Hook Dem
09-29-2005, 04:04 PM
This from the Canadian Press, which apparently, is a bit more
objective than our own press and politicians.
George Bush, the man
David Warren.The Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, September 11, 2005
There's plenty wrong with America, since you asked. I'm
tempted to say that the only difference from Canada is that they
have a few things right. That would be unfair, of course -- I am
often pleased to discover things we still get right.
But one of them would not be disaster preparation. If
something happened up here, on the scale of Katrina, we wouldn't
even have the resources to arrive late. We would be waiting for
the Americans to come save us, the same way the government in
Louisiana just waved and pointed at Washington, D.C. The theory
being that, when you're in real trouble, that's where the adults
live.
And that isn't an exaggeration. Almost everything that has
worked in the recovery operation along the U.S. Gulf Coast has
been military and National Guard. Within a few days, under
several commands, finally consolidated under the remarkable
Lt.-Gen. Russell Honore, it was once again the U.S. military
efficiently cobbling together a recovery operation on a scale
beyond the capacity of any other earthly institution.
We hardly have a military up here. We have elected one
feckless government after another that has cut corners until
there is nothing substantial left. We don't have the ability even
to transport and equip our few soldiers. Should disaster strike
at home, on a big scale, we become a Third World country. At
which point, our national smugness is of no avail.
From Democrats and the American Left -- the U.S. equivalent to
the people who run Canada -- we are still hearing that the
disaster in New Orleans showed that a heartless, white Republican
America had abandoned its underclass.
This is garbage. The great majority of those not evacuated
lived in assisted housing and receive food stamps, prescription
medicine and government support through many other programs. Many
have, all their lives, expected someone to lift them to safety,
without input from themselves. And the demagogic mayor they
elected left, quite literally, hundreds of transit and school
buses that could have driven them out of town parked in rows, to
be lost in the flood.
Yes, that was insensitive. But it is also the truth; and
sooner or later we must acknowledge that welfare dependency
creates exactly the sort of haplessness and social degeneration
we saw on display, as the floodwaters rose. Many suffered
terribly, and many died, and one's heart goes out. But already
the survivors are being put up in new accommodations, and their
various entitlements have been directed to new locations.
The scale of private charity has also been unprecedented.
There are yet no statistics, but I'll wager the most generous
state in the union will prove to have been arch-Republican Texas
and that, nationally, contributions in cash and kind are coming
disproportionately from people who vote Republican. For the world
divides into "the mouths" and "the wallets."
The Bush-bashing, both down there and up here, has so far lost
touch with reality, as to raise questions about the bashers'
state of mind.
Consult any authoritative source on how government works in
the United States and you will learn that the U.S. federal
government's legal, constitutional, and institutional
responsibility for first response to Katrina, as to any natural
disaster, was zero.
Notwithstanding, President Bush took the prescient step of
declaring a disaster, in order to begin deploying FEMA and other
federal assets, two full days in advance of the storm fall. In
the little time since, he has managed to co-ordinate an immense
recovery operation -- the largest in human history -- without
invoking martial powers. He has been sufficiently presidential to
respond, not even once, to the extraordinarily mendacious and
childish blame-throwing.
One thinks of Kipling's poem If, which I learned to recite as
a lad, and mention now in the full knowledge that it drives
postmodern leftoids and gliberals to apoplexy -- as anything that
is good, beautiful, or true:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise .
Unlike his critics, Bush is a man, in the full sense presented
by these verses. A fallible man, like all the rest, but a man.
objective than our own press and politicians.
George Bush, the man
David Warren.The Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, September 11, 2005
There's plenty wrong with America, since you asked. I'm
tempted to say that the only difference from Canada is that they
have a few things right. That would be unfair, of course -- I am
often pleased to discover things we still get right.
But one of them would not be disaster preparation. If
something happened up here, on the scale of Katrina, we wouldn't
even have the resources to arrive late. We would be waiting for
the Americans to come save us, the same way the government in
Louisiana just waved and pointed at Washington, D.C. The theory
being that, when you're in real trouble, that's where the adults
live.
And that isn't an exaggeration. Almost everything that has
worked in the recovery operation along the U.S. Gulf Coast has
been military and National Guard. Within a few days, under
several commands, finally consolidated under the remarkable
Lt.-Gen. Russell Honore, it was once again the U.S. military
efficiently cobbling together a recovery operation on a scale
beyond the capacity of any other earthly institution.
We hardly have a military up here. We have elected one
feckless government after another that has cut corners until
there is nothing substantial left. We don't have the ability even
to transport and equip our few soldiers. Should disaster strike
at home, on a big scale, we become a Third World country. At
which point, our national smugness is of no avail.
From Democrats and the American Left -- the U.S. equivalent to
the people who run Canada -- we are still hearing that the
disaster in New Orleans showed that a heartless, white Republican
America had abandoned its underclass.
This is garbage. The great majority of those not evacuated
lived in assisted housing and receive food stamps, prescription
medicine and government support through many other programs. Many
have, all their lives, expected someone to lift them to safety,
without input from themselves. And the demagogic mayor they
elected left, quite literally, hundreds of transit and school
buses that could have driven them out of town parked in rows, to
be lost in the flood.
Yes, that was insensitive. But it is also the truth; and
sooner or later we must acknowledge that welfare dependency
creates exactly the sort of haplessness and social degeneration
we saw on display, as the floodwaters rose. Many suffered
terribly, and many died, and one's heart goes out. But already
the survivors are being put up in new accommodations, and their
various entitlements have been directed to new locations.
The scale of private charity has also been unprecedented.
There are yet no statistics, but I'll wager the most generous
state in the union will prove to have been arch-Republican Texas
and that, nationally, contributions in cash and kind are coming
disproportionately from people who vote Republican. For the world
divides into "the mouths" and "the wallets."
The Bush-bashing, both down there and up here, has so far lost
touch with reality, as to raise questions about the bashers'
state of mind.
Consult any authoritative source on how government works in
the United States and you will learn that the U.S. federal
government's legal, constitutional, and institutional
responsibility for first response to Katrina, as to any natural
disaster, was zero.
Notwithstanding, President Bush took the prescient step of
declaring a disaster, in order to begin deploying FEMA and other
federal assets, two full days in advance of the storm fall. In
the little time since, he has managed to co-ordinate an immense
recovery operation -- the largest in human history -- without
invoking martial powers. He has been sufficiently presidential to
respond, not even once, to the extraordinarily mendacious and
childish blame-throwing.
One thinks of Kipling's poem If, which I learned to recite as
a lad, and mention now in the full knowledge that it drives
postmodern leftoids and gliberals to apoplexy -- as anything that
is good, beautiful, or true:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise .
Unlike his critics, Bush is a man, in the full sense presented
by these verses. A fallible man, like all the rest, but a man.