Soccer to me

As an American, I have to admit to only a passing interest in soccer. Like most Americans, my interest peaks during the World Cup and wanes greatly thereafter. However, my American-ness means I am also greatly interested in freedom, liberty and the like. Global events, like the World Cup and the Olympics, allow me to express my love for sports and my passion for the aforementioned American ideals. I am certain I am not alone in this. Americans, as a whole, like to cheer for our teams, be they soccer, hockey, gymnastics or any of various other sports we care about greatly every four years (kinda like our feelings towards elections). We also like to cheer for countries like Iraq, places tormented by war, oppression, terror and whatever else yet resilient enough to place a team on a global stage. These countries, huddled masses expressing their yearning to be free, always seem to hit a soft spot in our hearts.
Consider then, fellow Americans, the venues for the next two Wold Cup tournaments. The 2018 tournament will be held in Russia and the 2022 tournament will be held in Qatar.
First, let's understand the situation in Russia. Russia recently hosted the Olympics. Not long after, they either invaded (depending on whose story you listen to) or greatly assisted with the occupation of a portion of Ukraine.
Unless my global history is incorrect, the only other country to pull off the rare "host the Olympics, invade a neighboring country" feat was Germany in the 1930s...and I understand things went downhill pretty quickly thereafter.
Think about that for a second. The last and only country to do what Russia has recently done was Germany under Hitler. That's like throwing your name right up there with Charles Manson. And what happened to Russia as a result? They get to host the world's largest sporting event. Boy, that's teach them a lesson they'll not soon forget.
Now, FIFA awarded the event to Russia prior to said invasion, but let us not forget that Hitler earned a nomination for the Nobel Prize for Peace, which, in retrospect, seems like a reasonably poor choice.
Still, the situation with Russia is nothing compared to the circumstances surrounding Qatar.
Let's never mind for a minute that half of the eligible FIFA voters selected Qatar as their top choice despite the fact Qatar didn't have, at the time of the vote, so much as a single soccer stadium. Had the Cup been played immediately in Qatar, the event would have come off like a youth soccer event, with games being played whilst fans cheered from their nearby lawn chairs.
Qatar has since made some construction progress, which is where the issues concerning Americans come in. While Russia's freedom and liberty issues are more ambiguous and muddled by geo-political concerns, the freedom issues in Qatar are more literal. Like, literally literal. See, by a number of different accounts, Qatar is making headway towards building a sufficient number of stadiums to host the Cup in 2022 largely through the use of slave labor.
Certainly Egypt established the benefits of using slave labor to pull off large-scale construction projects, but that was several thousand years and an uncertain number of divinely concocted plagues ago. Even the United States changed its tune on slavery some time back.
The allegations of corruption and labor irregularities have been enough to prompt Germany to threaten a boycott of the event. It's a pretty big statement of how bad things are when the current world champions are threatening to boycott an event taking place eight years from now!
Perhaps the Germans have simply gotten wind of the fact that Qatar also plans to ban alcohol consumption. I might guess that Budweiser, one of the Cup's biggest sponsors, would object when the day draws closer. Others might object that Qatar has also suggested that gays will not be tolerated at the event, either--which is where they reach a common ground with Russia, so hey, that's something.
To summarize, for Qatar it's gays not ok, beer not ok, slavery and corruption, just fine.
That said, we as Americans, with our love of sports and liberty, should not stand idle as these injustices to freedom and sport are allowed to carry on unopposed. In this country, you're either for us or you're a'gin us...and if we're not a'gin the Cup being in Russia and Qatar, then we're for their policies of oppression and intimidation. And to me, that's un-American.