Thought for the day
March 5, 1999
Today, a "Court Martial" (literally a "military court") aquitted Marine Capt. Richard Ashby of involuntary manslaughter. The Italian (and indeed, many European nations') press are reporting this a "a slap in the face" or "an outrage." Not surprisingly, the harshest criticism has come from their communist government who have forgotten WWII and don't want U.S. protection anymore.
First of all, the loss of life is very sad. Here are a bunch of people, minding their own business in a gondola and all of a sudden, the cable is cut and they fall to their deaths. Not that it's completely unexpected, I mean hey, you're hanging from a wire hundreds of feet in the air. Am I the only person who thinks that's inherently dangerous?
Nevertheless, they didn't expect Capt. Ashby any more than he expected them. From what I can determine, he had carefully planned for his mission but was not provided an accurate map of the region. Nor was he warned to stay above 2000 feet. In fact, one important purpose of his mission was to practice flying really, really low so that in times of conflict he would be more likely to survive to carryout his mission to protect the people of Italy and other allies.
There aren't any winners here. Capt. Ashby and his brave crew were risking their lives in the service of their nation to protect the people of Italy. Had this tragic accident occurred during a war no one would have objected to American pilots being there. But this is peacetime and death isn't supposed to happen during peacetime right?
To put it into perspective, Italy has probably had more JUDGES and POLICEMEN murdered by drug-dealers in the past year than died in this cablecar accident. But hey, who cares about them? They were killed by criminals not "cowboy pilots." I don't doubt that these Marines are "cowboys," all cocky and full of machismo. That's pretty much the sort of person you want to come flying-in at the speed-of-sound over the treetops to blow the axis-powers or the soviets away.
If Italy is done with us, and they don't need our protection anymore, then maybe we need to reconsider our agreements to protect their hairy asses.