Why the Mumbai terrorist attacks weren’t important

Gideon Rachman, on why the attacks in Mumbai don’t make his top five list of “what we will remember from 2008″:

So what is the fifth choice for 2008? Several readers pointed out that if the terrorist attacks in Mumbai had taken place in London or New York, I would have put them on the list without hesitation. True – and if the attacks had taken place in Mogadishu, I would definitely not have put them on the list. Doubtless, this says something unpleasant about the relative values placed by western journalists on lives around the world. But a more palatable explanation is that a terrorist attack assumes true geopolitical significance if it has global consequences. So if the Mumbai terror attacks provoke a war between India and Pakistan, they will indeed be one of the most significant events of the year. So far, thank goodness, that has not happened.

I buy Rachman’s first instinct much more than his cleaned-up, “more palatable” version.  What is the point, I must wonder, of making a predictive list of what the global “we” will remember, looking back on 2008, if you condition it with what may still happen?  9/11 certainly changed the entire world, but it was not yet clear, in October 2008, how it would do so.  The shockwaves of Mumbai are as powerful to those in India right now as were those in New York seven years ago, and if Rachman purports to be writing for “lives around the world,” he should consider that the lives of more than a billion people were more affected by what happened in Mumbai than the rise and fall of oil prices for the Western world.

(image of the Taj Mahal from flickr user Honza Soukup under a Creative Commons license)

God is a bus-riding Facebook user

Michelangelo's painting on the 42 bus

Christmas Warriors strike back…at Washington, DC buses.  JoEllen Murphy, God-believer and self-described “stay-at-home mum,” has responded to those vicious anti-religious ads (“Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.”) with her own commandment, which can now be seen driving around the streets of DC:

“Why believe? Because I love you and I created you, for goodness sake – God”

In case God’s personal injunction is not enough to make the heathens believe, then hHis Christian soldiers have gone all 2.0.

I partnered with a non-profit organisation. Two friends designed and manage the website (ibelievetoo.org), and another, a professional graphic designer, created the advert. We even have a Facebook group with over 2,000 members.

And if you don’t friend God, He will smite Poke you wrathfully.

(image from flickr user yosemitewu56 under a Creative Commons license)

Safety…except for bridges and hurricanes

It’s not what he meant to do, but I think Eugene Robinson here gives a little too much credit to the Bush-Cheney legacy, even as he argues that, while he can understand the administration’s gut keep-America-safe-at-all-costs reaction, history will not forgive the Cheney-led refusal to ever veer from these instinct-driven principles in favor of cooler rational reflection.  Robinson cites Cheney’s stubborn mantra:

In an interview broadcast Sunday, [Cheney] invited Fox News‘ Chris Wallace to “go back and look at how eager the country was to have us work in the aftermath of 9/11 to make certain that that never happened again.” People have since become “complacent,” he said, but the administration’s actions have “produced a safe 7.5 years, and I think the record speaks for itself.”

Safety courtesty of the Bush administration

He then duly dismantles this fiction with the reality of torture, extraordinary rendition, warrantless wiretapping, and, of course, the invasion of Iraq.  Tellingly, though, he includes the overthrow of the Taliban in Cheney’s positive “record,” a piece of casuistry that is about as clear-cut as saying that the Iraq war is a net benefit because the world is without Saddam Hussein (a claim that, I would wager my house, Cheney fully embraces).

But what is most disturbing is that the meme of the “safe 7.5 years” seems to be so ironclad that it can roll right over things like Katrina and the Minneapolis bridge collapse without a second thought.  These were not terrorist attacks, no; but responding to nature and maintaining serviceable infrastructure are fundamental parts of keeping America safe, and the administration’s failures in these exponentially more straightforward responsibilities are even more egregious indices of its utter worthlessness.  Even if one can “understand” the sickeningly obsessive motivations to torture, wiretap, and murder every terrorist or potential terrorist out there, we can in no way even comprehend the unconscionably lax oversight of the most basic domestic security and protection systems, and criminal lack of response to some of the worst disasters ever to befall this country.

(image of I-35 bridge collapse from flickr user Poppyseed Bandits under a Creative Commons license)