Hurricane Katrina: Blaming Bush
I see a lot of people playing the blame game here in the hurricane aftermath. People are blaming Bush for all kinds of things already. Many are saying that we are not getting them relief quick enough. They say that Bush rushed into Afghanistan and Iraq for oil, but he's taking his time with Hurricane Katrina as though we have no interests there.
I don't understand the "rushing into Afghanistan and Iraq" argument. We went into Afghanistan two months after 9/11. On top of that, we didn't go into Iraq until March of 2003....over a year and a half after 9/11. So no one "rushed" into the war.
On top of that, it's a lot easier to deploy troops and supplies to place that has things like electricity, functioning airports, clear roads. These are things that Iraq has and New Orleans DOES NOT. Not to mention that the wars did take months of planning (for deployment at least), while the hurricane is only days old.
As for the actual destruction, we need to remember two things:
1) The destruction spans 90,000 square miles (equivalent to over one and a half New York States!)
2) We've never dealt with anything so widespread before, bigger (in size) than many nuclear attacks.
So much was destroyed. Remember, no roads (debris and flooding), no electricity, airports that are only now starting to be able to receive supply flights. Does anyone seriously expect to be able to supply and/or rescue people from an area the size of a whole state in only three days? That's not practical, and blame is not fair.
This tragedy is very different from 9/11 because of how widespread it was. To compare the size, 9/11 was one city block, maybe two total if you add surrounding destruction. Hurricane Katrina was spread over a massive area. So you can't expect to have relief and all the problems solved within three days.
Things don't go perfect or smoothly and the first thing that people want to do is play the blame game. Who better to blame than George Bush, right? Granted, rescue efforts could be better, but we've never faced anything like this before, and Bush is not the man to blame for it.
The situation is horrible. But I think we need to fight our instincts to look for who to blame and concentrate on fixing the situation. I gave a similar argument to someone and his response was "Well who DO we blame then?" I snapped back at him "Stop blaming people and grab a ****ing shovel! Write a damn check! Standing there and crying won't do anything to help!"
The best thing for people to do is to take out your credit cards and call the American Red Cross at 1-800-HELP-NOW. Even $5 helps.
