Katrina - An Overseas Perspective
So here we are in Bonaire, and, go figure, Katrina is on their minds here as well. Cable TV brings CNN, BBC, Dutch and German television into most homes on the island, and many have been closely following all of them.
Frankly, the people here are completely confused. The Dutch offered help immediately, and it was rebuffed. The Dutch offered help 10 years ago after the first series of studies that showed that New Orleans was SO in danger. The people here are amazed at the finger pointing between state, local and federal governments, and the fact that it's STILL so completely messed up there, and rather than FIX IT, the politicians are screeching at each other, having stupid photo ops, and whining.
Government has ONE function - to do the bidding of the people who provide consent for its existence. The government is here to take CARE of the people. Why else would we give it so much money in taxes? Why else would we allow it to do things on our behalf? The American people AND America's politicians forget that government is OUR servant, not vice versa. Those who COULD not help themselves were left to die. There is no excuse for that, either in my eyes or in the eyes of the people here. No amount of "it wasn't MY responsibility" will change that fact, either.
Filling the agency charged with disaster management with political cronies with NO experience is something that happened in Soviet Russia, not in the United State of America. A municipality that stuffed its poorest and most desperate into the Astrodome, then marveled because it ran out of supplies and services, rather than bussing them out when everyone else evacuated is something that happens in "other places." A governor who sits there whining about other people's failings rather than doing anything as simple as calling out the National Guard happens in banana republics. If WE as Americans can't understand how this could happen, imagine the bafflement of the overseas people?
More later, as I try to fathom how some Americans who never had to worry a day in their lives where their next meal is coming from, can possibly say the poor in the Gulf "deserved" what they got for "not leaving."