The Arrogance of Power


Well, the Marines do it again….go to strange countries and meet interesting people and…..kill them; twenty of them just having a bit of fun in the Italian Alps. Of course it wasn’t the pilot’s fault that they strung a cable across the valley three hundred feet in the air. And of course NATO pilots have to train in the Alps in case some terrorist group decides to launch a ski attack against one of the NATO club members.

First of all, a military plane should not have been anywhere near that place. Pilots fly there solely for the purpose of hot-dogging! To pretend otherwise is shear effrontery. Once, having coffee at Grindlewald I watched an f-16 fly straight at the north face of the Eiger. Then, a few (hundred) feet from the cliff, it turned straight up with a huge explosiveness as its after-burners kicked in. The jet’s roar had barely dissipated when we saw several puffs of snow as avalanches powdered down the massive cliffs. They said there were six climbers on the face that day.

In Utah, I have been in designated wilderness canyons scared out of my wits as I am stooped over my campfire and suddenly the whole place is shattered with the explosion of a Stealth Bomber blackening the sky above on one of its low-level fun runs.

Does this little military tribunal think we are totally bereft of common sense? A 747 can plunge into the deepest trough of the Pacific or explode over the Himalayas and we always, always find the black box. But for some reason we can’t find the black box and tape from Captain Ashby’s plane? Come on! This whole thing proves that military intelligence IS indeed an oxymoron.

Captain Ashby said the cables were not on the map. Duh!!! I suppose the next thing he said was that he did not know that people climb and ski in the those mountains!!! Is it possible we have people so stupid flying these things that they think the only gondolas in Italy are the ones plying the canals in Venice?

He said he thought he saw some sort of mirage or optical illusion. I’ll bet he did! At 617 miles an hour 300 feet above the ground "optical" is only one of the illusions he and his crew would have been experiencing! People who fly jet fighter planes are addicted to speed. Speed is one of their principle defenses – to outrun other planes or missiles; if speed were not paramount we would still be flying by-planes.

I think the rest of the world has every right to be sick of the United States. This is so transparently like the rich boy down the street who has sped through the school zone and wiped out a bunch of pre-schoolers in his new BMW. With a few lawyers like Johnny Cochran they "prove" that the sun was in his eyes, that his speedometer was broken, that school got out early that day, that in fact on that particular day the teachers had not specifically instructed the kids not to cross the street so of course it was not his fault.