ACCIDENTS happen; and natural disasters are part of this earth’s make up. If you build villages next to Mt. Vesuvius, you cannot complain about them being obliterated when the mountain unleashes its fury. After all, the mountain has been doing it since the year 1700 BC, which is about sixteen centuries before it took out Pompeii. Similarly, if you build New Orleans in a literal bowl under sea level, you will expect it to flood at any given time.
Air accidents are rare in relation to other modes of transport. But when you get five crashes in a month and the sixth into September, you begin to wonder. What is going on? Why are they dropping with such frequency? These are legitimate questions much as the “delay” in federal response to Katrina is a valid issue to be raised.
But blaming Boeing for the crashes is like blaming Bush for the disaster. Boeing built those planes that have given uninterrupted safe service for more than two decades, but Boeing, much as it tries, cannot control local service and international standards. The same goes for the president. If the federal government in its sprawling madness failed somewhere, it should be investigated and the errors cleared.
We also cannot deny that there are class and race issues in the United States. But one positive thing about natural disasters is that they unite humanity rather than divide it. Besides, the president is from the South and New Orleans is but a few hundred miles from his home state of Texas. If there is a fault, it is that of his advisors who, for some reason or another, did not put him in the picture. What they thought was just another hurricane in a busy season, turned out to be the big one. I would question those and ask the president to take action.
Politics is a dirty game, and there are many who would stop at nothing to score a point or two. Humanity has scored major advances in science and mechanical progress. But we have yet to master time. We cannot make time play to our tune: it is basically deaf. Hence, it does take time to pluck survivors one by one from rooftops. As for putting more troops in the stricken city earlier than happened, I simply say that no one could believe that this unfortunate city would turn on itself and show that not all the bad people did drown. As a species, our façade looks nice and shiny, but we are rotten to the core when it comes to greed and madness.
Speaking of the blame game, I am surprised that Al-Qaeda did not claim responsibility yet. Perhaps they are working on their next award-winning video to announce this to the world but are having trouble finding a weatherman to dress in their garb and teach him to parrot their script.
If you think this is a joke, think again. Nothing is beyond them. But one must feel for the unfortunate scriptwriter on this one.
Meanwhile, we wish New Orleans the best and do get well soon.
