Archive for January, 2010

Ok, I’m going to give an opinion here that is probably not going to sit well with people, but when you look past the emotion, you’re going to see that I’m right.

After waking up this morning, I began my routine of going through the news sites. I ran across a story on Fox News about the poor families of the college students from Lynn University who have not been located.  The story is about the families anger at the US Government for their inability to locate the children or (hopefully not) their bodies.

The story quotes Leonard Gengel, the father of one of the missing girls as slamming his fist on a table and yelling, “We know our daughter was there and we want them to find her!”
A little background here, some students and staff from Lynn University embarked on a trip to Haiti to deliver food and visit schools and orphanages. This was a trip organized by the College. (Who has hired private rescue teams to try to find the missing staff and students) This was a case of private citizens embarking on a private venture to a foreign country.

Let me be clear. I cannot begin to imagine the hell that these families are experiencing. However, that does not make this the problem of the United States government. As I said before, private citizens embarking on a private venture in a foreign country does not require the US Government to blaze in and ignore the overall mission to answer the concerns of the families. Haiti lost over 200,000 people. The are burying hundreds at a time in mass graves just to deal with health concerns. The resources of the aid that we have sent are to try to save the living. That is the priority.

We all have been very clear about how we feel with the Banks and the Automakers. It applies here as well. When private citizens embark on private ventures, and things don’t go as planned; it is not the responsibility of the United States Government to send the cavalry in to the rescue. As I said before, I sympathize with their pain. I pray to God that they will find answers, and hopefully good ones. But, I cannot condone the anger at our government for not finding them.