When fear battles terror: Lessons from a tragic flight

When President Bush summoned journalists to the White House on Wednesday, he expected to explain why things had gone so dangerously wrong in North Korea. Then a famous baseball pitcher flew his airplane into a New York residential skyscraper, killing himself and a companion and setting off alarms that reverberate in memory.Discontent about the diplomatic missteps in Washington that culminated in North Korea's nuclear swagger dropped, for a time, from the center of national attention.
The national attention span is always uncertain, moving from the sexual preoccupations of a congressman whose resignation was swifter than any act of Congress, to arguments about the number of Iraqis who have been killed since the U.S. became their protector."The only thing we have to fear," said President Franklin D. Roosevelt, pausing to brace his listeners, "is fear itself."The commander in chief in the war on terrorism described the nation's purpose on Wednesday in this way: "Stay the course means, 'Keep doing what you're doing.' " He said further, according to The New York Times: "Stay the course also means, 'Don't leave before the job is done.' "Not every generation deals with fear and uncertainty in the same way. Government leaders proclaim a war on terrorism, while citizens fear that war may follow the war on poverty and the war on drugs into the footnotes of American history.The country grieves for Cory Lidle, the pitcher-pilot, and his flight companion. However the awful event is eventually classified, it will be remembered as New York 's most spectacular traffic accident. The driver, in this case, let his affection for flying take him into the most populous city in the country. He was licensed to fly, but he was not an old-timer at the controls.Other athletes have figured in vehicular tragedies, but so have hundreds of thousands of less-famous non-athletes. Some of the accidents could be prevented. In Chicago, the serving of goose liver in restaurants is against the law, but the same places are licensed to sell intoxicating drinks to customers whose cars are parked nearby, ready for the drive home.The crash of a plane into a Manhattan skyscraper took the breath away from Americans already scarred by memories of 9-11. It was reported that Lidle observed all regulations governing flights that loop around the Statue of Liberty and travel in the shadows of tall buildings. That might lead a person to wonder why the government requires grandmothers to take off their shoes for examination before boarding an airliner, but apparently permits licensed pilots to fly themselves and their guests into fearsome areas.If the areas were not fearsome, American military planes would not have taken to the air to shield such cities as Los Angeles and Seattle after news of the New York catastrophe was broadcast.Government agencies are not well coordinated in providing national security. Possibly they never will be in a nation as large and diverse as the United States, where change is constant, bureaucracies are territorial and politicians embrace capitalism more happily than democracy.Cory Lidle will make it into a hall of fame if his mistake, his wrong turn, loosens a healthy fear among his fellow citizens. His recreational flying reveals how exposed the capital city of world commerce remains today. Healthy fear, which is not terror, can draw attention to potentially disastrous oversights in leadership and planning.Overcoming fear, as Franklin Roosevelt suggested, is fear's only value.

Mistake (contract law)

In contract law a mistake is incorrect understanding by one or more parties to a contract and may be used as grounds to invalidate the agreement. Common law has identified three different types of mistake in contract: unilateral mistake, mutual mistake, and common mistake.
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