The number had crossed 3 million Afghani refugees in Pakistan at one point. It then declined, but the US invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 brought a fresh influx into both countries.

It has to be said, both Pakistan and Afgan govts. didn’t do a particualarly good job of dealing with the refugees, but unlike some other countries which come to mind, they didn’t turn them away either.

-cvj

If people show up at a jewelry store in standing water with bolt cutters, the explanation is obvious. So it goes; every city has street thieves. They don’t hold public office (at least not since the Nixon administration).

Now let’s turn to the people who do hold public office. Because of them, what should only have been a disaster is also a fiasco. If they were worried about looters and marauders, they should have sent troops to restore public order on Tuesday. Not one thing that has happened since Tuesday morning is a genuine surprise.

I wouldn’t rail against social welfare spending just yet. As much of your paycheck (likely more) goes to funding the $500 billion/yr US military machine and the additional $200-300 billion/yr in other defense related expenditures\nation-building\etc. The US military industrial complex has become the biggest welfare recipient of all.

The US has dramatically cut social welfare spending, science funding, and other “non-essential” expenditures while doubling military spending in just 4 years, now accounting for more than half the entire world’s military spending combined.

When you look at the state of health care, and things like disaster relief in the world’s most powerful industrialized nation, you have to wonder how different things might be if if some of that incredible, mind-boggling committment of money and resources to the pursuit of world domination were instead poured into silly left-wing causes like infrastructure, civil defense, healthcare, etc.

2. We have to acknowledge the failure if we are to do better. Put it this way, the Federal and State governments, with a day or two of advance notice, are unable to evacuate of the order of 100,000 helpless people from a hazardous environment. If there is a disaster in New York City (such as terrorist attack with a dirty radioactive bomb or toxins that make the place unsafe for people to stay) and of the order of a million people have to be evacuated, what then?

3. Homeland Security is a joke.

4. I believe the US Armed Forces’ response to the Indonesian earthquake and Asian tsunami was faster and more effective (or the press releases were better) than what is happening in Lousiana and Mississipi.

5. Also, I don’t think Lousiana and Florida really are the same country in terms of how they are treated. For New Orleans, there is the strong undercurrent of “how stupid they are to build in such a location”. But the probability is 1 of being wiped out by a hurricane in the coastal areas of Florida and elsewhere; the probability of a San Andreas earthquake wiping out the San Jose area is close to 1 as well; but the people there are never condemned for being stupid.

Then there is this complaint about perpetual government bailout. But where were people protesting at the Army Corps of Engineers’ beach replenishment program in New Jersey? The rule to being a good conservative seems to be never grudge the money spent by government to save the property of the well-off; always attribute disasters to the poor to be brought on by their own stupidity, and grumble about each meager dollar sent their way.

It seems to me that science-wise, the American conservative is largely an IDist, but is otherwise a social Darwinist.

6. This rich and powerful country is overwhelmed by the order of 100,000 refugees????? I now understand the roots of conflict in the third world. Both Pakistan and Iran accomodated of the order of 2 million refugees each from Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan-US jihad; these are infinitely poorer countries, and seeing what’s going on here, I can now appreciate what a strain it must have been on those societies. If roads to New Orleans have been reduced to goat trails, well, there were never any roads in the rugged mountains of the border areas of these countries where refugees spilled over in their thousands of thousands; and they had to be met at the border, and fed and sheltered.

So what you say (”nothing one can do against natural disasters of this scale”) is, with respect, largely ignorant bull. I’m sure that you did not mean it, so please look again at the situation and the background.

Cheers,

-cvj