Will Katrina dent perceptions of “American exceptionalism”?

[BrainGlutton]

For a general discussion of the idea of “American exceptionalism,” see this thread from last year: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=269293

[DanBlather]

@smiling bandit

[qipte]But why couldn’t we have sent in a convoy of trucks with food, water, and medicine?

IIRC, it was pretty much flooded. They had to use boats and airlift people out.
[/QUOTE]

A trio of Duke University sophomores say they drove to New Orleans late last week, posed as journalists to slip inside the hurricane-soaked city twice, and evacuated seven people who weren’t receiving help from authorities. The group, … say they also managed to drive all the way to the New Orleans Convention Center…“We found it absolutely incredible that the authorities had no way to get there for four or five days, that they didn’t go in and help these people, and we made it in a two-wheel-drive Hyundai,”

From here.

[Rashak_Mani]

Too much emphasis on keeping order and too little in relieving people ?

[Menocchio]

Well, I’ll step up and say it.

Yes, my views on the capabilities of the American people and government have been greatly diminished by this tragedy.

A hurricane of this size was always going to be bad. Many would die if they did not evacuate. Millions of dollars would be lost in property damage. But, once passed, I expected that the afflicted would recieve prompt aid and the rebuilding would begin almost immediately. The human toll after the winds died down should have been negligible.

But that didn’t happen.

Maybe I was simply overestimating emergency response capabilities, but I was shocked and apalled by what happened. It seems to me that there was a failure on every concievable level, before, during, and after the event.

I don’t trust the government to keep me safe from anything, anywhere, at all. And if it can’t, then what’s the point of having a government.

[SuaSponte]

I think the absurd stink over the use of the word “refugees” demonstrates that American exceptionalism is alive and well. “Americans can’t be refugees” is a clear exceptionalist sentiment.

Sua

[msmith537]

@Menocchio

Yes, my views on the capabilities of the American people and government have been greatly diminished by this tragedy.
I don’t trust the government to keep me safe from anything, anywhere, at all. And if it can’t, then what’s the point of having a government.

Oh well boo hoo for you. So sorry that the government does not provide you with an impenetrable hurricane shield.

@DanBlather

Quote:
A trio of Duke University sophomores say they drove to New Orleans late last week, posed as journalists to slip inside the hurricane-soaked city twice, and evacuated seven people who weren’t receiving help from authorities. The group, … say they also managed to drive all the way to the New Orleans Convention Center…“We found it absolutely incredible that the authorities had no way to get there for four or five days, that they didn’t go in and help these people, and we made it in a two-wheel-drive Hyundai,”

Good for them. It’s easy for three people to evacuate 7. Now move 70,000.

This isn’t the first disaster to hit America and it won’t be the last. Hopefully lessons will be learned but one thing is certain and that we will recover from it.

[John_Mace]

@SuaSponte

I think the absurd stink over the use of the word “refugees” demonstrates that American exceptionalism is alive and well. “Americans can’t be refugees” is a clear exceptionalist sentiment.

Sua

Good point!

[Cheesesteak]

@msmith537

Good for them. It’s easy for three people to evacuate 7. Now move 70,000…

Unfortunately, those three drove to a place in a freekin’ Hyundai, and the gov’t was saying they couldn’t get there with buses or trucks to evacuate and provide supplies.

[MovieMogul]

Interesting piece on Iran’s observations on our preparedness. Excerpts:

Tehran, Iran, Sep. 11 – Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been following closely the way the United States government has been handling Hurricane Katrina, and drawing strategic conclusions from it.

In remarks that appeared on Ansar-e Hezbollah website on Sunday, a top official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said the devastating hurricane had exposed America’s vulnerabilities.

“The mismanagement and the mishandling of the acute psychological problems brought about by Hurricane Katrina clearly showed that others can, at any given time, create a devastated war-zone in any part of the U.S.”, Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, the official spokesman of the IRGC, said.

“If the U.S. attacks Iran, each of America’s states will face a crisis the size of Katrina”, he said, referring to the massive hurricane which hit the southern coast of the United States. “The smallest mistake by America in this regard will result in every single state in that country turning into a disaster zone”…

…Jazayeri said the hurricane havoc showed that “contrary to public perception, the strength of America’s leadership is like a balloon, which can easily burst”.

The Revolutionary Guards spokesman said the U.S. administration’s inability to end the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan showed the “weakness of America’s defence and state departments, as well as its intelligence and security apparatus”.

In a defiant tone that mirrored recent remarks by top officials of the Islamic Republic, the IRGC spokesman said, “Precise information from inside America shows a lack of coordination among military, security, and political agencies in that country and brings to light the fact that others can cause many times the amount of damage compared to the blows they may receive”.

[Gangster_Octopus]

I always thought “American Exceptionalism” referred to the idea that among the developed world the USA was the exception in having never developed a strong socialist movement or strong socialist leaning political party.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Martin Hyde

Americans aren’t a race of superbeings.

::looking up from ironing my cape::

Speak for yourself, Martin.

[msmith537]

@Cheesesteak

Unfortunately, those three drove to a place in a freekin’ Hyundai, and the gov’t was saying they couldn’t get there with buses or trucks to evacuate and provide supplies.

Being able to get someplace with a little Hyundai does not mean that you can get there with a thousand 2-ton trucks in the same amount of time.

@ArchiveGuy

“The mismanagement and the mishandling of the acute psychological problems brought about by Hurricane Katrina clearly showed that others can, at any given time, create a devastated war-zone in any part of the U.S.”, Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, the official spokesman of the IRGC, said.

“If the U.S. attacks Iran, each of America’s states will face a crisis the size of Katrina”, he said, referring to the massive hurricane which hit the southern coast of the United States. “The smallest mistake by America in this regard will result in every single state in that country turning into a disaster zone”…

Obviously this statement should be of some concern to our leaders should Iran ever develop a weather machine.

[Cheesesteak]

An army truck that carries 2 tons of cargo should be able to transit any terrain that a Hyundai with 7 people in it can. 2 tons of cargo means 1 ton of water and 1 ton of MREs. 2 pounds of water (1 quart) will take care of a person for a day, as will 2 pounds of MRE. Each truck, 4000lbs of cargo, will provide enough food and water for roughly 1000 people. With 100,000 stranded people, that’s 100 trucks a day, not a thousand. Even if you want to double the needs, that’s 200 trips a day, one truck every 7 minutes. With all of our efforts, we can’t ship out 1 truck every seven minutes over passable roads?

At least get truckloads of food and water to the known staging areas. I think that ball was clearly dropped. It doesn’t take a genius to bring food to people, we were paralyzed by red tape and poor management.

[BrainGlutton]

@Gangster Octopus

I always thought “American Exceptionalism” referred to the idea that among the developed world the USA was the exception in having never developed a strong socialist movement or strong socialist leaning political party.

I’ve rarely read the phrase in that context. But see this book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393322548/qid=1126725382/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-1883474-0724667?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Regarding the general history of the idea of AE, see this article (accuracy and neutrality disputed, not surprisingly): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

[Gangster_Octopus]

@BrainGlutton

I’ve rarely read the phrase in that context. But see this book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393322548/qid=1126725382/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-1883474-0724667?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Regarding the general history of the idea of AE, see this article (accuracy and neutrality disputed, not surprisingly): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

Well according to this [url=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/americanexceptionalism.htm”]site (and many others) "American Exceptionalism was pretty much as I described, but it also in many ways has been subsumed by a more generic idea of the USA being the “exception”.

The notion of “American exceptionalism” became widely applied in the context of efforts to account for the weakness of working-class radicalism in the United States. The major question subsumed in the concept became why the United States is the only industrialized country which does not have a significant socialist movement or Labor party. That riddle has bedeviled socialist theorists since the late nineteenth century. Friedrich Engels tried to answer it in the last decade of his life. The German socialist and sociologist Werner Sombart dealt with it in a major book published in his native language in 1906, Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? As we have seen, H. G. Wells, then a Fabian, also addressed the issue that year in The Future in America. Both Lenin and Trotsky were deeply concerned because the logic of Marxism, the proposition expressed by Marx in Das Kapital that “the more developed country shows the less developed the image of their future,” implied to Marxists prior to the Russian Revolution that the United States would be the first socialist country.

[msmith537]

@Cheesesteak

An army truck that carries 2 tons of cargo should be able to transit any terrain that a Hyundai with 7 people in it can. 2 tons of cargo means 1 ton of water and 1 ton of MREs. 2 pounds of water (1 quart) will take care of a person for a day, as will 2 pounds of MRE. Each truck, 4000lbs of cargo, will provide enough food and water for roughly 1000 people. With 100,000 stranded people, that’s 100 trucks a day, not a thousand. Even if you want to double the needs, that’s 200 trips a day, one truck every 7 minutes. With all of our efforts, we can’t ship out 1 truck every seven minutes over passable roads?

I love it when people make things like this so easy. Have you ever organized 100 trucks? Do you know how long it takes to load 4 tons? How many tons do you need? Tons of what kind of cargo? For how long? Where are they stored? Where are the trucks parked? Who will drive them? Who will load them? Are there security concerns? Do we have fuel for the trucks? Where will we refuel them? What route should they take? It doesn’t take a genius but it does take some organization. I don’t know the details of the planning and execution of the rescue efforts but yeah, there does seem to be a lot of disorganization. I agree with you that job didn’t get done right. It didn’t get done right not because they fucked up an easy job but because the magnitude of the job was beyond their limited logistics expertise.

[Cheesesteak]

@msmith537

It didn’t get done right not because they fucked up an easy job but because the magnitude of the job was beyond their limited logistics expertise.

That’s right, it’s not easy. I didn’t mean to make it sound easy, as if anyone could do it, I only mean for it to sound possible, as if an expert could do it.

I used to work for the IBM Disaster Recovery group (in finance, so I have no REAL skills in this sort of thing). I could make the work they did in disasters like Hurricane Floyd and 9/11 sound really, really hard too. They organized, with at most a day or two of notice, the complete replication of a few dozen unique datacenters, loading of every customer’s data and application tapes, connection through the internet to their clients and other locations. They procured additional equipment as needed to help not only their own DR customers, but other IBM hardware customers who had recovery contracts with other vendors. All this with resources that are miniscule in comparison to what FEMA can bring out.

How did they do it? Practice, practice, practice. They have a few big datacenters across the country, and there are disasters maybe once a year, the rest of the time, all they do is test their procedures with as many customers as they can schedule.

None of this effort should have been on the fly, it should all be established procedure with one goal in mind, get food, water and meds in, get people out. If they have limited logistics expertise, they should not be in the disaster recovery business.