LONDON (Reuters) - The world has watched amazed as the
planet's only superpower struggles with the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina, with some saying the chaos has exposed flaws
and deep divisions in American society.
World leaders and ordinary citizens have expressed sympathy
with the people of the southern United States whose lives were
devastated by the hurricane and the flooding that followed.
The United States has not actively sought foreign aid following
Hurricane Katrina but dozens of countries lined up on Friday to help
with rescue efforts, from hefty cash donations to tents and helicopters.
The State Department said more than 40 governments and international
organizations had made generous offers and the list was growing by the
hour after Katrina devastated New Orleans and other parts of the U.S.
Gulf Coast, killing hundreds and possibly thousands of people.
But many have also been shocked by the images of disorder
beamed around the world -- looters roaming the debris-strewn
streets and thousands of people gathered in New Orleans waiting
for the authorities to provide food, water and other aid.
"Anarchy in the USA" declared Britain's best-selling
newspaper The Sun.
The pictures of the catastrophe -- which has killed
hundreds and possibly thousands -- have evoked memories of
crises in the world's poorest nations such as last year's
tsunami in Asia, which left more than 230,000 people dead or
missing.
But some view the response to those disasters more
favorably than the lawless aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
"I am absolutely disgusted. After the tsunami our people,
even the ones who lost everything, wanted to help the others
who were suffering," said Sajeewa Chinthaka, 36, as he watched
a cricket match in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
"Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now
with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the
civilized part of the world's population is."
"A modern metropolis sinking in water and into anarchy --
it is a really cruel spectacle for a champion of security like
Bush," France's left-leaning Liberation newspaper said.
"(Al Qaeda leader Osama) bin Laden, nice and dry in his
hideaway, must be killing himself laughing."
A female employee at a multinational firm in South Korea
said it may have been no accident the U.S. was hit. "Maybe it was punishment for what it did to Iraq, which has
a man-made disaster, not a natural disaster," said the woman,
who did not want to be named as she has an American manager."A lot of the people I work with think this way. We spoke
about it just the other day," she said.
Commentators noted the victims of the hurricane were
overwhelmingly African Americans, too poor to flee the region
as the hurricane loomed unlike some of their white neighbors.
New Orleans ranks fifth in the United States in terms of
African American population and 67 percent of the city's
residents are black.
"In one of the poorest states in the country, where black
people earn half as much as white people, this has taken on a
racial dimension," said a report in Britain's Guardian daily.
Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, in a veiled
criticism of U.S. political thought, said the disaster showed
the need for a strong state that could help poor people.
"You see in this example that even in the 21st century you
need the state, a good functioning state, and I hope that for
all these people, these poor people, that the Americans will do
their best," he told reporters at a meeting in
Newport, Wales.
"Maybe they just thought they could sit it out and
everything would be okay," he said.
"It's unbelievable though -- the TV images -- and your
heart goes out to them
Bush: Nobody Anticipated The Breach Of The Levees
I'm sick about the situation in New Orleans. We're America, for pity's sake!
When the third world countries laugh at us because we have no plan for
evacuating cities (Homeland Security?) , when others (Canada, Germany,
Netherlands) offer help when help is needed and we refuse WHILE PEOPLE
ARE DYING, what is our future?
The government of these United States created agencies to manage and
mitigate natural disasters like this, to guide and comfort those in
need, to seek out help from other nations, to work with the citizens
affected so that their lives might not be wiped out by a violent act of
man or nature. When those agencies, their expected response, that
fucking compact between the government and her people implied in the
creation of such agencies, absolutely and utterly breaks down, that is
political.
When a president, who should have been receiving reports hourly on the
situation in New Orleans, says no one could ever have imagined anything
like this, five days after the gates of hell opened on a city, that is
political.
When people call for help and cannot hear an answer, when they cry for
food and cannot be fed, when they starve and die in the streets of
America, America the beautiful, America the powerful and generous and
free, because we cannot find the boats fast enough nor the planes nor
the buses to save them, that is politcal. Our saying does not make it
so. It is.
Our response to the hurricane is already political. Government agencies
are being mobilized, tax dollars are being spent. Our fellow citizens
are suffering. Our leaders made us a promise when the took the oath of
their office. They held up their hands and they said, "I do solemnly
swear that I will support and defend the constitution of the United
States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true
faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely,
without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will
well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am
about to enter. So help me God."
When an American city descends into anarchy and chaos, when a man dies
in a lawn chair on a grassy median, garbage strewn at his feet, when
gunshots prevent rescuers from taking the hands of the helpless, that
is political. Our leaders take an oath to defened this country against
all enemies. Even if the enemy is the rising of the tide.
Call your congressional representatives.
Remind them of their responsibility to ensure Americans are safe. Tell
them you want this horrific situation remedied. Tell them about the
stories you've read here and elsewhere, the pictures you've seen. Tell
them what you want them to do.
I took a sampling of some editorials and only an excerpt is provided to ensure that
copyrights aren't violated.
But even before engineers repair the damaged levees and
begin the long process of pumping New Orleans out, the city's residents
deserve to know whether human actions or inactions bear a share of
responsibility for this catastrophe. There is strong evidence that they
do and that the entire Gulf area will be at risk of future Katrinas if
policies and priorities are not changed.
George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his
life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the
need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual
in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was
needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an
Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators
and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the
public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and
promised that everything would work out in the end.
Each time you hear a federal, state or city official
explain what he or she is doing to help New Orleans, consider the
opening paragraphs of a July 24 story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
"City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the
poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event
of a major hurricane, you're on your own."
--snip--
And yet apparently there was no emergency plan and no resources to evacuate "the carless, the homeless, the aged and infirm."
In this era when we are a nation at risk of terrorism and natural
disasters, we can only hope that what is happening in New Orleans is
not built into the fabric of our national homeland security policy. We
should provide security for everyone, including the poor, aged and
infirm.
Watch for a public uproar when statistics show how many
impoverished citizens of New Orleans were killed by Hurricane Katrina
because they couldn't afford to flee.
--snip--
"We knew the hurricane was going to hit New Orleans and Mississippi
hard. Why didn't we send buses in to get the poor people out before
disaster hit? We spend millions on recovery and rescue AFTERWARDS . . .
when we could have alleviated so much death BEFORE?"
Jack Cafferty on CNN
...I'm 62 and I remember the riots in Watts, I
remember the earth Quake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things.
I have never, ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as
this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these
people. Why can't sandwiches be dropped to those people that are in
that Super Dome down there...This is Thursday...This storm happened
five days ago. It's a disgrace and don't think the world isn't
watching..
LONDON (Reuters) - The world has watched amazed as the
planet's only superpower struggles with the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina, with some saying the chaos has exposed flaws
and deep divisions in American society.
