{"id":1012,"date":"2003-12-29T11:17:58","date_gmt":"2003-12-29T16:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1012.html"},"modified":"2003-12-29T11:17:58","modified_gmt":"2003-12-29T16:17:58","slug":"tragedy-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/tragedy-in-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Tragedy in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Friday&#8217;s earthquake in Iran is an unimaginable tragedy. When I consider the deaths and destruction, it&#8217;s just overwhelming. It&#8217;s simply impossible for me to even imagine the pain of those in Bam struggling to cope with the suffering around them.<\/p>\n<p>Though it&#8217;s little consolation, it is heartening to see so many people and countries from around the world stepping up to offer assistance. I&#8217;ve seen reports that aid is coming from dozens of countries, the United Nations, and non-profit organizations. Here in the U.S., I&#8217;ve noticed that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.redcross.org\/\">American Red Cross<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.niacouncil.org\/iranquake.asp\">National Iranian American Council<\/a>, among others, are facilitating aid to earthquake victims and their community, in addition to assistance from the U.S. government.<\/p>\n<p>That said, it was disheartening to see that the Iranian government announced Saturday that aid would be welcome from everywhere &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/12\/28\/international\/middleeast\/28IRAN.html?pagewanted=print&#038;position=\">except Israel<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not in a position to criticize a country that has so lost so many and so much from this natural disaster, and I know that Iran&#8217;s government doesn&#8217;t even recognize Israel as a nation. But are things so bad in the Middle East that Iran is unwilling to even accept charitable donations from an adversary in a time of national crisis? Aren&#8217;t these rare tragedies a time when people can set aside differences, no matter how stark, and help a neighbor shoulder a burden?<\/p>\n<p>The mind shudders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Friday&#8217;s earthquake in Iran is an unimaginable tragedy. When I consider the deaths and destruction, it&#8217;s just overwhelming. It&#8217;s simply impossible for me to even imagine the pain of those in Bam struggling to cope with the suffering around them. Though it&#8217;s little consolation, it is heartening to see so many people and countries from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}