Wednesday, November 14, 2001

Americans still need to pay attention
Commentary by Jordan Blum

Out of sight, out of mind.

It seems now that the TV networks have stopped showing planes hurtling full speed into the World Trade Center every 30 seconds, we’ve stopped letting the image fly around in our minds.

It’s still being advertised as the “War on Terrorism” but all viewers will find on the news now is more information about the Northern Alliance moving closer to Kabul and Taliban claims that the United States is bombing innocent children.

This conflict is quickly becoming a war against the Taliban and it seems the American public is losing sight of the ultimate goal to defeat terrorism, although I’m assuming the government is still steadily moving toward that goal — hopefully. In a way, people have already forgotten why we’ve entered this war in the first place.

Sadly, it appears America lacks patience and won’t fully support an ongoing campaign against terrorism. Most people will be content with the defeat of Osama bin Laden and the fundamentalist Taliban regime. I know this because I’m as impatient as anyone. For a while, I went back to just casually glancing at CNN coverage, but we have to force ourselves to focus on things that indirectly affect us more than we’d like to believe. Bush tells us to be patient as a nation and realize this isn’t a war that can be quickly won, and maybe some of those statements are meant to cover his own butt, but they are essentially true.

No one is asking you to mindlessly support President Bush’s every action, but rather to pay attention to what is happening in the world and be proud to be American by not just putting a cheesy bumper sticker on the back of your car.

Simply waving an American flag and not following the campaign in Afghanistan is about as meaningful as a redneck southerner waving a Confederate flag and saying he’s doing it out of “Southern pride.”

Although Bush’s support is still very high, it’s already moving down and too many people are already trying to compare Afghanistan to Vietnam, when no one except those directly involved really know the facts.

It is sad how Americans have to be directly affected by something to truly care. For a while, the anthrax scare was getting more media coverage than the campaign in Afghanistan, not because it was more important, but because we believed it posed more of a threat to us personally than bombs going off in the Middle East.

It got to the point that if someone stepped on a piece of chalk half a city would freak out and buy a gas mask and a six-month supply of Cipro.

I’m not exactly Nostradamus, but it’s a virtual fact that more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil are imminent and, sadly, they may need to occur for more people to get over their invincibility complexes and understand the magnitude of the events currently shaping the world.

I don’t want to pigeonhole everyone because a lot of people are more informed than I am, but a lot of people used the argument that we have to move on with our lives as an excuse to go back to being apathetic isolationistic bums.

U.S. foreign policy for the future and the views of America from abroad are being made as I type and half of the American public just doesn’t seem to care.

People ask why foreigners don’t particularly care for Americans. Well, maybe it’s because a lot of us don’t really care what happens to their countries.

Jordan Blum is a junior broadcast journalism major from New Orleans. He can be reached at (j.d.blum@student.tcu.edu).