I find it interesting that some in the mideast took the occasion of the loss of Columbia to remark that this was somehow God’s punishment against America.  As an agnostic, I don’t believe in such things, but I think it may be helpful to compare and contrast the relative accomplishments of countries like Iraq and the United States (I will leave such an exercise to the reader as it has been done before on other sites).

Those who attempt to do great things sometimes fail in spectacular ways.  But they at least dared to do those things.  I don’t see any great accomplishments coming out of the peanut gallery in the mideast (other than perhaps advances in torture techniques).  I don’t recall where I read this, but someone pointed out that there are people in America who are engaged in the task of building functional spacecraft in their garages.  Our country is unique in how we provide a framework that facilitates the ability of private citizens to acquire the resources necessary to undertake such tasks and in how we guarantee the freedom of said citizen to persue that task.

If I were to believe in a God, I might be inclined to retort that said God had indeed blessed America if our national concern was centered on an incident in the exploration of space.