I speak of the 2008 Olympics scheduled to open in Beijing, China, next August. The question is whether to boycott the games because of China's dismal performance at home in the human rights arena and on the road in Sudan and Tibet.

China has met protests for independence in Tibet with brutal force in recent weeks; the number of dead Tibetans now is approaching 100.

But Tibet is only the latest problem for the Chinese who were awarded the Olympics just a dozen years after the world watched the horrors of Tiananmen Square. Chief among the boycott-fueling issues is China's best pals status with the government of Sudan, an African nation whose leaders support murdering militias and so stand accused of complicity in the killing of more than 200,000 in the Darfur region and the displacement of 2.5 million.

China buys 400,000 barrels of oil a day from Sudan, two- thirds of the country's exports, and owns 40 percent of the African nation's largest oil company.

American film director Steven Spielberg has already dropped out as artistic director for the opening ceremonies, citing China's continued pussy-footing with Sudan while people die in Darfur.

Moreover, Beijing's air quality (the city of 12 million has put forth a plan to ban almost all public smoking after May 1) has forced one Olympian, marathon world record holder Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, to skip the race. Gebrselassie suffers from exercise-induced asthma.

The violence and killing in Tibet, a response the Chinese government accuses the Dalai Lama of inciting, have only added voices to the clarion call for a boycott of the Olympics.

Skip it

Not that a boycott or even a politicization of the games is unprecedented. We may invoke the spirit of competition and the family of nations, but the Olympics are rife with examples of nations attempting to make statements on the muscled backs of athletes.

From Jesse Owens' ebony streak punching a hole in Hitler's plan to unveil a superior race in 1936 to the murder and mayhem of Munich in 1972 to the U.S. shunning Moscow in 1980 to protest Russia's invasion of Afghanistan to Russia's payback in Los Angeles four years later, political self-interest has hovered over the games.

But boycotts, like food embargoes, tend to deliver their most potent punch against the wrong people.

In the Olympics, those would be the athletes. Olympic boycotts tie the hands of our strongest and the feet of our swiftest, crippling competition and weakening the spirit of the games we're so fond of reciting.

Athletes have brains and hearts, too, however. Witness John Carlos and Tommie Smith's raised fists in the 1968 Mexico City games, a symbolic gesture that reminded the world that athletes have individual voices that differ from the government whose colors they wear.

Sometimes an athlete's performance illuminates the world, lights a dim and dismal corner and transcends sport. Owens did it in Berlin, as did Australian Cathy Freeman when she carried the entwined flags of her country and her Aboriginal heritage after she won the 400 meters in Sydney in 2000.

We should skip a boycott, but neither athletes nor the rest of us have to act as though nothing has happened.

As it is

Something has: Darfur, Tibet, Tiananmen.

There are things to do. An 800 meter runner or a swimmer or a cyclist might wrestle with whether to skip the opening ceremonies to protest China's human rights record. You and I can consider divesting in companies that do business with Sudan. Or question a congressman about American policies with China. Or simply wonder aloud about the dichotomy of the Olympic spirit smack dab in the middle of a repressive state.

Or turn on a very bright bulb.

When the International Olympic Committee gave the games to Beijing in 2001, the critics came out immediately, calling for a boycott. For its part, China began the process of dressing itself up, a makeover of considerable effort but apparently only on the surface.

We like to think the Olympics light the world. A boycott would darken the view.

We need to show up, with enough foot candles to show the world China as it really is.