In Games of Truce or Consequences, Medals Will Be Won

No land understands better than Japan what the United States is capable of, when it comes to war. If endangered, if provoked, Americans have been known not to turn the other cheek. You hit us, we hit back.

It isn’t necessary to remind Dick Schultz of this. I do anyway.

“Don’t you find it awkward,” I ask Schultz, the executive director of the U.S. Olympic Committee, as we tiptoe through the pigeons in a public square, “to ask your country not to bomb another country, at least for a couple of weeks until it would be more convenient?”

Apparently, war is not only hell, it can ruin a perfectly good Winter Olympics.

“I get what you mean,” Schultz says, aware that if we attack Iraq--at any time from now through Feb. 22--our biggest worry shouldn’t be that the U.S. would renege on an Olympic truce.

“But, yes, we’re holding our breath. My hunch is, nothing will happen. You know [Saddam] Hussein. He has a habit of stretching his belt to the very last notch, before he gives in.”

I never appreciated, until this, all the things a president must consider, before mortal combat.

Like, how will it affect our bobsled team?

Many here fear what Bill Clinton might do by George Washington’s birthday. A trouble-free fortnight in the Japanese Alps is everyone’s fond desire.

Take it from Makoto Kobayashi, director general of Nagano’s Olympic committee: “It is absolutely necessary for a successful Games to be held peacefully. Since the Olympic Games are a festival of peace and friendship, it would be outrageous for any act of violence to be committed here.”

That it would. But what is a president of the United States supposed to do, in the meantime? I gather he should begin X-ing off the February days on his Oval Office calendar until two weeks from Sunday, look at his clock, watch Nagano’s closing ceremony on TV, turn it off, then pick up a red telephone on his desk and order: “OK, now!”

Tricky job, commander-in-chief.

You can’t attack Iraq until the Olympics are over. And it ain’t over until the sumo wrestler sings.

“The U.S. government is the only authority which will make a decision for the U.S. government. This is none of our business,” insists Francois Carrard, secretary general of the International Olympic Committee.

Well, so much for truces. The IOC gave three cheers to last November’s resolution by the U.N. General Assembly, the one calling for a worldwide armistice at any time the Olympic Games are in progress. And the Americans were behind it 100%. It sure did seem like a good idea at the time.

You say you want a resolution, well, we’d all love to see the plan.

Carrard has seen enough of this one to tell that the Americans found a loophole. He says, “We know it’s a nonbinding resolution. We have sensed some softening in their position in the last 24 or 48 hours.”

In other words, the Olympic truce isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, mister secretary general. Never mind how united our nations are. Scissors cut paper. Bomb breaks scissors.

If a U.N. weapons inspector goes back to Iraq, he won’t have a copy of that U.N. truce in his back pocket, to stick in Saddam’s belt.

This much was made perfectly clear by the White House’s spokesman--that’s spokesman, not sportsman--Mike McCurry, who, when asked if the ol’ Olympic truce could prevent a military strike against Iraq, responded with a serious doubt that presidential policy would be “affected by sporting events.”

That goes for a Super Bowl truce too, in case there was one.

America’s top-ranking IOC member, L.A.’s own Anita DeFrantz, did not think McCurry’s comment a deal-breaker. DeFrantz called him “a spokesman for the White House, but not necessarily the White House.”

With luck, the Olympic peace pipe will still be smoked, and perhaps even inhaled.

If anything does happen, the USOC’s Schultz is a man with a plan. He wants American armed forces to come here to Nagano and provide extra security for our athletes.

“I’ll tell you what would worry me most,” Schultz says, on our stroll outside the Hotel Metropolitan, backdropped by Japan’s tallest peaks.

“It’s not terrorists. It’s not groups, with crazy causes. It’s that individual out there. That lone sympathizer, who thinks he has to get even for something. I wouldn’t want to give that one person an excuse. Not here. Not now.”

It is out of his hands, though.

We can’t go around having world peace affected by sporting events. Next thing you know, Iraq will ask that we be called for a foul, for shooting during a timeout.