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Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management Crisis and Emergency Management Newsletter Website |
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December
2005
Volume 9 - Number
3 |
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The events of September 11, 2001 came as a shock to everyone in America and even the world. Who would have imagined that a country as powerful and as large as the United States would be vulnerable to an act of terrorism? With our strong military and high-level intelligence agency, how could something like this happen? Unfortunately, acts of terrorism are nothing new to the rest of the world. Such devastating events have been occurring worldwide on a regular basis for many years. Being the isolationist nation that we are, it was the “out of sight, out of mind” attitude and the belief that nothing like terrorism could ever touch us. Most Americans had sadly never heard of Osama bin Laden before September 11th. While certainly the nation could have been more prepared for the hijacked planes that ran into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the plane that crashed outside of Pittsburgh, the approach that the government is taking now is an extreme reaction that has caused many other disaster mitigation and prevention efforts to fall to the wayside. With FEMA now located under the directorate of the Department of Homeland Security, its ability to respond appropriately to the numerous natural disasters has been severely compromised as evidence in Hurricane Katrina. The Department of Homeland Security has one major focus and that is terrorism. Since George W. Bush has taken office, he and his administration have been on a rampage to beef up our military and use it to enforce American principles around the globe. Evidence of this can be found at the following website http://www.newamericancentury.org/index.html. The Statement of Principles of the Project for a New American Century is signed off by many of the current members of the administration, including Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld. The fact that becoming the absolute greatest power in the world is their main objective, then fighting off terrorism is going to be one of their largest problems. People around the world all have their own belief systems and ways of living. When another country comes in and tries to enforce their way of doing things on to the people, there will usually be resistance to this. We have seen this happen throughout history, dating back to the beginning of time and up to recent history with the American occupation of Iraq. Out of this resistance and enforcement of principles, we see terrorism grow. This is inevitable. Despite this fact, countries continue to press their own agenda on others, lacking any respect for other people and their beliefs. Thus America has paved its own way to this journey we have embarked on of world domination and simultaneously fighting terrorism. In my opinion, in order to be a strong country, we must first look to our own people and take care of them first. How can a nation be brilliant if millions of its people are uneducated, live below the poverty line and don’t have adequate access to healthcare? How can a nation survive when we can’t even respond to our own natural disasters at home? The delayed, unorganized and feeble response to Hurricane Katrina stems from the government’s insistency on focusing efforts on terrorism. FEMA has lost much of its clout and respect now that it is part of DHS and the resources dedicated to natural disasters has dwindled considerably. It is frightening to think that we will let our own people die, whether it is in a hurricane, in combat in Iraq or as a result of an illness that could have been avoided with adequate healthcare, in order to become a dominant world power. |