on the tsunami

[nadinbrzezinski]

letter to congress critter

Dear Congresswoman,

In the course of the years I worked as a medic in the city of Tijuana. Part of my job, among the many hats I wore, was disaster management. So you may say I have an idea of the costs involved.

Hence why when our President said we are only giving 15 million? Now it is up to oh 350 million that I will remind you we have been shamed into giving. I was a tad shocked. Not only that but knowing US traditions when there are disasters around the world I was baffled, at the lack of response from our President. I must ask, did he have another pet goat moment?

Still lets look at the hard numbers. Immediate casualties, they are going to get all the way to 250,000. Why am I saying this? Well, they have not started looking for bodies in some areas yet, and once they do they will find them and casualties will continue to rise from the current number at 150,000. In the end we will never know the actual number, as many were swept to sea. Yes, you read right I did write a quarter of a million dead in the immediate event. Things though will get hairy and most disaster managers are trained to look at medium to long term. With disease, starvation and exposure, over the course of the next year I will not be too shocked to hear that a million people have perished and another ten million were or are currently displaced. By the way, I will go look for that news in reliable news media, and the US News Media is not it. As usual they were way behind the power curve and when they finally started to cover it, well the slant made me gag. You may have caught the hysterics from the Right Wing Echo Machine when President Clinton gave his opinion to Channel 4, BBC. It was not about the disaster but how we can bash Clinton again. By the way, who cares about Clinton? Oh yes he did tell the truth, somebody has to take charge and alas we have not ... sorry, I knew there was a reason for the hysterics ... politics trumps everything for the so called moral majority I guess ... and the world be damned.

Economic cost will quickly approach a trillion USD with the amount of infrastructure and housing destroyed. This is why a flustered UN worker said that the richest countries were a tad stingy, and yes he actually meant us. Oh and this amount of economic destruction will also affect us... I wonder how many sweat shots for Nike were destroyed, for instance.

So what could we have done?

1. Order US Military assets to provide logistical support to move relief workers ... we have done this in the past.

2. We do have water purification reserve units, and trust me their presence on the ground will be a PR boost for us, and we need it.

3. Taking a leadership role, though that is far over. Others have taken that role for obvious reasons. The old saying applies, command belongs to those who exercise it.

4. Remember what we have pledged so far buys breakfast in Baghdad for one day...

Must of this is water under the bridge, and though the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Bohhome Richard are being redirected to the area, given that those orders were giving 72 hours after the primary event, and after we were shamed into it, those are a tad too late ... in the world of PR we lost a golden opportunity.

Problem is, our fearless leader hates international institutions and we know the Geneva Convention is obsolete (words from the man to be confirmed Attorney General, but that is another matter entirely) ... hence this go at it alone policy is going to continue to hurt us. The world will not soon forget that after September 11 we were all Americans, but when the chips were down with the largest natural disaster in modern history, we sat tumbling out thumbs at the world. We may choose to forget and in fact I guarantee the American people will forget, but after all Americans have no historical memory, but the world has one. They are not going to forget it anytime soon. In fact in some of those areas this will be spoken off in tales five and ten generations down the line.

With no further,

XXXXX

PS Happy new Year, given who will be inaugurated on the 20th, I hold no hope of a better year, by the way.

[flordehinojos]

1. bush couldn't have sent his brother with the promise of 15 or 35 millions.

That would have been okay for Colin Powell...but now that his brother is hitching along for the ride ..... well, you know, he's got to put him in good standing...it is not about the disaster, the victims, or the devastated region. it is about the bushes, the bushes, the bushes!

[camby]

2. You're right, * shrugged

Bush's initial reaction was one of almost indifference. $15MM is nothing to the U.S., just about on a par with Bush's initial reaction - didn't he say something about "responding appropriately"? Jeez. But maybe he was thinking about those 200,000 unborn babies who die from abortion each year, and how unjust it is that we aren't mourning them instead (this was actually a strand I picked up on the freeper website).

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. the problem is... many people cannot conceive

of the consequence of this. For the freepers who read this board, I will explain it in terms they may get it... Phuket Bay IS a US Navy R&R station, that is gone. So our personnel in that area has nowhere to go... that alone will cost money.

Oh and those Nike shoes you love to wear, most are made in the area devastated by the tsunami, in fact they are probably under water. So do not expect Nike to have a good year or for you to find your Air Jordans at a good price.

It is just that freepers really do not care about the people who have died (and in some ways those are the lucky ones), or about the survivors. they are in a new kind of hell, and many will die from diarrheic diseases, and upper tract respiratory infections. For the freepers, yes this means that when Nike goes back and rebuilds some of their sweatshops they may actually have a problem finding healthy employees in sufficient numbers.

For bush, well another sign that Armagedon is here I guess, never mind I can explain with science what happened and why... and teh periodicity of these things... but he cares not for science, or for our image around the world. After all, who cares he is about to go to his maker when he gets called during the rapture... so he truly does not give a shit.