After Abandoning 300 Children on Sinking Ferry, We Should be Asking: How Reliable an Ally is South Korea?

Sinking South Korean Ferry

I do wish the media would stop obsessing over why that damned ferry sank and ask the only question that matters at this point.  Why did no one -- the Captain and 22 members of the crew who took the only lifeboats, the S. Korean Coast Guard, their Navy, Marines, Army, President and Commander in Chief,  rescue vessels, fishermen -- lift a finger to rescue those 300 children from below the deck of the listing ferry? It did after all take two hours for the ship to sink.

I ask this question as a mother. Perhaps everyone knew it was impossible and that the children were already dead. But in that case why stage such an elaborate week-long pretense of trying to save them later, that is, after the ferry was submerged?

This answer might even have foreign policy implications.  How reliable is an ally who claims to be at the ready for an attack by its lunatic-fringe North Korean neighbor at a moments notice?  And yet it can't seem to muster the energy or initiative to rescue school children from a sinking boat?

Please understand. I'm old enough to grasp the fact that accidents -- tragic, horrible, unfathomable -- do happen.  And sometimes the error is purely human but irreparable nonetheless.  In such cases we must grieve and let go.  But it is so much easier when we're being given honest explanations. Right now I don't care if the President thinks the ferry captain is a murderous scoundrel, if the safety inspector was paid by the ferry boat company, if the ship was hauling three times the allowable load. These issues will be hammered out in court. What matters here and now is how maritime authorities abandoned 300 children on a sinking ferry. If we're seeing this much subterfuge and obfuscation in regard to a ferry boat accident, what might we expect were the United States called upon as it was in 1950 to send troops to rescue South Korea from drowning?  My godfather fought in that war.