Besides, how were Federal officials expected to know how bad it was going to be? The people that run this country of ours can't be expected to do things like pay attention to the Weather Channel, CNN, Fox News, or any of a hundred other news outlets that were screaming the day before the storm hit that Katrina had become a category five hurricane with 175 mph winds, that it was aimed square at New Orleans, and that the city could well vanish in the next 24 hours.
Our government officials were much too busy protecting us from terrorists to worry about some silly natural disaster that was fully expected to wipe entire communities from the face of the Earth, potentially kill thousands of people, and destroy the nation's energy delivery infrastructure. I mean, suppose such a distraction had caused someone to miss an important Al Qaeda videotape airing repeatedly on Al-Jazeera TV? What then? Catch the tape in a rerun later in the day?
And suppose someone had caught a report about Katrina, and known that a massive hurricane was about to strike the United States within the next 24 hours. What then? Was someone in charge suppose to remember what Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew did a few years ago, and recall the additional pain and suffering caused by slow government responses back then? Should someone had taken note of all this, and maybe exercised a little initiative by organizing a relief effort ahead of time that could have been in place and ready to go first thing Tuesday morning?
And then after the disaster, all these people wanted someone to swoop in and save their lives and the lives of their family members. How selfish and inconsiderate is that!?!? Obviously these ordinary citizens are totally oblivious to the fact that requests must go through official channels, regardless of the dramatic live action shots of people screaming and waving their arms on their rooftops. Forms must be filled out in triplicate, and the utmost care exercised that someone doesn't confuse the goldenrod copy with the yellow one. Otherwise things will have to be refiled under penalty of law, and could someone PLEASE turn down the TV? Hey, does that helicopter pilot have permission to be saving people's lives?
And how dare all these people complain? Why did they stay behind in the first place? After all, a mandatory evacuation order was issued. Never mind that many of these people are too poor to afford cars of their own. What was the government supposed to do? Furnish them with buses that would enable them to get to safety? Don't be ridiculous.
After all, many of their neighbors to seek shelter at the Superdome. So what if the place turned into a lawless cesspool of human waste? Just because the Superdome was expected to house tens of thousands of evacuees during a disaster that everyone agreed was going to happen sooner or later is no reason to think that the facility would have been equipped with a generator big enough to not only power the lights but to also provide air circulation. Oh, and what about the water situation? Why, these taxpayers had the audacity to expect an adequate supply of running water to be able to flush the damn toilets. So what if the if the people would end up slipping on and falling into one another's bodily wastes? What's wrong with that?
What else would these greedy citizens have asked for? Adequate personnel in the building to maintain some semblance of law and order? Don't be ridiculous. The government can't be expected to waste its time on something like that. Not when we're busy spreading the joys of freedom and democracy in Iraq.
Besides, most of the people suffering are black, so it's not like they voted Bush in the first place.
0 thoughtful ramblings:
Post a Comment