On breaking Boston, terrorism, and a dose of perspective

On breaking Boston, terrorism, and a dose of perspective.

Last night I was dismayed to see massive street celebrations in Boston, a city in which mere hours earlier, 4 people lost their lives, and countless others lost their limbs.  While it is certainly a relief that the two suspects are no longer a threat, what is there to celebrate, exactly?  Are we celebrating the return to our pre-Boston fear levels?  You know, when we thought America was invincible and beyond the reach of any act of terrorism (but not beyond the reach of gun deaths, of which there have been more than 3,500—not a typo—since the Newtown massacre in December).  Or are we celebrating America’s resiliency in the face of two young jihadists who brought one of America’s most important cities to its knees?   

All I keep reading is that Boston is unbreakable, Boston will come back stronger than ever, the terrorists messed with the wrong city, etc.  How can a city that was literally brought to a standstill by 2 men without any WMDs be unbreakable?   Boston is so strong that the entire city was shut down—airports, subway, streets, you name it. 

The (fairly obvious) truth is that Bostonians are no different than any other group of people.  There is no inherent strength of character that one has just from living in Boston.  What we consider to be tough circumstances are cake for the overwhelming majority of people on Earth.  The idea that Boston wasn’t “broken” by this tragedy shows the typical American ignorance towards the rest of the world, and an incredibly inflated sense of toughness.  3.4 million people die each year from a lack of clean water; I wonder if the presidents of the countries in which most of these deaths occur give press conferences after particularly bad outbreaks of water-based diseases;  do they laud the strength and courage of their citizens and the supremacy of their countries for being able to cope?  Most likely, such press conferences do not occur. 

We as Americans love to applaud ourselves without bothering to take a look at the world around us, or the consequences of our actions abroad.  Yes, thank God, people at the Boston Marathon conducted themselves heroically in a time of uncertainty and fear.   That does not however mean we are better or more courageous than anyone else; rather, it means that Americans are capable of showing compassion.

The talk of “messing with the wrong city” represents a kind of disturbing and fallacious logic; it implies that there is a right city in which it is ok to target innocent civilians.  Bostonians, to their credit, are not going to get up and flee en masse after one isolated incident.  Bravo.  I wonder if after one of the hundreds of car bombs that have rocked Iraq since we “liberated” the country, people took to the airwaves and newspapers to say that Baghdad or Kirkuk or Mosul was the wrong city to be messed with.  Me thinks not.  

Reading the American newspapers or watching American news would make one believe that the Boston attack was the worst event in human history.  Here are some events that have occurred in the last month: a NATO bomb in Afghanistan killed 11 children, while a suicide bomb in a courthouse killed an additional 44 in the country, and just yesterday, 13 Afghan police officers were murdered in their sleep.  Meanwhile 3 police officers in Mexico were murdered (adding to the total of 70,000 Mexicans killed in the unofficial drug war in the country over the last 10 years); a bomb blast at a coffee shop in Iraq killed at least 27 people; car bombs and air strikes rocked Syria, on the heels of a month in which more than 6,000 people died in the civil war there; anti-Muslim pogroms rocked Burma, leaving 43 dead; gun battles in the Central African Republic (CAR) left 13 dead, while an attack on a church in CAR killed 7 immediately, including 3 babies.

I bring up these events not to trivialize the severity of the attack in Boston, but to provide a reality check.   Our faux-reality bubble in which our actions abroad have no impact, and in which we are immune from threats, is not how most of the world lives.  Just as the switch from a draft to a volunteer army limited the domestic opposition to our voluntary wars (see Iraq, 2003), the mostly-successful efforts of the CIA/FBI/DHS  to prevent terrorism on our shores have softened and skewed the reality of our actions abroad.  The vast majority of Americans don’t really know what has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor have we felt pain domestically as a response.  Thus, we have been tricked into believing that America was a safe zone, and that no terrorist would be able to/would dare attack us.  The despicable attack and subsequent capture/death of the terrorists in Boston should be greeted with a somber, thoughtful, humble response, not with giddy celebration.