On the other hand
[Editor’s Note: For the sake of argument and fairness, the following is a poor attempt to argue the flip side of the airline debacle. As the writer has little experience with arguing the liberal and/or protectionist point of view, the article tends to be a little ambiguous in it’s support for protectionist policies. Oh well, we work with what we have available!]
Keeping track of airplanes has become a big part of our national security. Considering the type of high-end munitions that were obviously readily and abundantly available even in such a small-time operation as Iraq was under Saddam, an airplane of any size must now be considered a weapon of mass destruction. As has been so horribly demonstrated on 9/11, an airplane is a means of delivering deadly payload to a large population of people. All one would need is a few volunteers willing to die for the cause.
As an aside, during the campaign I wish Bush would have answered the constant “no WMD in Iraq” mantra with a simple, “Saddam had airplanes, didn’t he?”
Of course he had airplanes. A couple dozen twin engine propeller planes each loaded with, oh, say a portion of a mere 270 tons of RDX and HMX explosives would be equally or more destructive than were the jumbo jets loaded with jet fuel that hit the World Trade Center on 9/11. I say a mere 270 tons because that is only a drop in the bucket of the thousands upon thousands of tons of munitions that have been secured and/or destroyed since the invasion of Iraq.
Still, the opposition here in America would chant over and over that there was no connection between 9/11 and Iraq, even the 9/11 commission stated that. Blahbitty blah blah. I guess the implication here is that since Bin Laden wasn’t over for burgers and a romp in the rape rooms every weekend there is no conceivable way that Saddam could ever deliver to terrorists the means of making crude weapons of mass destruction.
Statements like the “no WMD in Iraq” canard clearly represent the bar on the “Global Test” Senator Kerry accidentally referred to in one of the debates. A bar much too high to ever justify aggressive use of military force. We might as well dismantle the damn thing and save the money if Kerry is elected because everybody in the world will correctly assume our military is to look at, but not to touch. Not even in the case of an emergency should you break the glass.
The ability to contribute an airplane, or even a small fleet of airplanes of different types and sizes, and all the high explosives a customer or brother-in-arms can cart away is a significant threat. In my opinion.
So, anyway, back to the airline industry topic in the previous post. In that post I took the position that the airline industry should be left to the market to sort out. In this post let’s consider the flip side. Given the very high threat that a single airplane can represent to our security, would it still be a wise policy to allow the open market to sort out the airline industry. Much of the new investment in the industry would be foreign, I’d assume. Would it be a good idea to allow a foreign company, say Air France, to have a larger control over the airplanes flying in our airspace?
Do the risks of foreign ownership of more of the planes in our airspace merit protectionist policies and taxpayer financial support of badly managed carriers?
If the risks are too great and the airlines are to be subsidized by the taxpayer, is it fair for the employees of these monstrous, inefficient operations to continue to wallow in the excesses of union bargaining when there are other just as deserving Americans who are struggling to keep afloat in industries that are not on the government dole? I think the recent labor negotiations at Delta would indicate that at least some union members may be coming to this conclusion all by themselves. Sometimes conclusions are inescapable. If you want to continue to be among the employed, you had best be prepared to work for less. In some cases, much less.
In other words, why should some Americans have to suffer through the painful changes that the market can sometimes foist on an industry or region while other Americans are protected from it? As a further insult, many of the Americans who are suffering through tough times are the very ones asked to pony up more of their scant resources in order to protect other Americans from the same situation.
If the market is not allowed to sort out the airlines themselves, at least it is appropriate that the market should sort out the labor problems in many union dominated industries.