"What will the world say?"

I read recently in the newspaper that President Obama gave a reason for our intervention in Syria over their use of Sarin gas on their own people.  Part of it was, "what will the world say if the United States did nothing about this criminal act"?  I wondered about the following.

What will the world say about our "first-day" infant mortality rate being the highest in the industrial world.

What will the world say about a society where children get gunned down in their classrooms by a mad-man with military grade weapons and does nothing in response?

What will the world say about a society that allows its inner cities to rot while many of its residents live in poverty?

What will the world say about a society where there are more people in prison than anywhere else on earth.

What will the world say about a society that still allows the death penalty while the vast majority of the industrial world has banned it?  And has used that punishment on teenagers and the mentally ill?.

There are a host of issues that we should worry about "what will the world say" concerning conditions in this country.

News Items for this week

NASA launched a Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer or LADEE into a path with the moon that will study the dust in the moon's atmosphere.  This will cost $ 280 million and after 6 months will crash into the surface of the moon destroying the project.  If they want to study dust try a tenement in any of our inner cities; the cost would be much less.  Source: The Virginian Pilot on 9/8/13.

At the Group of 20 summit, President Obama won no allies on his plan to attack Syria.  He said "the world " places" and "immense responsibility" on the US to respond to humanitarian crises.  He said the "first question often asked is 'why isn't the US doing something about this'".  The world is really asking this?  Really.  I don't hear it and neither does the UN or most of our allies hear it.  Obama must have exceptionally good hearing.  I wonder if the world is asking why we don't do something about racism, gun deaths, infant mortality rate, poverty and the blight of our inner cities?  Source The Virginian Pilot on 9/7/13.

The US is building a new aircraft carrier-the Gerald R. Ford-and it will be the most expensive "warship ever built".  Being built in Newport News it was originally set to cost $ 10 billion but now the Navy says it will cost $ 12.8 billion.  Besides that the ship will not "be fully functional when its commissioned" now set for March 2016.  The GAO said the ship should not be commissioned when originally set but the Pentagon disagreed; the Pentagon won.  The GAO thinks the final cost will be more like $ 14.2 billion.  Federal law requires the Navy to have 11 aircraft carriers and now has only 10.  This ship will be part of a  three carrier plan that is estimated to cost $ 43 billion: the John F. Kennedy is the next ship in line and is under construction.  It is being  built by the Huntington Ingalls Industries in Newport News.  The shipyard in Newport News is the only one that builds aircraft barriers and one of two that build subs.  Source The Virginian Pilot on 9/6/13.