Not 'our tsunami'

This is our tsunami," Biloxi, Miss., Mayor A.J. Holloway said of Hurricane Katrina to multiple news services Tuesday.\nThough the death toll from Katrina is not yet established, it appears the damage is extensive. Hundreds have likely died and damage estimates range between $9 billion and $26 billion. The size of such a hurricane is uncommon in modern weather history, and its damage payout may be among the largest ever.\nBut just for a moment, let's compare the Indian Ocean earthquake and resulting tsunami of late 2004 to Hurricane Katrina. Total estimated dead from the tsunami according to the United States Geological Survey: 283,100. Total estimated dead from Hurricane Katrina: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands," said New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin Wednesday. Seems like an unfair comparison.\nThe tsunami-Katrina metaphor is a little shaky. Yet, this quotation made it successfully into CNN, USA Today, Reuters, and The New York Times, as well as countless foreign publications, without so much as a peep of complaint. Holloway's heartfelt but erroneous statement has become yet another manifestation of American ego.\nIt isn't unreasonable that our government should respond to Katrina more actively than it did to the tsunami. After all, a problem close to home is more real than one far away. But is one American life really worth a thousand foreign lives? When 3,000 civilians died in America, we started two wars and demanded justice. When hundreds of thousands were murdered in Sudan, we covered our harassed reporters more than the genocide. \nDoes a country have to help its own citizens first? Of course. A modern liberal democracy should help promote the general welfare of its people. Nevertheless, our government's obligation to protect Americans first should not change the value of a human life. Every dead body had a mother and father, had a past, had a life. Why is it so easy for us to write off the foreign dead?\nThe media is always the easy answer, but the media print and broadcast what we want to hear. The real culprit for the inflated worth of an American life is within the American psyche. We believe we are exceptional, that we're special, that our lives are somehow more worthy because of where we live. \nNow, I am a patriot, and I believe we live in the greatest country in the world, but a human being is a human being. Having the arrogance to value a human life based on property, nationality or religion is fundamentally wrong. \nMy heart goes out to those affected by Hurricane Katrina, but my heart also goes out to the scores of people who die every day in America, the children dying of starvation in Niger, the men and women dying in Darfur, the victims of the tsunami, the victims of all tragedy everywhere. Life is life. Let's not toot our own self-important horn. Let Katrina's catastrophe be a lesson in humility: human life is fragile, and we must treasure it no matter where it calls home.