Let's Compare the Reactions to Natural Disasters

First I'd like to express my deep sympathy to those affected by the horrible earthquake and the aftershocks in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan. I hope that over the next few weeks that there will be another outpouring of help, similar to what we saw during the tsunami last December. During horrible disasters like these this is how people should and usually do react: it's a normal human response - to help those when they need it.

However, let's compare this normal sympathetic response of most natual disasters to mainstream media's reaction to recent hurricanes in the United States. Some media outlets started out fair, but then the criticism began. Here's a summary of major critical points that we all read:

Why did Hurricane Katrina happen? Bush must be to blame. If not him, then specifically his policies. It's all down to global warming, right? (Never mind that some of the worst hurricanes in world history happened a hundred years ago). But no matter - Still, why didn't he pass Kyoto? (Never mind that the bill was rejected by the congress in 1997, and guess who was president then?)

The criticism continued: why weren't people better prepared or better evacuated- hey everyone knows that the president of the US knows the streets of New Orleans waaaaay better than the city's mayor, right? He knows every city better than the local governments. And if he doesn't he downright should.

The criticism continued: why was the response so late? By the way, where are the troops? If they weren't in Iraq, they'd certainly be helping. Hey - why are they in Iraq anyway? Everyone knows that natural disasters are far more lethal than terrorists. And by the way, there's never been any connection between Iraq and terrorisim anyway, right? And even if there is a connection, it's well established that the connection has been caused by one man: GW Bush.

Hey let's do an investigation to find out how GW's federal government failed us, similar to what we did with the 9/11 commission. An all-out investigation of the federal government is what the US really needs right now.

Hey, I'm not saying criticism should not be done. It should be. But in this case, the mainstream media so obviously had another agenda - to squash the president. Hopefully they let off Musharraf easier.