| This is reprinted from my friend Kevin's website (link above) because I just thought it deserved as many people as possible seeing it. Not sure I can claim that many readers, but if it's another chance to get onto a search engine, or if someone visits here who doesn't visit his site and has a chance to read it, well, then that's why I reposted it. |
September 1st in Russia isn't a holiday, but it is significant. It's a different way of thinking, but to them the first day of the school year holds more meaning than the last day of the previous year. Beginnings are emphasized over endings. The first day of school, known simply as "First Bell," is a day to recognize the next step in a child's development. But September, as we keep learning, might not be the best month for optimistic thoughts.
A team of Chechnyan rebels, armed with guns and wired to explosives similar to the suicide bombers of the middle east, seized control of a school. Militant separatists bent on becoming martyrs to their own cause of freedom for their people. It won't work, of course. It will end badly for many, perhaps all.
Children, teachers, and school staffers sit huddled inside the school, waiting for the fireworks to begin. Past experience teaches us much. The images of a crowded theater lined with bodies of both terrorists and their innocent victims are tough to forget. Vladimir Putin, former KGB agent, rules Russia with an iron fist, if not an iron curtain. Death looms large over the more than 350 hostages.
But the big news in the United States is not about terrorists or hostages or even the Republican National Convention. Our top story tonight is the dismissal of Kobe Bryant's rape charges. I'm sure historians will debate the outcome of Mr. Bryant's rape trial for decades, whereas a silly thing like ethnic warfare in the eastern hemisphere won't even merit a footnote.
In a situation which makes Columbine look like a Norman Rockwell painting, American media chose to lightly gloss over it, then moved on to an in depth and compelling debate about Kobe's future in the NBA. That, my friends, is why THEY hate us. That, dear people, is why America faces another painful anniversary in a week's time. Our ignorance and our lack of shame make us the most disgraced nation since WWII Germany. And to think, we don't even have to kill anybody to be despised... our apathy and ego are more than enough.
Since we claim to be fighting a war on terrorism, and we seemingly have no problem setting foot on foreign soil uninvited, why aren't we in Beslan, Russia right now? Why aren't we in Moscow, dethroning Putin and installing a regime who recognizes the rights of Chechnyans? Why aren't we in Chechnya installing a government that can contain the violent extremists of their citizenry? Why aren't we in North Korea, fighting a genuine threat of actual, proven-to-exist nuclear weapons of mass destruction? Why aren't we in Libya, capturing or even assassinating its leader who has claimed responsibility for the deaths of scores of Americans? Why aren't we in Arafat's bunker with a force of special ops. agents to muzzle that outdated son of a bitch before he opens his fat face again? Why aren't we in Israel, commanding the Israelis to heed the teachings of their most sacred religious texts which teach of love and forgiveness and charity and compassion?
But we don't go to these places and we won't do these things because we aren't fighting a war on terror. And we can't televise global tragedies which don't directly impact Joe American because it would only serve to remind us how cold and self serving the United States really is. So we hug mom, we eat apple pie, we interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you breaking news about Kobe Bryant's penis, and we go to bed feeling safe and smug. Which is all well and good as long as the victimized children aren't American so we don't have to pretend to care, because let's be honest, we only barely care when they are American children.
Foreign boys and girls, dressed in their brightest white shirts and blouses and their cleanest black pants and skirts, carrying backpacks and sack lunches, attending their first day of school, only to be threatened at gunpoint by men so desperately misguided they actually believe the murder of children might force us... westerners... Americans... to take notice... to intervene. Hell, we don't even interrupt "Fear Factor" for something that trivial.