"Particular credit belongs to Chilean President Sebastián Piñera. It was Mr. Piñera who insisted on an all-out rescue effort, ultimately involving three separate extraction methods, when a more cautious (or fatalistic) politician might have feared raising expectations that could easily have been dashed.
Commentators have described his decision as a calculated political gamble, but to us it seems more like genuine statesmanship. Chile has historically depended on mining for much of its wealth. To keep faith with the men who go deep down into the earth to extract that wealth, as Mr. Piñera has, can no more be subject to a cost-benefit analysis than an army's decision to rescue its wounded or fallen soldiers from the battlefield. Deeper things are at stake."
Comments
Here's a relevant comment from a house editorial of The Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870367360457555...):
"Particular credit belongs to Chilean President Sebastián Piñera. It was Mr. Piñera who insisted on an all-out rescue effort, ultimately involving three separate extraction methods, when a more cautious (or fatalistic) politician might have feared raising expectations that could easily have been dashed.
Commentators have described his decision as a calculated political gamble, but to us it seems more like genuine statesmanship. Chile has historically depended on mining for much of its wealth. To keep faith with the men who go deep down into the earth to extract that wealth, as Mr. Piñera has, can no more be subject to a cost-benefit analysis than an army's decision to rescue its wounded or fallen soldiers from the battlefield. Deeper things are at stake."