Hurricane Katrina Left a Mark on George W. Bush’s Presidency
Reader Comments
Katrina
What I want to know is if the same people who condemned Bush so loudly for not dropping everything and immediately flying to New Orleans are condemning President Obama for not dropping everything and flying to Fort Hood.
Does the fact that Obama didn't do that ALSO PROVE that HE didn't care about what happened in FT HOOD??!! HMMMMMMM? Yeah, I didn't think so.
How Come?
How come no one here is pointing out the fact that Katrina hit more than one city. Every other metropolis affected was able to handle this situation through local and state governments. Why is it only New Orleans complaining about G.W. I am not a fan of his but we as a country need to stop blaming him for everything I have been through major hurricane's in my life (Hugo, Rita, & Now Ike) and never did anyone sit back and wait for the Government. There was a sense of community and people hgelping people. New Orleans is not only the community that was affected by Katrina, just the only one who can't do anything for themselves. And don't try and use that excuse that the levies broke there, Even people in Houston were warning the city councils about the weakening levies, but no they chose to use money for the city in other ways. This is not G.W. fault but an entire city that took this hurricane way to lightly before it ever even hit land.
Where were the Governer and Mayor
While many want to blame Bush, the fact o the matter is that evacuations, emergency plans, etc. are the responsibility of the governor and the mayor (Blanca and Nagin) who neglected to perform their duties. It is their responsibility to get the first responders moving and organized, especially when you have a hurricane that you know is coming. The fact of the matter is that the federal government is constitutionally prohibited from moving in without the state's permission (which took Blanca 3 days to finally allow federal agencies to deliver aid. This is also why we have National Guard (who acts under the governor's orders). New Orleans wasn't the only city hit by Katrina, it was bungled by an incompetent mayor who failed to act. It was a failure by the mayor and governor who, instead of acting promptly with emergency plans, just took a back seat and neglected their duties.
Look at any other natural disaster, the people who are there to evacuate, fight the fire, clean things up etc. are local fire, police, national guard and various other local first response agencies. FEMA was never intended as first response agency, that's why they train fire, police, and local governments on how respond, because they are the ones who are going to be there when it happens. Once a state of emergency is declared and the governor calls for federal help, that is when they come. To sit here and blame Bush for the failure of local leadership to perform their duties is a simple display of ignorance.
Katrina and Bush
I don't know why everyone keeps "blaming" Bush for the Katrina response. The initial blame should be placed on the people at the local and state levels. In every hurricane preparedness bulletin it states that one should have supplies and be prepared for 3 to 5 days without assistance after the storm. With a disaster of the scope of a Cat 4 hurricane that stretched so far along the coast it took a long time to mobilize relief. I was in Gulfport 6 hours before the storm made landfall and people were burning bonfires on the beach and I saw a total of 2 businesses that had boarded up. No one took the storm seriously. We asked a waitress when she planned to leave and her reply was "Why would I be leaving?" That business is now just a concrete pad. Some states and local governments did everything that they possibly could. The federal response was gotten there as quickly as it could also. Don't ask what your government can do for you, ask what you can do for yourself!
W
The arrogance of a man to seek the presidency with such limited ability and intelligence is mind boggling. The neocons found the clay they needed to form a mouthpiece for their twisted right-wing agenda.
Katrina debacle:
Most would agree this was ironically a defining moment for not only GWB but his bumbling administration as well. Who could ever forget the comments made by his mother while supposedly showing empathy for those many disheveled survivors of Katrina living under unbelievably harsh conditions in homeless shelters. According to GWB’s mother “these people were living in far better conditions (in the shelter) than those from which they came”. Being out of touch was something he obtained honestly and this much is apparent judging from the way he governed. There is no coming back from that egregious insensitive handling of a by and large poor people crisis. This would be among a long list of detestable failures that would plague the Bush administration and make it near impossible for his legacy to ever be anything more than a colossal (how not to govern) demonstration in executive mismanagement of the highest order. GWB wasn’t smart enough to govern so he relied entirely too much on closed circle consensus opinion which he would boast about being the “decider” on. I’ll always remember the pictures of dejected, melancholy and somewhat pathetic shell of a crumpled war-torn clump of a man. History will not be kind to him or his attack dog Dick Chaney.
Bush can’t see failure of Katrina response
It should be obvious to the American people that Bush failed relative to the Katrina response.
Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993
Bush and that airplane picture
There are some pictures one never forgets. The sailor kissing the nurse in NYC pictured by Life Magazine. The sneering smiles of the killers of Emmet Till standing on the courthouse steps after being found innocent of his murder. The naked little girl running down a road in Vietnam screaming tearfully with fighting going around her.
And President Bush sitting pensively looking out the airplane window at the watery grave that was most of New Orleans.
Personal Experience
I am a survivor of Katrina. I'm not a criminal, a former resident of the 9th ward. I'm just a person who lost their whole life's belongings to an act of nature. I live in a country where I thought I would be taken care of if a disaster ever occurred. I was wrong. I don't come from a slacking family. We work and pay taxes. We're upstanding citizens. But we were left out, literally, to dry by our government. The state government of Louisiana was extremely overwhelmed. It is ridiculous to say they didn't need the help of the federal government. If you did not experience Katrina you have no idea what was happening. It is the U.S. government's job to quickly aid their own people when they are in desperate need. The Bush adminiatration did not do this.
The Mayor? The Governor?
Yes, Katrina was a tragedy, but this was a localized disaster and the area has a mayor, city council, parish president, state disaster agencies and a governor. They failed to recognize the enormity of the situation and their lack of preparedness, so they didn't even know to ask for federal help. Blanco and Nagin should be strung up as the failures here. I think the shock of losing their political power base caused them to freeze in actually doing the job they campaigned for.
