The Blame Belongs to Bush
By Valerie Morris Dodson
Dr. Martin Luther King emphasized 'A time comes when silence is betrayal'. Who among the democratic or independent parties is willing to risk being labeled unpatriotic by the republicans? Or a member of the Republican party could actually risk nasty looks from his fellow party members and stand up and start demanding answers to the questions the residents of New Orleans, Biloxi, and other small towns across the Gulf Coast have a right to. Not to speak out on what the response from the Government has been to Hurricane Katrina would be the real "unpatriotic" thing to do.
Politicians everywhere are running around and pointing fingers about who should have done what at what time to get food and water to the victims of Katrina. Instead they should right now be focusing on the cleanup and getting aid to these people as soon as possible. The ringleaders of the finger pointing seem to be Bush and Cheney. The news that the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, has been pulled off operations in the Gulf Coast under fire over the relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina does not even begin to make amends for the government’s slow response time. Mr. Brown was not fired at the time he was ordered back to Washington and replaced by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen. At the time of the writing of this article he has still not been fired as the head of FEMA. Mike Brown says he doesn't know why he was removed from on site command of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, which could rival quotes made by G. W. Bush as some of the dumbest quotes made in the whole political spectrum. I wanted to crawl under a rock for shame of what the Presidency and Government of this country has become when I heard President Bush, on national TV, tell the head of FEMA, Mike Brown, he was "doing a good job", three days before he was recalled back to Washington D.C.
For a full week after the crisis hit in the storm ravaged areas President Bush did not seem to have a sense of shock that people in New Orleans were starving. No sense of urgency to get the buses there to evacuate people from the city, and to get medical care for the sick and elderly so they wouldn't die, and to get the convention center and the Superdome under control so that people wouldn't be raped, and murdered. I wonder if he really understands his own concept of "Shock and Awe" that was used in the "War On Terror" in Iraq. This writer for one, has been in "Shock and Awe" for the last week and half. In shock over the lack of coordination in the Department of Homeland Security, and in awe of the stupidity of the suggestion that looters be shot on sight when they are starving and the government has not brought them food and water. I ask you dear reader to ask yourself is it really worth shooting a young black kid over a TV that's been sitting in water for three days anyway? Haven't we already lost enough life due to ignorance?
What I would like to hear is that President Bush has within himself some sense of a caring human being. What I want to hear is that he got on the phone when he found out people were starving at the Superdome and told someone he didn't care how it got done, but if every person at the Superdome didn't have food and water in 24 hours then that person would be fired and he would find someone who could do the job. But no it took the Mayor of New Orleans to get on TV and tell the American people no one is here to help us, and we are starving, and where is all the help from FEMA, before the President decided he needed to do more than just a fly by. Could he sleep at night when he knew old people in wheelchairs were dead on the side of the street in New Orleans, because he didn't do all that he could do to get help there promptly? This is a quote from President G. W. Bush, "I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch." I would like to hear him apologize to the American people for letting this happen on his watch. After all FEMA is part of his administration. I would like to hear him on TV telling us that heads will roll over the total failure of our government in this crisis. Many officials, local, state and federal, made very serious mistakes. Ultimately, the blame belongs to Bush. He is responsible for the safety of our country and the lives of thousands of people were in harm’s way. There is no way to argue away this fact. Bush's failure to manage government and failure to hire competent people as leaders appears to have been a large factor in the lack of control that followed Hurricane Katrina.
After this crisis I don't see how the American people can possibly believe the Administration of G. W. Bush could possibly protect us from another terror attack. Not only do the people of America now know that it can't, but so does every terrorist around the world. This federal failure to respond was televised, for all the world to see, why? Because FEMA is managed by the Department of Homeland Security. You know the same guys that are supposed to be protecting us from the terrorists. This is a dangerous time for America. Now would be the time for terrorists to strike.
Also, FEMA has reportedly issued an order "that media outlets refrain from sharing photos of the dead" in New Orleans. Sounds just like that order not to show flag draped coffins coming back from Iraq. Could it be the Bush Administration doesn't want us to know how many people have really been killed in this tragedy? Challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration agreed on Saturday not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims. The AP picture of a dead body in a wheelchair, wrapped in blankets and resting near a wall, will be one of the most-remembered images of the tragedy.
For the first time since the 9/11 terror attacks, a majority of Americans (56%) say it is more important for the president to focus on domestic policy than the war on terrorism. Now is a good time to picket the White House. I think this would be a good move. Everyone hold up a sign saying the President should resign over the mess that the government has become over Hurricane Katrina. We also need signs for Cheney with his most recent lovable quote "I think we are in fact on our way to getting on top of the whole Katrina exercise." Let's don't forget a sign for Barbara Bush too with her most recent quote "so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them". The fact that they have a cot to sleep on, food, water, medicine, and police protection isn't what most of these people would call utopia.
The issue of race is of great importance in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The fact that the great majority of the forgotten, and displaced in New Orleans are poor black people will have a profound effect on race relations in this country for years to come. The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 6-7, 2005 among 1,000 Americans, found that the hurricane had a large psychological impact on the public, which I personally would compare to the 9/11 attacks. Of those polled 58% say they have felt depressed because of what's happened in areas like New Orleans. This is only surpassed by the 71% that reported depression in a survey taken in the month after the 9/11 attacks. The study found that there was a substantial racial division in reactions to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. As many as 70% of African Americans that were polled said they felt anger, while only 46% of whites said they felt anger at the delay in aid to hurricane victims. The delay in aid to the poor and in need in New Orleans in the wake of the hurricane could possibly have set this country's race relations back at least 40 years.
Many people are angry and asking questions whether the government really supports their views and personal interest. Rapper Kanye West, went off-script to say that " George Bush doesn't care about black people" during an appearance in last Friday's NBC telethon for Hurricane Katrina victims. He also added that America was set up "to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible." All the ingredients were available for a race riot after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The well off and middle class, mainly white people who could afford the price of gasoline, high-tailed it out of town, the poor, the majority of whom are black, were left abandoned, the streets taken over by foul flood water, dead bodies, and armed looters all while the government sat unresponsive and society as a whole was left angry and waiting for someone to rescue the abandoned. Take a look at the figures that were reported by the L.A. Times, that presents the poverty rates for states with rates greater than the average for U.S.
City---------------------Poverty Rate (%)
New Orleans----------------27.9
Birmingham, Ala-----------24.7
These figures are from the year 2000, when the U.S. average was 12.4%. The average now is 12.7%, which means that numbers for New Orleans should be even higher. Approximately 100,000 of the city's poorest black people do not have private transportation. They rely on public transportation. I have seen pictures on the internet of a parking lot full of empty school buses completely under water in New Orleans. There must have been at least 30-40 empty school buses. I would like to know why the Mayor of New Orleans or the Governor of Louisiana did not send these buses on August 27Th and 28Th to help those who could not afford to get out.
The buses bare witness to the fact that more should have been done before things declined to the point dead people were left floating in the streets. This week, the 2005 UN Human Development Report was released. Since 2000, the U.S.A. went from 3rd place down to 10Th place on the human development index. America has always set the example for the rest of the world. I wonder if poor and underprivileged people will still want to come to this country now that the world has seen how we treat our own less fortunate. And for those of you that say welfare breed incompetence and dependency I have a message for you. It does. Just look at the character of corporations like Enron, Tyco and Health South that line up at the federal feeding trough every year for their tax cuts and tax breaks while they steal old people's retirement accounts.
It has been four years since this country started the hunt for weapons of mass destruction (WMD). It did not find them in Iraq because they had no WMD. We should have been looking here in the United States. As Hurricane Katrina has demonstrated, there is plenty of destruction right here at home. This is another shining example of the failure of the Department of Homeland Security and the Bush Administration. The dirty secret in America right now is that maybe just maybe if he had our National Guard at home, protecting the homeland like they signed up to do, the hurricane relief effort would not have taken so long.
People if you are not outraged and you haven't written a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, or your mayor, or the Governor, or your Congressman then pinch yourself and check if you’re still breathing. Better yet check and see if you still have a heart to feel with and a brain to think with.
I leave you two quotes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt who is one of the greatest presidents in American History. "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little." and "True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."
Submitted by Valerie Morris Dodson
09/15/2005
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