I'm awed, amazed, thrilled, and grateful for the successful rescue of the 33 trapped Chilean miners. I really am. But there's a disquieting thought that keeps intruding on my celebration. It seems curmudgeonly, at best, to point out that for most of their ordeal the miners have had contact with the surface, food, water, tobacco, medical advice, a very expensive and intense rescue effort, and the good will of the entire world. I admire the men no end for managing to work together and survive such a horrendous experience.
But when I read over and over the concerns about the men's mental health, and how they will bear scars for life because of their ordeal, and of all the effort put forth to help them, including training in how to deal with the media (another tribulation!), I can't stop thinking of the men who for longer months endured captivity and torture during the Vietnam War. Or the 444-day ordeal of the victims of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Or [fill in any one of a number of terrifying imprisonments]. Where was the concern for them? Where the effort to ease their return to society? Where, even, the money pouring in for interview, book, and movie deals?
Maybe we've become more concerned and compassionate over the years. Maybe we just like a good, dramatic story. I wouldn't take anything away from the support given these miners—but wouldn't it be nice to see that solidarity, that love, that attention, and those financial resources poured out for the ones who suffer even now, all over the world, mostly in obscurity?
I think that a small, contained group in a tragic situation makes for a better story than that of a large, dispersed group, and provides better political capital than a group whose peril could be linked to political decisions in the past. Especially in the latter case, who will step up and admit a group is in crisis and needs help, when it was his decisions or that of his fellows that caused the crisis?
I also find it interesting that very little is written on the mine and its operator. Some of the miners trapped had warned about the poor safety in the mine, but I don't know what (besides closing this particular mine) this tragedy will change. That would require thought and political action. The constant progress in the rescue, however, and the aboveground drama, made for excellent reality TV...
Good points, although in the case of, say, the Vietnam War POW's, I understand other countries ignoring their plight -- but not our own. No matter what one's political views, the welfare (physically, spiritually, socially, psychologically) of someone who has sustained such long-term suffering is at least as important as that of the miners.
I think you're right about "small, contained group." My complaint reminds me of the saying we heard over and over again in the 1970's: If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we...." Landing a man on the moon was a specific, technological feat amenable to solution by infusion of sufficient money and effort. Curing cancer and ending poverty proved to be much more complicated. What's more, there was no one with significant political or economic interest in not having the miners rescued, whereas ending the drug problem or stopping the global sex trade—each of which represents a quantity of suffering orders of magnitude greater—encounters significant opposition.
And now there are 17 coal miners trapped in China....
