Little did the Greeks know what they were getting us into back in 1896. And how could they?
Certainly, their vision of the Olympics probably went no further than to celebrate which of them ran the best marathon in a loincloth.
Now, we are three weeks from the start of the Sochi (Russia) Winter Olympics, and the anticipation of sport is, once again, being overshadowed by the concern for safety. There are headlines about athletes, but bigger ones about their well-being.
Once again, security is trumping sport.
These Olympics are meant to be for skating and skiing and curling, not bombing and maiming.
Yet here we are, once again, mixing our expectation of achievement and celebration with fear of the unimaginable. Without trying to sound too much like the Rodney King lament, can't we ever just play our games in peace and quiet?
Sometimes, these pre-Olympic security scares feel contrived, more like a warning to the bad guys and a justification for spending many millions of dollars to beef up the policing.
This time, not so much.
At least 34 people died last month in two bombings in a city 400 miles away. Now comes news of threatening videos and the reported arrival in Sochi of a female suicide bomber.
One security expert who reports for CNN, Frances Fragos Townsend, said recently, "This is the most dangerous threatened environment we have seen for the Olympics."
Accompanying all this are reports that the United States will have two warships nearby, as well as several C-17 transport planes at the ready for evacuating U.S. citizens. That alone would appear to make it tougher to focus on your triple toe loop, or, if you are a fan, on which event to attend.
The best shield is a dismissal of reality, as former figure skating star Tara Lipinski did when she said recently, "There are so many threats at the Olympics, the athletes are used to that."
One theory says that all the publicity the scarers get from doing the scaring is enough for them. Here's hoping.
Reality says that 40,000 Russian security personnel, the announced number, are not on hand merely to march in parades.
We make no recommendation here as to how to solve this. We have no magic, just a sadness that it has come to this, that something as healing as international sports competition has to share the wonders of its athleticism and joy of its celebrations with the fear of evil.
Sadly, there is a track record that shows that none of this should be taken as just bad guys crying wolf.
In Munich in 1972, 11 Israelis died and we found out when ABC's Jim McKay, stricken with the burden of having to be the bearer of horrible news, looked into the camera and said, "They're all gone."
We experienced it firsthand in Atlanta in 1996. When you walk into a crowd of departing people, minutes after a noise that can only be identified as a bomb, and see ashen faces and blood on arms and cheeks, you know sport has been violated.
Those Games went on, but mattered less.
The Munich murderers, the Palestinian group Black September, were terrorists. So was the Atlanta murderer, Eric Rudolph, whose bomb that night in Olympic Centennial Park killed Alice Hawthorne and injured 111.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Terrorism threat at the Olympics: A sad but unalterable fact of life
Dengan url
http://belajarsehati.blogspot.com/2014/01/terrorism-threat-at-olympics-sad-but.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Terrorism threat at the Olympics: A sad but unalterable fact of life
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Terrorism threat at the Olympics: A sad but unalterable fact of life
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar