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Eagles or Vultures?*
 When
I paused from this morning’s C-Span coverage of the shuttle
disaster long enough to check my e-mail, I found the following brief
note nestled in my inbox. It was from Dr. Kim B., a life-long health
care worker, and an old family friend.
She
sent the following terse message (complete with her own
parenthetical inserts):
“So
now we can get on with mourning seven people (and I do) while we are
plotting to exterminate 800,000 more (who didn’t sign up for a
dangerous job consciously).”
Kim’s
obviously conflicted feelings echo my own, and I think she speaks
for many anxious Americans tonight. I heard similar sentiments
voiced by viewers who accepted C-Span’s invitation to call-in
their personal reactions to the shuttle tragedy.
It
is tragic to accidentally lose seven human beings in a reach for the
stars. Is it any less tragic to lose thousands in a reach for power?
Over
and over today I viewed video footage of the last moments of that
engineering marvel, the Columbia. In the first few frames, it
appeared as a silver streak marking America’s mastery of heaven
and earth. Then, without explanation or warning, this soaring symbol
of speed and power became a hideous fireball spewing bits and pieces
of toxic chaos across the Texas sky. Our best technicians stood mute
and helpless at their remote control consoles as their wondrous
creation of handicraft and logic was brought down by forces they had
not quite mastered.
Like
Daedalus, the mythical engineer who strapped his son Icarus to a
winged contraption made of feathers and wax, we had sent seven of
our best sons and daughters soaring aloft in our magnificent flying
machine.
Flying
high above the Texas desert at twenty times the speed of the loudest
scream, something went terribly wrong.
When
overconfidence took Icarus too close to the sun, the wax melted and
his father’s engineering triumph came unglued.
Can Americans grieve over seven deaths by fire, yet feel national pride at a man-made catastrophe consuming thousands of lives?
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Sailing
200,000 feet above America, our spaceship Columbia, a modern
contraption of ceramic tiles and aluminum tubing began to glow white
hot and shed its parts It left a trail of broken dreams scattered
from Dallas to Shreveport.
It
was over in a flash. We lost five sons and two daughters.
Tonight,
and tomorrow, and for days to come, America will mourn.
Among
the missing astronauts was one man who grew up only a hundred miles
from my hometown. His biography is full of familiar place names. I
feel somehow connected to his family. We all feel connected at times
like this. In such moments we are family.
The
irony for some of us, like my friend Dr. B., is that even as this
morning’s tragedy was unfolding, America and England’s family
elders were winding up a war council in which, with great confidence
in the infallibility of their technology, they contemplated sending
800 fireballs in 48 hours to burn the sons and daughters of Baghdad.
Ostensibly, this massive firestorm of death is intended to punish
the head of Iraq’s dysfunctional family for misdeeds that we
originally encouraged but have recently decided to condemn.
Is
it possible for Americans to be so compartmentalized in their
emotions that seven deaths by fire will trigger an appropriate human
outpouring of grief, but a man-made catastrophe intended to consume
thousands of human beings amid the ruins of one of the world’s
oldest cities is eagerly anticipated as a cause for national pride?
Can the same people who shed genuine tears for seven fallen eagles
really feel nothing but contempt for whole flocks targeted for
annihilation in another of America’s temper tantrums?
What
kind of people are we? What kind of heart is it that grows heavy
with the news of seven brave adventurers lost in an accident of
experimental technology, but that swells with hubris over news of
the technological prowess that will soon enable our button pushing
technicians to sit at their remote control consoles and condemn
thousands of men, women and children to a painful flame broiled
death?
What
kind of people are we? What can we be thinking? What kind of mind,
having just witnessed our technology’s limits in the face of great
unforeseen forces, arrogantly dismisses the probability that the war
we are so eager to launch might unleash forces which our technology
cannot control?
Daedalus,
the mythical engineer, knew the limits of his technology and the
weaknesses of youth. He tried and failed to convince his son not to
fly so close to the sun. Juvenile pride is an intoxicating elixir.
Perhaps,
as Americans contemplate our lost comrades, we should turn our
communal grief into something more morally uplifting than self-pity
and a search for weaker beings upon which to inflict our
frustrations.
Perhaps
we should beseech our arrogant young Icarus not to fling us into the
sun.
George Lewandowski is the Content Director for
YellowTimes.org. He lives in the United States. You can reach him at
glewandowski@YellowTimes.org
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This article was originally published in YellowTimes.Org
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