My first and only post on Katrina
Our pal Dada Head makes an insightful observation…or not.Oh well – everything’s political. Or almost everything. And if it ends up being the case that Louisiana and Mississippi suffer because they don't have enough National Guardsmen on hand ... well, should that fact not be mentioned?
I suppose that depends upon whether or not the question that DH asks is pertinent to present reality. I suspect not, but AMERICAblog sees it differently.
The Red Cross has indicated its response will be the largest in its history. So how many National Guard and military troops will Bush send to help save these people? Well, in 1992 his father sent over 30,000 troops to Florida after Andrew, in addition to over 6,000 National Guard activated by the state.
According to today's, Louisiana has activated 3,500 National Guardsmen.
As the waters rise and people are trapped in their homes, think about someone's grandmother trapped in an attic waiting for her government to help her. George Bush's response? He spent yesterday talking politics, and today he's supposed to go to California.
Unless we see tens of thousands of troops activated to support this disaster recovery, the people who die over the next few days because there aren't enough troops are all on George Bush.
Is nothing off-limits for the anti-war Left? Apparently not. But surely they can’t all be too dim to realize that the peace-time, pre-election environment of 1992 is altogether incomparable to the war-time situation in which we now find ourselves. What’s more—and this may sound a little insensitive—there were clarion calls to evacuate New Orleans well in advance of Katrina’s land-fall. Do those who chose to remain bear no responsibility for that choice? Regardless, there are legions of volunteers and government workers that are currently providing assistance to those that are trapped, injured or otherwise inconvenienced. So critics such as these need to grow up and stop using the lame Sheehan-style rhetoric.
Update: renowned Lefty Katrina Vanden Heuvel, of The Nation, is shocked…SHOCKED!...that infamous Right-winger Rush Limbaugh would dare ‘politicize’ a tragedy by renaming the hurricane after her. Of course Ms./Mrs./? Vanden Heuval chose to take the high road.
It's so very easy and childish to personalize tragedy. (Did you hear the one about OxyContin's new tagline: 'What a Rush!'?) It is so cheap to politicize a natural disaster. (Did you see the headline about Louisiana's National Guard watching the destruction of their homeland from Iraq?) But let's try to empathize with those who are suffering through no fault of their own and think about how we can help them.
posted by Robert @ Tuesday, August 30, 2005
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