From the WSJ Opinion Archives
America
Sucks It Up
The New York Times strikes a discordant note this morning with an article by
Todd Purdum in which he tries to capture the national mood after the loss of
the Columbia:
Like the space shuttle Challenger disaster 17 years ago this week and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the disintegration of the shuttle Columbia played out in real time before a nationwide television audience, sparking many of the same unsettled feelings. Only because the breakup began some 40 miles above the earth could the instinct to think of terrorism be repressed. But to a nation still struggling with the aftermath of the most devastating terrorist attack in its history and the abiding threat of another, plus a sluggish economy, nuclear tension with North Korea and the prospect of war with Iraq, this morning's disaster was an especially harsh blow.
If our personal experience is anything to go by, this is a bad emotional misreading. Yesterday's news did not spark "unsettled feelings"; it revived old familiar ones. Anyone over 25 is old enough to remember the Challenger explosion, which did spark "unsettled feelings." It did so, though, because it was a new experience. Like Sept. 11, it took time to sink in; only with the passage of time did we "know" how to feel about it. In contrast, yesterday's disaster, while intensely sad, was not traumatic--except of course for those whose loved ones died or who suffered some other direct loss.
The Challenger disaster was also more shocking because it happened in more carefree times. Less than 17 months ago, 3,000 people died on American soil at the hands of an incomprehensibly vicious enemy. To put things in perspective, the big terrorism story of 1986 was the April bombing of a disco in Berlin, which killed two, including an American soldier, and prompted a "surgical" bombing of Libya, whose dictator, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, had ordered the Berlin attack.
Mark Steyn gets it right when he argues that yesterday's loss "will not be as traumatisingly mesmeric as the Challenger disaster. The yellow-ribbon era died with September 11: even if their television networks haven't quite adjusted, Americans are tougher about these things; this is a country at war and one that understands how to absorb losses and setbacks."
In his new MSNBC blog, Glenn Reynolds makes the same point: "Post 9/11 and with a war looming, we're a bit tougher about tragedies. We should fix the problem and get on with things, with a minimum of tear-jerking. . . . We'll bury our dead. But then we must move on."
The deaths of the Columbia crew were as heartbreaking as their lives were ennobling. But it was not an "especially harsh blow" to a country mired in malaise. Todd Beamer, one of the fallen heroes of Sept. 11, captured the lesson of that day just before he and his fellow passengers saved untold lives by taking on the terrorists who'd hijacked their plane. "Let's roll," he said. Not "let's wallow."
The
Web Gets a Scoop
It's said that journalism is the first draft of history. If so, the Internet
sometimes affords us a glimpse at history's rough outline. At 8:38 a.m. EST
yesterday, a reader of the Free Republic Web site started a discussion thread
for shuttle enthusiasts:
Space Shuttle Columbia is in a decent for the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and will pass over the San Francisco Area around 6:00 AM Pacific Time. Route will take the Shuttle over Las Vegas, Flagstaff, etc. NASA has still not decided which runway will be used. Landing will be at 9:16 AM Eastern.
Other Freepers joined in, describing the view of the descending shuttle from the West Coast--then gradually realizing something was amiss. Someone asks at 8:58 a.m. EST, "Was it glowing at all?" The first clear sign of trouble comes in a post at 9:05 a.m. We won't quote any more than this, because you really have to read the full thread to appreciate the drama. But it's worth noting that the first word of trouble didn't come across the Associated Press wire until 9:16, the scheduled landing time. Free Republic scooped the AP by at least 11 minutes--which is an eternity in the competitive world of wire-service reporting.
A
Family's Double Loss
Astronaut Laurel Clark was close to her cousin Timothy Haviland. "Tim had planned
to go the launch, but it was not to be," his mother, Betty Haviland, tells the
AP. Tim worked for Marsh & McLennan, on the 96th floor of the World Trade Center's
north tower, where he was murdered on Sept. 11, 2001. Tim and Laurel were both
41 when they died.
"Grief and death happens to a lot of people, but you don't usually watch it on national television and not once but a thousand times," says Betty Haviland. "And you can't not watch, because that's your son or your niece up there."
The
Price of Appeasement
A
priceless artifact was lost when the Columbia broke up: a pencil drawing that
Israeli mission specialist Ilan Ramon had brought along. Titled "Moon Landing"
(and shown alongside), it depicted the Earth seen from the moon, as imagined
by a young visionary named Peter Ginz some six decades ago. The Nazis murdered
Peter Ginz at Auschwitz in 1944. (Ramon's mother was also an Auschwitz inmate,
but she survived.)
Peter was 14, so if he had lived, he would be about 10 years younger than John Glenn. Who knows--if the West had stopped Hitler earlier, Peter Ginz just might have grown up to become an astronaut.
Palestinians
Whoop It Up?
Yesterday
we noted that Iraqis--or, to be precise, those Iraqis who speak to Western reporters
without fear of being imprisoned, tortured or murdered by Saddam Hussein's thugs--were
whooping it up over the Columbia loss. "God is avenging us," one "government
employee" told Reuters.
On Sept. 11 we noted that Palestinian Arabs were whooping it up over the attack on America. We wondered, naturally, how the Columbia tragedy was going over on the Palestinian "street."
If a later version of the same Reuters dispatch is to be believed, the Palestinians are much better behaved than they were back in 2001:
There were no such signs of jubilation over the shuttle disaster in any of the Palestinian territories. The official response from the Palestinians was one of condolence.
"President (Yasser) Arafat and the Palestinian Authority offer their condolences to the six American families and the Israeli family who lost their loved ones in the catastrophe," Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official and spokesman, told Reuters.
Erekat said Arafat had sent President Bush a message of condolences over the loss of the NASA space agency's shuttle. The United States, Israel's closest ally, is the chief Middle East peace broker.
This may be something of a whitewash; the Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh manages to find quite a few Palestinians who share the views of Reuters' Iraqis: "They were sent to space to spy on the Arabs and Muslims," Ramallah schoolteacher Rudainah Salman tells the paper. "I have no sympathy for the astronauts because they were doing something bad to us. Allah punished them because of their bad intentions. I hate the Americans and the Israelis because of what they are doing to our people." The Washington Post reports that some Jordanians agree. "God have mercy on them, but if there was an Israeli among them, it was God's response," says one Amjad Abu Nawas. "We don't want innocent people to die, but between us and the Jews, there is enmity."
Bad
Taste Watch
The Houston Chronicle's Web site has a special page titled "Columbia's
Last Mission." It looks to be pretty comprehensive and interesting, but
if you scroll down and look under the right side under "What You Can Do,"
you find this suggestion:
Did you photograph some shuttle debris? Send us your debris photos: E-mail it to us to post.
This is a bit crass, is it not?
What
Would We Do Without Experts?
"Speed Makes Space Flight Very Risky, Experts Say"--headline, New
York Times, Feb. 2
They
Also Died
We erred yesterday
when we described Columbia's loss as the second fatal accident in space-shuttle
history; we should have said the second fatal in-flight accident. A sidebar
to an InterspaceNews.com account of Columbia's maiden voyage, in 1981, describes
a tragedy associated with that flight:
To prevent an accidental fire or explosion sealed compartments on the shuttle and ground equipment are purged with pure nitrogen. Nitrogen isn't poisonous but without oxygen a fire can't happen--however people can't breathe either.
Through a chain of miscommunications several technicians entered the shuttle's aft compartment on March 19, shortly after the shuttle's dress rehearsal was completed. They fell unconscious in the nitrogen-filled aft compartment. Other techs were able to pull their bodies out and fire and rescue personnel gave the victims CPR and oxygen. John Bjornstad died the day of the accident. Technician Forrest Cole lingered on, dying on April 1st. Four others were either hospitalized or treated and released. Some had respiratory problems for the rest of their lives.
The accident review board noted that a series of events led to confusion, a do not enter sign was removed when it should have been replaced with another sign with a warning. A supervisor was called away to another location. One tech who put on an emergency breathing mask and tried to see if anybody was still inside the shuttle couldn't tell because his mask fogged over. The accident led to more stringent safety rules and procedures. During the STS-1 mission astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen recognized Bjornstad and Cole for their sacrifice to the shuttle program.
That voyage, incidentally, also made the Columbia a movie star; it was the subject of the 1982 IMAX movie "Hail Columbia," which is now available on DVD.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Marie Bourgeois, Gerry Daly, Monty Krieger, Natalie Cohen, Barak Moore, Nadine Wildmann, Christian Peck, Pat Mizell, Ed Sieb, Avi Bell, C.E. Dobkin, Chana Lajcher and Kerry Tatlow. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Why Israel's fallen astronaut was a hero to America.
- Arlen Large: Observations on the eve of Challenger's last launch.
