in another year made the Olympics lose some of their appeal.
This year it seemed that terrorist threats and the seeming lack of security by the Greece government would tarnish the Olympics. If you watched much of the Olympics on TV, you couldn’t help but notice the thousands of empty seats that would have been filled except for the influence of terrorism on people who would normally have attended. Even for the athletes who won medals, it must have been disappointing to be crowned as the best in the world before an audience smaller than you would expect to see at a high school football game.
The thing most noticeable about the U.S. Olympic team was the absence of some high profile NBA players who decided not to be a part of the “Dream Team.” The high profile NBA players offered a variety of reasons why they did not want to participate. None came out and said they were scared of a possible terrorist attack, but it was obvious that the threat of terrorism had an effect. A person has every right not to be on the team if they have no desire to. If not for the possibility of terrorist attacks, the players who decided not to be on the team would have felt slighted if they were not asked to be on the team. Someone once said, “The price of victory is high but so are the rewards.” If victory and fame were certain and the risk was low, there would be a long line of NBA players wanting on the roster.
There were still many inspiring stories of accomplishments by athletes from many countries in this Olympics. I thought none was more inspiring than that of Carly Patterson who rallied to win the gold medal in the overall individual gymnastics competition. She is probably not over five feet tall nor weighs over ninety pounds, but she stood as a giant on the medal podium. Some of those seven foot, three hundred pound guys in the NBA could take lessons in courage from this little lady.
Maybe we should not be so quick to point an accusing finger at the NBA players who didn’t want to go. We may be just like them in the way we live our lives. When we invest our money, we would like to find the investments with quick and high returns with low risk.
When the war on terrorism began, successes and victories came quick; loss of American lives was minimal. The public opinion for the war was overwhelmingly in favor of the actions that had been taken. I had imagined U.S. forces rolling into Baghdad and other parts of Iraq with crowds of liberated Iraqis cheering, similar to the way that the people of Kuwait had welcomed their liberation in Desert Storm.
Since the initial success, the dirtier job of cleaning up the situation has begun. Things have not gone as most had expected. The number of American dead has risen to just over one thousand. Public support for the actions in Afghanistan and Iraq has dropped substantially.
We were looking for a quick victory, high rewards and minimum loss. I sometimes wonder if America now has the stomach or backbone to stand strong if ever faced with the loss of life that came in World Wars I or II, Korea or Vietnam. |
