One of my onetime regular readers posted a link to an article about “The Role of U.S. Criminal Negligence on a Global Scale”. Look at this silliness:
At least 55,000 people were killed by the tsunami that devastated coastlines from Indonesia to Somalia. Almost a third of the dead are children. Thousands are still missing and millions are homeless in 11 countries. Hundreds of thousands have lost everything, and millions face a bleak future because of polluted drinking water, a lack of sanitation and no health services, according to UN undersecretary Jan Egeland, who is in charge of emergency relief coordination.
And the US is criminally negligent here?
Look, I’m aganst the war in Iraq, believe me. But you know, the US didn’t create this tsunami. The US isn’t responsible for installing bouys so the rest of the world can knows whether a tsunami is approaching their shores. Okay, this bit here makes me a little nervous about stupidity on the part of some NOAA employees:
Although the local governments had no real warning, the U.S. government did, and it failed to pass along the information. Within minutes of the massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Indonesia, U.S. scientists working with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) suspected that a deadly wave was spreading through the Indian Ocean. They did not call anyone in the governments in the area. Jeff LaDouce, an official in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that they e-mailed Indonesian officials, but said that he wasn
Some things could have been prevented though, for instance: people would not have been on the beach when the waves hit (I saw videos of the wave just rolling up over sunbathers), the train that was flipped could have not been running, that sort of thing. I think it’s pretty specious to imply that a warning would not have done any good.
You’re right, a warning *may* have done some good. From what I saw in Thailand when I was there, I’m not sure it *would* have, but it’s possible some people could have been saved.
That doesn’t negate the fact that even the non-issuing of a warning is not the fault of “The USA” in some monolithic way. The author of the article I linked to seems to find some correspondence between the idiocy of a couple of climatologists and the war in Iraq.
What disgusted me about the article was that it was being used as a kind of pony upon which the author could ride, proclaiming her dissent against the Iraq war. I agree the war has been ridiculous and stupid, but not every issue is about the failings of the USA, on the other hand. What I see is another American making this all about America.