Over Detroit Skies

My buddy Roey Rosenblith's first hand account of the attempted attack on Delta flight 253. Just glad he made it out alive.

"It's been less than two days since all of this has happened. We still have a lot to learn about who Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was and what made him into a human bomb. From what I know the story is particularly tragic, because on a continent where most people had so little he seemed to have so much. He made up an elite group of perhaps .1% of the population. Not only did he study abroad he studied to be an engineer. He could have come back to Nigeria and put his skills to use in a wide array of fields: agriculture, health, transportation, telecommunications, he could have created solutions that would help some of the poorest people on earth. Even if he didn't want to do that, with a wealthy family and well connected father, the world was his oyster. Why would he throw all that away to follow this horrific path? When he studied in England, what happened there to infuse this hatred into his heart?

I've spent the last five years of my life dedicated to engineering products that would help the world's poor. I wonder if I had ever had the opportunity to meet Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and talk shop with, discuss the agro-processing devices and small solar lighting systems ... supply chains and accessing rural markets ... that he might have seen that at least this American was not his enemy. Or maybe it wouldn't have mattered at all; how can you reason with what is inherently unreasonable. I suppose that all we can do, all I can do, is not give up."