“We owe a debt of gratitude to Bush for how he dealt with 9/11,” Elizabeth Hasselbeck, Sheri Shephard said “People would respect Bush more if he admitted that he made a mistake on how Katrina was handled.”
Dealt with 9/11? How did he deal with 9/11, by going to war with people who had nothing to do with it? For claiming that people had bombs of mass destruction, uses it as an excuse when in fact they didn’t? Yes, 9/11 happened on Bush’s watch and he had no control over that happening, but damn it, it did! And ever since, we have been in a war costing the country billions and billions of dollars a month!
And Katrina, don’t even get me started on how bad that was handled! Bush didn’t even land during his initial helicopter ride over New Orleans. His first speech from there didn’t occur until WEEKS after the incident. People had to wait for at least 4 days to get food and water delivered to them. The work to rebuild the city of New Orleans by the government hasn’t really even started yet; it still looks like a third world country down there. The work that has been done there has been completed mostly by the residents. Yes, the rebuilding of the levee system has begun, but little else – such as schools, police and fire stations. Unfortunately, 705 people are still reported as missing and 275,000 homes were lost. Thousands of people are still living in trailers. 1,836 people died in this horrible storm. Bush claims in his speech on Monday that the government WAS NOT slow in reacting to the storm because they pulled off 30,000 from rooftops. That did not begin until 4 days AFTER the storm hit! If that’s not slow then I don’t know what is! He still can not own up to his mistakes now, 3 years later… 80 percent of New Orleans was under water, 80 percent!
If we can come up with $700 billion to bail out the banks and the auto industry, what about the economy of New Orleans? These people who are being bailed out have caused their own situations, not the people of New Orleans and Mississippi who were hurt in a natural disaster! Shouldn’t something be done to help these people?
2 comments:
Let me respectfully disagree 100% with what you have typed here and outline why I feel this way.
Lets start with 9/11. I feel he has kept us safe through his policies. For example one of his doctrines is a foreign policy that states the United States had the right to aggressively secure itself from countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups. Other countries like Spain do not have this aggressive policy in place and get attacked. Another policy that he has put in place is aggressive interrogation techniques by the intelligence community like waterboarding. In my opinion and many other opinions, these techniques put into place by the Bush administration (that Obama does not support)have let to the continued safety of the United States. CIA officials say the most effective use of waterboarding was in breaking Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, who ultimately took responsibility for the 9/11 attacks and other al Qaeda terror plots including the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. A senior CIA official says that it was only because of waterboarding that Mohammed talked.
I think Iraq and 9/11 are two different issues and should be kept separate. If Saddam Hussein hadn't violated the UN policy and refused to allow weapon inspectors in we may have never had to go in there and do something about that asshole. But lets remember CONGRESS voted for this. And the UN was behind it too. So going in wasn't just Bush's 'crazy not related to 9/11' idea. And I have to say he's just sticking to his foreign policy, which I personally am happy that it is aggressive and not passive. I don't want a president who's foreign policy is to just have "talks". Sorry.
Lets talk about Katrina. And lets also talk about all the greedy legislators who had the ability to pass laws and provide funding that would have prevented the levees from breaking. The reason New Orleans had the total devastation was because of congress and their failure to do something when they had the chance. Why is nobody blaming them? And they love to finger point the blame to the Bush Administration and conveniently forget this. Then you have an idiot mayor and local government of Louisiana who refuses to take responsibility. What about local blame and ownership of the responsibility? People blame Bush because it's easy. Because he's not popular in the mainstream media and because blaming someone else or themselves is just to painful. I think all these residents who decided stay behind after the buses left (or did leave but can't seem to move out a FEMA trailer years later) should take a good hard look inside before blaming Bush. Take a good hard look inside and see "what was my part?". If you always point the finger and find blame in others and stay in that victim role, I can only imagine it makes it harder to ever break free from the circumstances you don't want to be in.
And the economy. We aren't coming up with $700 trillion. We're borrowing it from China, printing more money from the Federal Reserves, etc. I think something should be done to help these people that are in need from the hurricane Katrina, but Habitat for Humanity is doing a much better job than our ridiculous embarrassment of a local government (Louisiana). Lets give them (H4H) the money and have them rebuild the city. Because who ever is running the show down there (democrats) are doing a terrible job. And it's not Bush's fault, he's already thrown billions of dollars and FEMA trailers at the problem. The solution comes to getting the governmental bureaucracy bullshit out of it; and remembering CONGRESS is to blame for all of the problems that involve legislation (hello) lets vote them out people. Get some libertarians in there.
If we could all become a little more critical in our thinking (and critical is an attempt to get to the truth, not to judge), we would be so much better for it. Unfortunately, a true critical eye doesn't just expose the flaws in others and their ideas, but also in our own.
It is tough for me to understand why we feel we have to defend our thoughts and not analyze them. If we have it all figured out, then what's the point. And if we don't, why can't we learn to see the multifaceted issues of this world for what they are - complex and layered and not so black and white.
Yes, Bush should have addressed the issues in New Orleans with a greater urgency. Yes, the local government was not being proactive. Yes, we choose to judge those who are hurting as a result of the disaster (after all, many of them were poor and we those who aren't poor use monetary status to judge others) which leads to complacency. Yes, H4H does do a better job than the government, but it is dependent on the good will and generosity of people who - based on the fact it isn't all fixed up yet - may fall short of what is needed.
There isn't ever any one person to blame. And while we are all busy blaming others, we are forgetting what is really important, figuring out why it happened and correcting errors so that it doesn't have to happen again.
As long as we look to man and his institutions for answers, we will always fall short. As we set up systems to judge others, to seperate and catagorize people, we will create as many problems as we attempt to correct.
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