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 Katrina: No unity as with 9/11 |
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| Location: South Africa » Johannesburg |
Another thought provoking article on the recent disaster...
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Katrina: No unity as with 9/11
09/09/2005 14:44 - (SA)
Washington - The extraordinary showing of national and political unity
displayed after the trauma of September 11 2001, is missing now that
Hurricane Katrina and her deadly winds have subsided and left behind an
earthly disaster as catastrophic as the terror attacks themselves.
Finger pointing and blame games have replaced the images of stunned
Americans rallying around President George W Bush and of members of
Congress.
The two events are similar in terms of the amount of devastation
wrought: possibly thousands of deaths, billions of dollars in
structural damage and many, many lives turned upside down.
No tangible enemy
But it's the differences, observers say, that explain why much of the
public and some lawmakers rushed to criticise Bush's response to
Katrina and the flooding and subsequent evacuation of flooded New
Orleans.
Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Centre for the People &
the Press, says the post-9/11 sense of unity was mostly a response to
Americans feeling attacked by an external enemy.
"The biggest difference here," he said, "is we don't have an enemy to focus our anger on."
Daniel Laufer, who studies public responses to crises, said the desire
to place blame is natural, but it's harder for people to scapegoat a
faceless intangible like Mother Nature as opposed to a real person like
Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the September 11 attacks.
Bush's ratings dropped significantly
Two-thirds of the public, according to the latest Pew poll, and
lawmakers of both parties blame Bush, who is one face of a federal
government they say was too slow to respond. Another face is Michael
Brown, the nation's disaster relief director who some lawmakers say
should resign or be fired.
In turn, the government has blamed both state and local officials.
In contrast, Bush's approval ratings shot up past 90% in the weeks after the terrorist attacks.
After 9/11, "there was a surge in patriotic feeling which had to do
with being in a common boat," says political psychologist Stanley
Renshon. While Hurricane Katrina horrified everyone, it directly
damaged a particular region and not the nation as a whole.
"When there's so many cooks working the stew, it's hard to know who put in the vinegar," said Renshon.
Leaders agree on spending
Four years ago, the September 11 attacks buoyed Bush and his leadership
credentials and helped him win a second term three years later. The
attacks on New York and Washington, which killed almost 3 000 people,
united the political parties behind a promise to protect the country
from whatever terror was to come next.
Democrats and Republicans worked together to create the department of
homeland security and put it in charge of dealing with natural
disasters and terror attacks. They approved billions of dollars in
post-9/11 spending and agreed on major anti-terrorism legislation.
That consensus eventually dissipated after the invasion of Iraq and as
questions grew about whether the federal government could have done
more to head off the attacks.
In Katrina's wake, about all the nation's political leaders have agreed
on so far is to approve the new spending, more than $62bn so far,
needed to help the disaster-stricken communities along the Gulf Coast.
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