Soldiers Lives Appearantly Worth Less Than Civilians (14 Soldiers Die In Helicopter Crash Due To Mechanical Difficulties)

 

“Fourteen Americans from the 25^th Infantry Division from Hawaii were killed today when their Blackhawk helicopter crashed in Northern Iraq. U.S. officials blame the crash on mechanical difficulties and not on hostile fire.”

That 7-second blip was all that was said about the 14 dead on NBC Nightly News last night. A similarly brief recap was broadcast on my local CBS affiliate a few hours later. The verbal emphasis was that it was a positive thing that their deaths were not a result of hostile fire.

May I take a moment to state the obvious? If these were Americans who died in an aircraft accident as a result of “mechanical difficulties” in any other part of the world, or more specifically: if the 14 dead were civilians, this story would be the lead story on every major new program and network in the country, and no doubt, discussed ad nauseum for days.

Helicopters are not significantly different from airplanes, American’s fly in helicopters every day, and if one crashed, killing all 14 aboard, due to mechanical difficulties, the press would have a field day: What happened? Why wasn’t this defect or problem identified earlier? Who is in charge? Who is to blame? Are helicopters safe anymore? The manufacturer better answer to us!

But no. Because it happened to U.S. soldiers, there was a 7-second blip about it and little to nothing else. As if dead soldiers are so common, such an everyday occurrence, that as long as they weren’t killed by hostiles…is it still not worth our umbrage? That the cause of their deaths, that being an accident, was merely a broadcast footnote.

I am upset that no one cares. That if these were civilians, that this would be a national story, that because these are soldiers, the story is inconsequential.

The Education Of A Collapsed Infrastructure (Prioritizing Our Government Funding)

Education is such a fundamental and basic right in this country. Unfortunately, not unlike other areas of our public infrastructure, policy makers only look at the cost of education and not the benefits of maintaining and improving it.

It is sad to think that there is such a lack of emphasis (or respect) for education, that even properly educated people feel that they need to “dumbify” themselves when in mixed company as to not standout or create a sense of discomfort in others.

In effect, Education has been about reducing the quality of education to conform to the lowest common denominator…let’s not push kids because if we do, the children who are intellectually slower will have a damaged self-esteem when they get older. Bunk.

Did you know that across the US, major universities are no longer requiring English majors to study Shakespeare? The reason: it’s too hard. That is tantamount to not requiring Philosophy majors to be exposed to the likes of Plato or Socrates. People are stupid because we set the bar low and reinforce stupidity and sub-par performance with praise and reward. Though, the current (and worsening) state of Education is only one manifestation of a diseased way of thinking that has taken over our society; a way of thinking that is breaking this once standard-setting, world-leading nation.

As the dimly lit flame of a once roaring—yet now unattended—bonfire, we have failed to support the systems we put in place in order to sustain and grow our nation.

Yes, a major bridge collapsed, but what about the 70,000 other bridges in this country that have been rated as in-need of significant repairs? The Brooklyn Bridge, for example, has a lower safety rating than the recently-collapsed Minneapolis 35W bridge did, as do tens of thousands of other bridges. And what about the tens of thousands of tunnels, many of whom run hundreds of feet below bodies of water? They have no federally-mandated safety and maintenance inspection standards at all, despite Congress being fully aware of this grievous oversight for over 20 years.

Our roads are in desperate need of revitalization as well. By chance, have you driven around (or over) a pothole recently? The number of cars on the road has more than quadrupled since the early 1960s and people are driving more often and farther than ever before. Nevertheless, we’ve hardly improved roadways with necessary repaving, and paving of new routes, instead relying on a flawed system of patches, pot-fills, and political positioning.

What can be said for our airports; have you been to an airport lately? Let’s forget about the elimination of expected services and amenities (e.g., stale pillows, complimentary horse blankets, hot plastic food served in Hungry Man platters at no additional charge) and discuss the increasing instances of lost baggage and delays. Lost baggage amounts to over 10,000 lost or delayed luggage items per day; Yes, ten-thousand lost or delayed items per day, my friends. Statistically speaking, you are safer swimming with Tiger, Bull, and White sharks than you are putting your medication into a checked luggage item.

Since Congress passed the bill to deregulate the airline industry and took away the authority of the FAA to regulate the number take-offs and landings at airports, more and more flights are being added by airlines every year, with even more regional and private jets taking to the air as well, adding further congestion to the already overwhelming aeronautic gridlock. Don’t be fooled by the statistics: airlines and airports have redefined what it means to be “delayed,” not to mention that nearly all airlines now pad their departure and arrival times to account for the inevitable delays. Despite this subversive statistical trickery, nearly 40% of all domestic flights in the US are delayed, late, or cancelled each and every day, with some routes experiencing delays 100% of the time.

There simply aren’t the systems in place anymore to support the number of people who fly. Business travel has sky-rocketed, per capita personal travel has increased tenfold since the 1960s, and people are flying more often. And yet, airports and the irreprehensibly antiquated Air Traffic Control System cannot keep up and Congress is hardly investing the money they need to and more importantly, when they needed to, to keep ahead of the congestion.

The FAA requested a new $20 billion satellite-based Air Traffic Control System to keep up with demand and traffic, and was expected to take 15 years to fully roll-out. Nearly 10 years later, Congress can’t get off their self-interested asses to do anything about it. The FAA requested it, the airlines need it, and the passengers demand it; nothing was done and now we are starting to really feel the consequences of their self-centered short-sightedness.

So now we look around and watch as our systems continue to break in front of us…though many of us hardly notice the greater disease because the symptoms have become so commonplace that we take them for the norm.

We have a population of over 300 million people; in the 1920s-1960s (when many of our systems were implemented), the population was half that and these systems were not designed or intended to be used for so long and by so many. We have serious problems with prison over-crowding, seven-digit phone numbers are soon to be a thing of the past, power grids are buckling and rolling blackouts in cities are not unheard of, at one-percent, the FDA is effectively no longer inspecting our food supply, and the annulment in the quality of education we provide to our children is sickening.

People are living longer and acting younger, it’s not uncommon to reach the age of 100 and be mobile anymore. What will the effects be of longer life coupled with the increasing birth rates nationally and globally? The population of Earth is on track to increase to 10 billion by 2050 (it was 4 billion when I was born three decades ago) and estimates continue to become more aggressive, with some pundits arguing that the global population will reach 10 billion by 2020. Our infrastructure is not only unprepared for that, but humanity is little better prepared to be thrown into mass-scale scenarios where necessary parts of that infrastructure ultimately break down.

To frame a discussion for addressing these issues, according to the US State Department in a report published in July 2007, the DOD’s average monthly expenditure for contracts and pay for the war in Iraq are running at over $10 billion per month. Forgetting about the nearly half-trillion spent on the war in Iraq so far, and what those tax-payer dollars could have otherwise been spent on (though not likely), just two years of this war on Iraq could have had the following alternate benefits:

The kick-off for the new satellite-based Air Traffic Control System ($20B), every major bridge, tunnel, and overpass in the United States inspected and repaired ($188B), and the distribution of updated scholastic textbooks to every child in the United States ($28B), leaving another $4 billion to support significant improvements and supports to our aging health care, public works, and educational systems.

Because our system is broken and long-term solutions are not being seriously considered, we are all forced to lower our expectations for the long-term quality and safety of our lives. Roadways, health care, air traffic systems…despite commonsense, of all those things, how can we neglect Education as if it was simply a cost, rather than an investment in Humanity? Real change is needed if we are going to repair the damage done to this country, but I wonder if we have what it takes to even do that anymore. Instead, I suspect we will watch Rome being invaded by barbarians all over again.