pin down exactly who is responsible for 'causing' the World Trade Center to collapse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden
Yes, and an equally succinct and precise answer as to why the Titanic sank is:
What you tried to say by saying that the 'irresponsible radio operator' was just as short-sighted as trying to blame the lead engineer on the WTC complex for the collapse of the buildings resulting from the 9/11 attack! He knew that planes could run into buildings in New York- after all, it had happened before- so why didn't he build his buildings to withstand that danger?
The
Californian's radioman had done everything a reasonable man could have possibly considered good and proper in the situation. After doing so, he was rebuffed by the object of his concern (or the representative thereof) and he- like any reasonable man- decided that there comes a time when someone must, as my Grandfather used to say, 'butt with their own head.' Satisfied he had made every effort, he shut off his set and rested in order to do his job for his own shipmates the next day.
The designers of the
Titanic had also done their best to make the ship as survivable as possible. They went above and beyond the call of contemporary merchant vessel construction in her design. They actually supplied more lifeboats than the British Board of Trade required for a passenger ship- a standard which had become woefully inadequate in the face of bureaucratic failure to keep up with the growth of ships.
White Star Line assigned the most experienced command crew they possessed to the vessel. There was roughly 200 years of combined experience on the North Atlantic standing on the bridge of
Titanic on the day shift!
What sank
Titanic was no deliberate failure on the part of any one man, nor will I be convinced that anything that happened
save the decision to maintain speed in the face of the iceberg warning was a deliberate decision to endanger the ship... and this was quietly contested, though unsuccessfully.