sishir: No doubt that is true - but again lets talk about foreknowledge, scale and capability. These are three things that differentiate any talk about tsunami response and the response to katrina. I certianly was not trying to imply that tsunami recovey was seamless. Katrina was not a sudden experience. It was forecasted. Preperations -both from the state, as weslinder has pointed out, and from the feds- was lacking given the data that indicated the potential problems. Both the state and the feds were well aware of the weakness of New Orleans, in particular. Contrast that to a no-warning earthquake. Katrina affected an extremely small area compared to the tsunami. Response should have been more effective simply based on the spatial scope the relief effort needed to encompass. Above all, the countries affected by the tsunami are not considered superpowers, and are not (relatively) even close to capability of the US to deal with these disasters financially, logistically, or environmentally. Nevertheless, one could argue that the US showed no effort that substantially demonstrated this capability. That is the real crux of this argument. The situation after Katrina, particularly in New Orleans should have NEVER been that bad. One could understand similar issues in small island nations such as sri lanka, the maldives, even larger countries like thailand or indonesia. But we are talking about the US, dealing with (in reality) one city - and failing miserably. That's shameful. It blows my mind. We can commit resources almost instantaneously, even more so after 9/11. But we did not. Not even for our own citizenry. In our own country.
No, history will not be kind to the Bush administration. -- [edit] I see rim, as usual, has it covered.
Overall I agree with you and agree that the US should've done a much better job. I just don't want to give the impression that the tsunami response was great. Things could've worked better and there is a lot to be learned from it. Also part of the ongoing failure of the tsunami response is that much of the money pledged to help with recovery hasn't been given.
How low can he go? WASHINGTON — Public approval of President Bush has dipped to a new low in the Associated Press-Ipsos poll, driven by dissatisfaction with his handling of the economy. A survey released Thursday showed 28 percent approve of the overall job Bush is doing. That was statistically tied with his previous low in the poll of 30 percent last month and in February. Only 27 percent are happy with his job on the economy, which threatens to enter a recession and which many national surveys show is voters' top worry. That was worse than his previous low of 29 percent approval for handling the economy set in February, and down 4 percentage points from last month. http://www.ap-ipsosresults.com/
