The Saints Aren't Coming

Watched the new U2/Green Day video while we were flying home from Vegas last nite (or was it this morning?.)



First, a disclaimer. We hate Green Day, and we refuse to let Irish tax evaders lecture us about our domestic affairs. Having said that, what a video. Put a lump in our throat the 1st time we saw it. Still does, no matter how many more times we see it. Shows what we all wish had happened, and what we wish could happen*.

As always, here’s the grainy Youtube version

And the hi-res Quicktime version.


*Sure, as former members of the Bureaucratic Service we fully realize that any forward deployed forces are completely incapable of immediate response to interior locations within the continental United States and even if it was possible their mission capabilities are wholly unsuited for US disaster relief and imagine the irony if we did redeploy them on a dime because that’s what Rumsfeld was tying to accomplish all these years and now he’s gone and it’s all irrelevant anyway because even if we could redeploy a fraction of the Air Force and Army elements depicted in this video the time it would take to actually effect such a large-scale movement of men, machines, equipment and all the necessary support services would be far more than the four days it took FEMA to respond and it would be more like six or even eight months before all the forces were in place and besides the initial response to a natural disaster is strictly a local one and everyone knows that any Federal response would have to be led by the local National Guard units and everyone knows (well, except for Governor Blanco) that any such request would have to spell out in painstaking detail the exact force package required that would exclude us from sending over any combat-capable aircraft and besides who the Hell sends fully-loaded warplanes to airlift people off of rooftops I mean really imagine if two of those Apaches collided over some poor bastard’s house and they fell on the property and killed everyone inside why the Congressional hearings would drag on for years and the lawsuits from everyone within 100 miles of the accident would exceed the actual Hurricane damages by several billion dollars and the only saving grace of all of this would be that we’d find out a few days later that a Delta Force Recon Patrol looking for survivors got into a firefight with Sean Penn and there were no survivors in his boat and anyway this is all academic because everyone knows that Harrier jets don’t have winches and anyone standing under one of those Jets while they were in VTOL mode would be roasted alive. But still…