Happy Independence Day

For Independence day, the BBC posted a list of ten good things that America has brought the world. I'll quote one of them:

Item Number Four is aviation. America did invent the aeroplane but it was rather a dull device at first and spent its early years being flown short distances in wobbly straight lines by plucky pioneers.

Before long though, America had invented barnstorming, and intrepid entertainers were performing the Charleston on the wings of bi-planes as they were flown under low bridges. A pointless but brilliant feat.

I put it down to the manner in which the Declaration of Independence promises the right to the pursuit of happiness.

The list includes such other classics as ice cubes and American cheese. You can read the article here.

The more things stay the same

I was reading an article about the Berlin airlift and shortly after an article about Russia allowing use of its airspace for United States planes transporting weapons into Afghanistan. The two events are almost exactly sixty years apart, and are a great illustration of just how fast some things change.

World War II had just ended then. It's difficult now, I think, to imagine just how angry the world was with Germany. The four major powers (the Soviet Union, England, France, and the United States) had a fairly simple plan: They would destroy all of Germany's industry, and rebuild it as a mostly agricultural society. That way, Germany could never again build up the enormous military and industry that it had during World War II. That ended up being unworkable, and a new set of problems quickly emerged.

Germany was divided into four sub-countries, one for each power, and the capital city of Berlin was also divided into four districts. Since Berlin was in the Soviet sector of the country, the Soviets hoped to eventually make the whole of it communist, and after a few years they cut off all supplies to non-Soviet Berlin to try and force them to acquiesce to Soviet control. This resulted in the Allies mounting a very difficult and very large operation to supply the entire city by air. There had been no written agreement with the Soviets about land rights to the city (the Allies were relying on Soviet goodwill), but they did have clear written agreements on air passage rights. The Soviets couldn't stop the airlift without being dishonorable.

One of my favorite stories from the airlift was when the French agreed to build a new, larger airport for the supplies. There were two towers owned by the Russian army blocking the flight path. Since there was no chance the Russians would agree to their removal, the French simply blew them up during the night-time. The next day, the furious Russian commander approached the French commander and asked "How could you blow up those towers!?" Apparently, the Frenchman replied, "we used dynamite."

Nowadays, the Soviet Union is gone, and Russians and westerners can visit each other relatively easily. We've got a completely new set of insurmountable obstacles nowadays. So next time you're wandering if the Palestinians and the Israelis will ever forgive each other, or if it's possible to truly dismantle terrorism, or if it's really possible to feed Africa -- perhaps it just takes time.