From Switzerland’s Le Temps:
“The sea walls would not have burst in New Orleans if the funds meant for strengthening them had not been cut to help the war effort in Iraq and the war on terror… And rescue work would have been more effective if a section of National Guard from the areas affected had not been sent to Baghdad and Kabul… And would George Bush have left his holiday ranch more quickly if the disaster had not first struck the most disadvantaged populations of the black south?”
More international headlines here and a powerful BBC editorial here.
Monday | September 5, 2005 at 9:50 pm
I suppose you read the rest of the editorial comments from the other international press agencies. If you didn’t here’s the BBC url where the above Le Temps quote came from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4211320.stm
Forgive me for being political, but these people make me sick. Now not only is the current administration to blame for international terrorism, but also to blame for natural disasters? God forbid previous administrations/presidents/local officials/the general populous/etc. shoulder the blame for not being prepared.
And the international press? Please, you know what, do these people not have editors? Neutral Switzerland? Don’t believe the hype. Hong Kong involved in humanitarian relief actions? Give me a break. Colombian environmentalists? WTF?!? And now Iran is lecturing us on having a “militarist mentality”? Did I miss a memo? Did we enter some sort of hyperspace time-continuum and I didn’t notice?
I think this is a good time to announce that I’m writing a book. I’m going to call it “America in the Eyes of the World: The Death of Common Sense”
Monday | September 5, 2005 at 10:20 pm
Dave, I think it has more to do with Bush’s firing his own Army Corp chief for trying to do something about the potential for diaster in Louisiana (1 Sept 05 issue of WSJ).
There’s a lot of reasons and a lot of blame to share. But when you have something like that to point to, yes, it becomes easy to blame a largely inept administration for some large measure of Katrina’s aftermath.
Like some of the survivors have been quoted as saying: the first two days were a natural disaster and the next four days were a man-made disaster…
Friday | September 9, 2005 at 4:46 pm
George W. Bush, the paragon of ‘assisted living’ from his earliest days, grandson of Prscott Bush, who had his six businesses seized by the Roosevelt Administration on Oct 20, 1942 under the ‘Trading with the Enemies Act.”. rejected for admission to University of Texas and whisked into Yale by his same grandfather being on the Yale Board of Trustees, plunked into the Air National Guard by his dad to avoid Vietnam, dowsing his brain in alcohol and cocaine (’Snow Prince’, they called him in his Yale frat…) until age 40 (he says…), stealer of two elections in a row (’backdoors’ in secret voting machine computer code…), essentially tells New Orleans survivors. “Let them eat spin…”, and is anyone really surprised? As Barbara Bush said of those crowded into the Astrodome, ” They’re underprivileged to begin with, so this is really working out well for them..” Still surprised? Why?