Originally posted by karajorma
I don't care whether the criticism is legitimate or not. I just reread the thread and saw only 4 people make the claim that 3rd world nations have handled this situation better. Stealth, Bob, Deep Eyes and myself. Of those 4 I'm the only one who isn't american. So the term isn't applicable to this argument regardless of whether or not Shrike feels the four of us were talking a load of crap or not. Unless of course he's accusing the other 3 of being unamerican.
Let me turn the question on its head. Do you honestly believe that America has handled the situation better than a 3rd world nation would have? As the most powerful nation on Earth you would think that it should have been able to.
A given third world nation? Typhoons in Bangladesh can cause upwards of a hundred thousand deaths, and that's not a once-in-a-lifetime event like NO.
People keep going on about how third world countries perform better, but nobody's actually posted anything that shows they'd perform better at dealing with New Orleans, which is quite possibly the worst possible city in the entire US at dealing with a hurricane. The SE Asia tsunami is a red herring because it didn't lead to long term flooding. New Orleans is
still 60% flooded. How many third world cities of that size have been inundated with only a few days warning?
As I said before, this is not just a hurricane, it's also a flood. It's
definately not a Tsunami.
Who's bashing America? Certainly none of the people I've mentioned. Certainly not me. If I express concern with the way America is handling a situation I'm America bashing. Yet when Clinton was in power it was okay for everyone to constantly complain about the American government. Why is that? Why is it suddenly bad to say that the government of a country sucks now? Especially when said government has no problem with insulting the government of other countries like France.
The fact is that this "You hate America" crap is being used to stifle discussioons. Look at the way Shrike used it. To shut up 3 americans who disagreed with him!
The problem is not america bashing. The problem is people who love America so much that they think it's perfect and are unwilling to hear a single word said against it even when it's by other Americans. [/B]
For the record, I'm not an American. I have no 'fellow Americans'.
As for 'American bashing', how many threads come up on HLP criticising EU policies, or Chinese policies, or others? Certainly not more or even terribly comparable on an individual basis and quite possibly not even if you added all the US-critical threads and compared them to the rest of the world-critical threads. People here ***** and piss and moan over almost every stupid or silly thing to come out of the US but don't seem nearly so inclined to do the same to other nations.
Bush did less than the previous administration because he actually cut the funding to a project designed to fix them. Had that project not been cut the levees would have been strengthened and could have withstood a cat 4 like Katrina. So he definately did less.
But lets assume he didn't. What problem can any politician not blame on the previous administration? War in Iraq? Clinton's fault, Bush Snr's fault, Regan's fault all the way back to whoever put Saddam in charge and he can then blame the administrations before him.
The fact is that if there is a problem the politician in charge is responsible for fixing it. The only defence they have is if there wasn't time to fix it since they took over. If Bush wants to blame Clinton for the economy, or the state of the world that's one thing cause that sort of thing takes decades before you can rule out the effects of previous governments. With the levees though Bush had more than enough time to fix them. His government were told they needed to. They didn't. It's his fault. [/B]
As was posted above, there were no plans to upgrade the levees and such a plan would never have been completed in time for Katrina anyhow. The budget cuts only occured two years ago, and even if the funds had not been decreased it strikes me as exceptionally unlikely that in those two years the levees would have been sufficiently strengthened. The studies alone for a multi-billion dollar civil engineering project might not even have been done yet. These things take time.
Whoever is in charge takes the blame. It's that simple. If you're not willing to accept that then politicians can never do anything wrong cause they can always point to a previous administration and say "It's their fault". As I've already said if Clinton was in charge I'd have been just as scathing about him.[/B]
And what would this criticism accomplish? Needless criticism gets in the way of a rational investigation. I'm quite certain there's much more legitimate criticism you can level against Bush than not spending billions of dollars on a civil engineering project that may not have been needed (speaking hypothetically). If you're going to criticise Bush for not allocating funds to the levees, it is quite fair to criticise all the previous administrations who did the same.
Should the general hurricane-proofing of the gulf coast region have been a higher priority? Yes. Does this blame rest solely on Bush? Certainly not when previous administrations didn't do anything more. It's a continued long-term failure that hopefully will be corrected after this.
Hindsight is wonderful in that you can see where you went wrong, but nobody can do
everything.
I'm not going to get into the specifics of one particular hurricane because quite simply I lack the data. I posted the stuff about hurricane Gilbert as an example of a major city getting smacked by something every bit as bad as Hurricane Katrina and coming through it better. Relief Web was the best site I could find and that's still not enough for questions as specific as yours. I don't know of any site on the web which is. [/B]
The problem with this comparison is that the main damage to NO is the continued flooding. Until the levees broke New Orleans was seen as safe and while battered, pretty much intact. It was the flooding that well and truly screwed things over.
And yet again you seek to label anyone who disagrees with you. First it was the evil europeans and their anti-americanism and now it's the evil democrats and their desire to make Bush look bad.[/B]
And again, how often do we see threads criticising the actions of other nations on this forum? And ones with the same vehemence displayed towards many US actions? Unless you're claiming that the US alone does more stupid **** than the rest of the world combined (which, as much stupid **** as the US pulls I find difficult to believe) then yes, there's a bias.
Take a look at previous topics. Do Stealth, Bob and Deep Eyes look like dyed in the wool democrats out to score points off of Bush at every opportunity?
This is exactly what I meant about people sticking their heads in the sand. Just simply assume that any point of view that disagrees with your own comes from the other side so you can safely ignore it rather than considering it on it's own merits and perhaps realising that you might be wrong.[/B]
What have they actually said in defense of their claims? Nobody's sourced any third world countries that got a major city (10,000 people is certainly not major and the city in question was entirely evacuated) struck by a hurricane and then a flood and showed better relief efforts than the US. For all I know New Orleans is an unprecedented case for an industrialized country.
Have I not said that this was a colossal f**k up at all levels? What you're doing is trying to claim that the f**k up was only at the state level so that you can absolve the Federal government of all charges. As I've said before that just makes it more likely that this will happen again next time.[/B]
And again, where are the vocal calls from other states over the same response issues in NO? If the blame was mostly at the federal level then wouldn't all the affected states have been screaming?
I hear Bush this and Bush that, but the criticism of the state-level screwups have been far more muted, even though they're equally important in dealing with disaster relief and the go-to people for preparation. They didn't even follow their pre-organized plans for dealing with such an eventuality which may have directly led to the large number of people still in NO and the problems facing those remaining.
If you've been saying there's been mistakes on all levels then I'll withdraw my complaint. But people
are blaming Bush at near or total exclusion to the state and municipal authorities when said authorities are as important as the federal government. If you're going to play the blame-game, at least play it fairly and assing blame where to all the parties. People on all levels made mistakes.
Who's saying that it is?
Since when have the other 3 members who compared this to a 3rd world disaster ever said that America gets everything wrong. For that matter when have I?
As far as I can see you're putting those words into the mouth of anyone you disagree with in order to score points. [/B]
The moment I say there's a lot of anti-US *****ing here at HLP, I get *****ed at and called some kind of US superpatriot who sees nothing wrong with the US. Who's putting words in who's mouth now? Perhaps I just see unwarranted or excessive criticism on top of warranted. Yes, 'you' (speaking figuratively) don't like the US because of XYZ. I don't need to hear it every bloody thread that mentions the US like some people who will remain anonymous.
And I believe that will be that last of that out of me, unless someone wants to discuss hovercraft more. These silly political arguments take far too much time to write and take time away from much more important things in my life.
And Re: Hovercraft, I don't believe there is any large number of small hovercraft available. They're not exactly common compared to boats and their possible utility probably simply doesn't compare to that of a helicopter.
