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www.NationalView.org's Note From a Madman
November 30, 2008
"Doorbusters!"
The headline could have been used for both big news stories this elongated
Thanksgiving weekend:
"Doorbusters trample Wal-Mart employee to death"
or
"Terrorist Doorbusters hold India under siege"
Somehow, as our allies in India were suffering through a 911-type horror in
Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the choice was a difficult one to make for Cable news
channel deciders. Should they lead with the ongoing incident overseas or run
with news from Black Friday - the day after Thanksgiving which marks the
unofficial beginning of the Christmas Holiday season shopping frenzy.
One could almost hear the newsroom banter as the decision was being made: "Why
couldn't they have attacked last week?"
The India "Doorbusters" killed at least 183 people as they took hostages in two
Mumbai hotels. They also killed Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who
were stationed in the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish Community Center, a greeting and
prayer center set up for Jews visiting Mumbai. Their infant son was smuggled out
of the center by a worker.
While the loss of a Wal-Mart worker, and the matter in which he lost his life,
is tragic (and certainly the fault of the pandemonium wished for by the big box
stores in late November) it pales in comparison to what happened in the most
dangerous part of the world today.
It still hasn't been established who orchestrated the attack, even though it's
already being blamed on Pakistani militants by the Indian police, the attacks
show how desensitized to other nations and people being terrorized we here in
the United States have become. While the whole world grieved with us on
September 11, 2001 (even France's Le Mond newspaper said "Today we are all
Americans"), the sentiments regarding India's own ongoing terrorist problems
certainly didn't appear to have made more than a dent on our mainstream
television habits.
For the lack of attention our American society places on the attacks in Mumbai
(and elsewhere around the world), I blame the Right-Wing media, the Bush White
House and our Republican leaders, and there are many reasons why.
Some of you might remember the spin which continued to spew from the mouths of
various Right-Wing sources going into the 2004 election cycle and going all the
way up to the economy's bottom dropping out this September: "We haven't had an
attack on American soil since 911."
It was a statement made so many times that it became one of the major talking
points of the White House and the likes of Fox News Channel.
What it translated to was that America is an Island and we should care only for
ourselves. The statement, by its definition, made the London subway bombing, the
Madrid train bombings and now, the Mumbai hotel siege less important when viewed
by the American television viewer. It was so bad that, prior to the economy's
implosion, McCain was going to run on Bush's record of keeping us "safe."
How bad is it really? The second statement out of almost every cable news
channel news anchor's mouth was, "...and five Americans are known to have been
killed in the terrorist attacks." The silence of any empathy for our overseas
allies (India) was deafening. Our first though shouldn't have been "How many
Americans were killed," or "I hope this doesn't pre-empt the NFL and college
football games this weekend" (which it didn't), it should have been a
realization that the whole world is in this together and that when one nation is
attacked we're all attacked.
Perhaps it should have been our epiphany.
There was more concern about a track fire closing one of the Amtrak tunnels on
Wednesday night for the big Thanksgiving escape this weekend than there was for
those being held hostage in India.
We, as Americans, can't always expect the support and empathy of the world when
we ignore the cries of our allies in similar circumstances. If we are truly the
greatest nation on Earth, we simply should know, and act better.
-Noah Greenberg
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-Noah Greenberg