A time to give thanks and a time to join in a call for peace

By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Sunday, Nov. 30, 2008 | 2 a.m.

It is still my favorite holiday.

Thanksgiving Day started out the same way it has for my family for the past couple of decades. My wife was up early and I was up earlier because her work — which is two full days of preparing and cooking for close to 40 people — was almost done and mine was just beginning,

You see, I cook the turkeys and that, at least at our house, is an all-day affair. You’d think after all these years I would learn to either delegate or desist, as I have managed to do with practically every other chore, but this one is special. It represents something personal that I am giving to friends and family and, so far, it has been a gift worth giving.

I am talking about the acts of preparing a Thanksgiving Day dinner because this year it is important to focus on things we can control because we have witnessed — before, during and for some time after the day we count our blessings — too many acts of inexplicable destruction over which it appears no one has control.

It was not that many months ago that my wife, Myra, and I were in India on a study tour with the Brookings Institution. We were in Mumbai for a few days and we stayed at the Taj Mahal. Watching television news coverage of that grand old hotel on fire and under fire has been especially sad because we know what that landmark means to the people of India. It is a symbol of freedom. We also know the railroad station and the Oberoi Hotel — we were there, too.

At one level we realize that, but for the space of time, that could have been us and our friends who were attacked and killed just because we were Americans or British or Jews. At another, of course, it was just one more of the many blessings we reflected upon Thursday.

I have been, like most Americans these past few weeks, thrilled that the presidential election is over and that Barack Obama is our president-elect. Democrats, Republicans, independents and others have quickly learned the difference between a man who takes decisive, intelligent action and one who doesn’t, or can’t, or won’t.

At a time when America’s and the world’s financial systems are being challenged beyond comprehension, a steady hand near the wheel has been far more assuring than the hand that currently steers our country’s economic course. It seems the great frustration that we feel is the two long months it takes to get from the election to the inauguration. Out with the old and in with the new never had greater meaning.

But, as much as our country is hopeful, as much as we want to believe that a President Obama and what is turning out to be an all-American leadership team assembled around him can fix all that the current administration has either broken or mangled over the past eight years, the fact remains that we cannot do it alone.

No matter how smart a President Obama may be and how accomplished his team is, the events of the past few days have shown us, once again, that the world can be a dangerous place and that we are either all in this together or we shall continue to see the Taj Mahals and Trade Centers of the world go down and innocents around the globe murdered by people devoid of humanity.

India is no stranger to terrorism. What country has that luxury in 2008? But, until last week, it has been like most countries on this planet, free to consider terrorist acts as disjointed events that have no connection to the other disjointed events around the world. In short, the acts of terrorism against us are not the other guys’ concern.

That just isn’t true. And until we can sit down with the Asians and Europeans and others with an understanding that their indifference toward terrorism anywhere is an invitation to mass murder and destruction in their own countries, at their own Taj Mahals, against their own people, then these acts will grow more violent.

I know the economy is job one for the Obama administration. But there is another job one. And that is leading a disparate, disorganized world toward a clear understanding that terrorist camps tolerated in one country are weapons of mass destruction toward another. That tolerance of religious fanaticism as a political end anywhere is a recipe for disaster elsewhere. And tolerance toward borders that thwart the long arm of justice in the name of impotent sovereignty are just lines in the sands of time that must be erased.

The next American president needs to be tolerant, of course. But only of those things that promote peace and understanding. There is no room for tolerance toward any of those people and institutions and countries that give aid and comfort to those who would destroy the magnificence of the world’s Taj Mahals and the beauty of innocent life.

Yes, Thanksgiving is a time for family and friends to gather and count our blessings and, yes, even compliment a chef on a job well done. We did all of that.

What is left to do is the hard part. I hope our next president is up to the task.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.