Water Coolers and the Battle of Midway

I bet you're wondering how I am going to tie these two together.

Let's start with the battle of Midway.  This was a decisive battle fought towards the end of WWII.  It is significant in that it is the second naval battle where the two opposing fleets were never in visual sight of each other. (After the Coral Sea thanks to Ron S. for that bit of data.)

A little while before Midway, the Japanese severely damaged the USS Yorktown, an aircraft carrier.  It was so beat up they assumed it sank.  But, it made it back to Pearl Harbor, barely.  It was listing heavily to one side and the flight deck had huge holes in it.

The fleet admiral asked the officer in charge of the shipyard, how long it would take before the carrier could return to full service.  The officer said, "6 months at least."

The admiral had a war to fight so he said, "I will give you 96 hours."

Four days later (96 hours), the USS Yorktown went back to sea.  The impossible had happened simply because anything less was unacceptable.

As it turns out, the Japanese saw the Yorktown and assumed it was our main fleet, since they were certain the real Yorktown had sank.  They attacked the carrier and sank it.  They then returned to rearm.  That was when we struck back.  That was the battle of Midway.  We won it, in part, because we refused to accept that the impossible was too hard to do.

This brings me to a certain water cooler that was left on a sidewalk in Times Square.  We had a fit over it, shutting the place down, bringing in dogs and x-ray equipment.  In the end, it held water and books.  Now I ask you, did the bomber from last week, the Nissan with the fire crackers in it, really fail?  I say it was a big success for the terrorists.  They want us to be afraid and we say, "We are not afraid of you!!!" and then run screaming when someone forgets to throw away their lunch sack.

This is terrorism at work.

Ask the average person and they will say, "Well, you can never be too careful."  Hard to argue with that, but I completely disagree.  We shouldn't have to be "too careful."  We are accepting the idea of being afraid instead of insisting the Department of Homeland Defense do its job.

Someone will say, it's impossible to do this job perfectly.

To that I say, "You are fired."  Go to any top company and get the top guy and tell him, I am going to give you unlimited resources to solve this problem.  He will get it done.  He won't put tracking collars on us.  He won't beef up the Patriot Act.  He won't spy on U.S. citizens.

He will get creative and he or she will get the job done.

We all need to stand up and say, "Get it done or get the hell out of the way."

We can do this.  We don't have to run from empty brown paper bags because some guy in a Pakistani cave is pulling our strings.

I see this political theater today.  They are tracking the hundreds of dollars this guy spent on fire works.  This is make-work.  This is pretending to be effective.  This is failure.

When I get time, I am going to make a web page where anyone can easily find their congressman and email or call them to say, "Get it done or get the hell out of the way."

Okay, I am all out of steam....time for some Family Guy and a nap.

j