This column originally appeared in the Williston Observer on June 17, 2010.
Too early to assess blame
The overriding question in the Gulf of Mexico right now is how can the daily spewing of 20,000 to 40,000 barrels of crude oil be stopped and, eventually, cleaned up. Inevitably, however, the question will be who is to blame for the disaster.
Parenthetically, given past history, it is likely that it will be decades before all the cases are heard and decided. The 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, which spilled a total of 200,000 barrels of oil (which the Deepwater Horizon can leak in just 10 days), is still being litigated. In 2008, the Supreme Court sent a punitive damages award case back to the lower courts for further hearings.
On my website, in the month of June, I've been taking a poll asking my visitors exactly who they blame for the on-going disaster. The choices include BP, Halliburton, the majority and minority owners of the oil rig, and the government in any of three forms: the Minerals Management Service (in charge of off-shore oil rig regulation), the Obama Administration generally, or just The Government generally.
My site tends to attract a conservative audience (in 2009, 34 percent of my visitors self-reported as Republicans, only 13 percent as Democrats; 55 percent reported voting for John McCain, only 35 percent for Obama), so the results two weeks into the month are not shocking. Still, given the situation, I do find the numbers a little surprising.
Only 44 percent of respondents blame BP or one of the affiliated companies. 47 percent blame the government for the on-going disaster. 21 percent blame the Obama Administration specifically, even though the administration has, thus far, taken a very conservative approach and been relatively hands-off in terms of forcing the companies involved to do much of anything.
The approach makes some sense. An oil company should know best how to handle a spill at an oil rig — the oil company or at least the companies responsible for the component parts of the oil rig. Halliburton, for example, was contracted to do the final cementing of the oil well, and Cameron International is the supplier of the failed blow-out preventer. That these companies have failed to perform their basic duties is a condemnation of the industry in general.
When it comes to fixing a problem with one of these component parts, it should be the job of the company to fix them. This is not a liberal or conservative position — it is a common sense position. The fact the oil is important to the nation from a defense standpoint or from an economic standpoint is no excuse for not being able to control an oil spill, and not a reason to assume the spill is the government's fault.
I know my poll is hardly scientific. One visitor recently told me that because my poll does not allow for a write-in response, it is essentially "useless." I countered that Internet polls, mine included, are generally useless, because they are not controlled and they are self-selected.
But the sense I get from reading a few other polls is that the feeling is not isolated. In a USA Today/Yahoo poll released May 26, 75 percent thought BP was doing a poor job with the spill, but 53 percent thought the Obama administration was also doing a poor job.
As I've noted before, the President often gets blamed, or gets credit, for things that are not his doing. Regardless, the office of the presidency is a powerful and important one. What a president says matters. Obama is pushing BP and the industry from his bully pulpit, and that must continue.
The administration, in recent weeks, has gone on the offensive. This past weekend, the administration said they planned to order BP to establish a fund of an undetermined amount to help compensate victims of the spill. Earlier this week, the president visited affected states for the fourth time since the oil rig sank. The Energy Department has established a web site to consolidate all the data it can about the spill.
Is the administration doing all it can in the face of this disaster? Perhaps, perhaps not — that's a tough call at this point. It may only be in the calm of the post-disaster analysis that we can tell that for sure. For now, the priorities must be finally capping the leak, containing the already-lost oil, and protecting the fragile ecosystems of the Gulf coast.
There will be plenty of time, decades in fact, for blame.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
The Sinking of the Cheonan
This column originally appeared in the Williston Observer on June 3, 2010. This version is slightly different from the published version.
The Sinking of the Cheonan
Just after 9:00 p.m. local time, on March 26, 2010, the sailors on the South Korean Navy corvette Cmheonan were thown into a mariner's nightmare. An explosion rocked the ship, and split it in two. The stern sank within minutes, according to the ship's captain. Of the 104 members aboard, only 58 were pulled from the sea. 46 are unaccounted for and are assumed drowned.
After weeks of rescue operations, the focus shifted to salvage and investigation. Portions of the hull of the Cheonan were visible above water, as the seas were only 130 feet deep at the site of the incident. By the end of April, both halves of the Cheonan had been recovered from the sea floor and were taken to a South Korean naval base for examination.
Speculation at the time of the tragedy was rampant, but experts said that only two causes were probable. Either an internal explosion, the result of an accident, fire, or some other incident on board; or an external explosion, the result of some kind of attack.
The Cheonan was operating within its territorial waters as declared by the United Nations. North Korea, however, considers the waters to belong to them. If the explosion was external, the North was the obvious suspect in an attack.
Within a day of the raising of both halves of the boat, the South Korean defense minister said that the cause of the splitting of the Cheonan was a "bubble jet," an extraordinary change in pressure that was strong enough to split the boat in half. Such a bubble jet can be caused by a proximate but non-contact explosion, as from a torpedo.
On May 20, an international commission consisting of Koreans, Americans, British, Swedes, and Australians, released a report on the sinking of the Cheonan. The report's conclusion was unequivocal:
"The [commission] assesses that a strong underwater explosion generated by the detonation of a homing torpedo below and to the left of the gas turbine room caused Cheonan to split apart and sink."
The evidence is highly technical in nature, and I don't purport to understand it all, but it convinced the experts. Some parts of the evidence I understand quite well: torpedo parts mixed in with the wreckage of the Cheonan. Though the Cheonan herself carried torpedoes, the parts included marks that were consistent with other North Korean-made torpedoes previously obtained by the allies.
North Korea, however, is not quite so convinced.
According to North Korea's official English-language news site, the commission's report is "foolish and fabricated." It called the Cheonan sailors traitors, and condemned the entire South Korean Navy as a "puppet navy." North Korea warned against any punishment for the sinking of the Cheonan, threatening "all-out war" if such measures are taken.
The bellicose blustering of the North is to be expected. Whether the attack on the South Korean ship was deliberate (the result of an order from on-high or an act of aggression by a lone captain) or an accident, it seems par for the course that North Korea would deny any involvement. The phrase "Thou dost protest too much" comes to mind.
American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the attack by the North as "provocative" and said that the actions will have consequences. Though she failed to elaborate much further, she noted that "business as usual" could not continue.
Liberals are generally regarded as doves, but if this past Memorial Day is a reminder of nothing else, it must be that Americans of all kinds serve and have served — men, women, all races, colors, religious beliefs, sexual orientations, and political leanings. I think it is fair to say that no one of these groupings loves peace or is willing to fight to defend freedom more than any other.
Given that, it should be no surprise that President Obama's administration is willing to meet North Korea's tough talk with tough talk of its own. Our commitment to the freedom of the South Korean people should not be questioned, because through every administration since the armistice treaty was signed, our military has had a strong presence in South Korea.
By remaining firm in our resolve, and by using diplomacy (both public and secret), I hope that the North will own up to its responsibility. If it does not, and it provokes a fight, the South Koreans can rest assured that the United States will stand by them, up to and including war. It isn't what we want, but it is what we will do.
The Sinking of the Cheonan
Just after 9:00 p.m. local time, on March 26, 2010, the sailors on the South Korean Navy corvette Cmheonan were thown into a mariner's nightmare. An explosion rocked the ship, and split it in two. The stern sank within minutes, according to the ship's captain. Of the 104 members aboard, only 58 were pulled from the sea. 46 are unaccounted for and are assumed drowned.
After weeks of rescue operations, the focus shifted to salvage and investigation. Portions of the hull of the Cheonan were visible above water, as the seas were only 130 feet deep at the site of the incident. By the end of April, both halves of the Cheonan had been recovered from the sea floor and were taken to a South Korean naval base for examination.
Speculation at the time of the tragedy was rampant, but experts said that only two causes were probable. Either an internal explosion, the result of an accident, fire, or some other incident on board; or an external explosion, the result of some kind of attack.
The Cheonan was operating within its territorial waters as declared by the United Nations. North Korea, however, considers the waters to belong to them. If the explosion was external, the North was the obvious suspect in an attack.
Within a day of the raising of both halves of the boat, the South Korean defense minister said that the cause of the splitting of the Cheonan was a "bubble jet," an extraordinary change in pressure that was strong enough to split the boat in half. Such a bubble jet can be caused by a proximate but non-contact explosion, as from a torpedo.
On May 20, an international commission consisting of Koreans, Americans, British, Swedes, and Australians, released a report on the sinking of the Cheonan. The report's conclusion was unequivocal:
"The [commission] assesses that a strong underwater explosion generated by the detonation of a homing torpedo below and to the left of the gas turbine room caused Cheonan to split apart and sink."
The evidence is highly technical in nature, and I don't purport to understand it all, but it convinced the experts. Some parts of the evidence I understand quite well: torpedo parts mixed in with the wreckage of the Cheonan. Though the Cheonan herself carried torpedoes, the parts included marks that were consistent with other North Korean-made torpedoes previously obtained by the allies.
North Korea, however, is not quite so convinced.
According to North Korea's official English-language news site, the commission's report is "foolish and fabricated." It called the Cheonan sailors traitors, and condemned the entire South Korean Navy as a "puppet navy." North Korea warned against any punishment for the sinking of the Cheonan, threatening "all-out war" if such measures are taken.
The bellicose blustering of the North is to be expected. Whether the attack on the South Korean ship was deliberate (the result of an order from on-high or an act of aggression by a lone captain) or an accident, it seems par for the course that North Korea would deny any involvement. The phrase "Thou dost protest too much" comes to mind.
American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the attack by the North as "provocative" and said that the actions will have consequences. Though she failed to elaborate much further, she noted that "business as usual" could not continue.
Liberals are generally regarded as doves, but if this past Memorial Day is a reminder of nothing else, it must be that Americans of all kinds serve and have served — men, women, all races, colors, religious beliefs, sexual orientations, and political leanings. I think it is fair to say that no one of these groupings loves peace or is willing to fight to defend freedom more than any other.
Given that, it should be no surprise that President Obama's administration is willing to meet North Korea's tough talk with tough talk of its own. Our commitment to the freedom of the South Korean people should not be questioned, because through every administration since the armistice treaty was signed, our military has had a strong presence in South Korea.
By remaining firm in our resolve, and by using diplomacy (both public and secret), I hope that the North will own up to its responsibility. If it does not, and it provokes a fight, the South Koreans can rest assured that the United States will stand by them, up to and including war. It isn't what we want, but it is what we will do.
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