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09/03/2004: "We're not the only ones..."
One thing that annoys me: Americans believing that our terrorist problems are a lot worse than other countries, or even just being ignorant of the fact that terrorists DO attack other countries. Case in point: the current Russian school hostage situation. Two years ago there was the Russian theater hostage situation, of which none of the Americans I talked to had any clue about. The two planes that were just recently hijacked in Russia didn't receive anywhere near the amount of attention that 9/11 did. Sure, it was missing the hitting-tall-buildings element, but it was still a bunch of crazies simultaneously hijacking planes with innocent people aboard.
Americans don't even have to deal with repeated assaults spread out over years like Russians and Israelis do. The Russians have the crazy fuckers from Chechnya taking hostages, and the Israelis have the crazy Palestinian militant fuckers blowing them up (although it makes me laugh, in a morbid, sad way, when you hear that Palestinian suicide bombers didn't kill any Israelis but DID manage to kill other Palestinians).
This isn't discounting 9/11 in any way; it just makes me feel more compassionate when I hear about terrorist attacks in Russia and Israel. It was so traumatic going through one event here in the U.S. that I couldn't even imagine having repeated assaults on innocent people and never knowing when they're going to strike next, but being sure that it's inevitable. I do wish for other Americans to feel more compassionate too; now that we've been through an attack by crazy militant fuckers, we should do more than just watch the new reports and figure, "That's in Russia, oh well."