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Waiting for a Leader

by Open-Publishing - Thursday 1 September 2005
6 comments

Edito Governments Catastrophes USA

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.

We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care. Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.

Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president’s demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.

While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast’s most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans’s levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane’s surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area’s flood protection?

It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won’t acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/opinion/01thu1.html

Forum posts

  • When will people realize that Bush is not totally stupid and incompetent but that he is INTENTIONALLY trying to SABOTAGE the US and the world for that matter?

    In the book, The Heat is On (1997), the author Gelbspan says:

    “Under the pressure of intensifying instabilities, climate changes and their feedback effects could very likely overwhelm the foundations of democracy. They could well mean a return to the age-old plague of TOTALITARIANISM….One of the first causalities of a succession of ecological disasters would likely be individual liberties and governmental democracy and their replacement by a permanent state of eco-emergency.”

    Bush wants chaos and instability. Not only from the effects of global warming and other bad environmental policies, but also from the effects of economic instability (endlessly rising oil prices, huge budget deficits, encouraging shipping jobs overseas, trying to destroy social security, etc.). I believe he strives for the instability created by endless war (overextending the military, creating more outrage from torture/humiliation, no National Guard to protect the Homeland, allowing known caches of enemy weapons to be stolen). I believe he strives for the instability due to the threat of ill health (inadequate vaccination supply, millions without insurance, pollution of food and water, potential widespread infectious disease after flooding events).

    I think Bush LOVES the chaos he has INTENTIONALLY created and that is why he is always smirking. Things are going exactly as planned!! I believe he wants all of this chaos to lead to a totalitarian government—with him at the helm. [Maybe then he wouldn’t feel so inadequate]

  • You New York Times clowns sat mute while Bush and his evil cabal put their nefarious schemes in motion, and you New York Times clowns even lent your support for that monster’s "War on Terror," which we now know is really a "War of Terror," and now you New York Times clowns have the unmitigated gall to cry out for "a leader"?! You are a pathetic and dangerous bunch, no better, in fact, worse than the monster who now squats in the White House. A pox on all of you New York Times clowns.

    • The hurricane and devastation along the Gulf was a real gift for the neocons, as they can test-run their Martial Law, coming soon to a neighborhood near you, and eventually into your own neighborhood. The guy and his cronies are police state fascists. Impeach his sorry arse!

    • Sadly I agree with you.

      Leader means Fuehrer in German. We had really bad experience with that.

      The world needs common sense!

    • "George W. Bush gave one of his worst speeches yesterday"...now that is something, Dumbya has outdone himself....must be the coke, tranqs, and the booze combo..he really ought to lay off, especially with Chenyburton laid up nursing his bum-ticker.....I would have said heart, but I really do not think he has one.

    • I agree 100 percent this scum in the white house are a bunch of neo fascist who want martial law on the rest of this country. all of them should be hung publicly TODAY.