Letters

The sluggish response to the crisis of Hurricane Katrina was shameful [Sept. 12]. There seemed to be a lack of organization and little coordination among federal, state and local authorities. The Gulf Coast contains vital ports for oil and natural gas and should have been given a high priority in U.S. defense planning against terrorism. The government’s unpreparedness makes me extremely skeptical of the effectiveness of the Department of Homeland Security. It certainly didn’t seem to have made plans for evacuation and disaster management in this major urban area. The scale of the disaster may have been unprecedented, but I thought the Bush Administration had spent the years since 9/11 planning for the unprecedented.
Beth Conlin
Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S.

How dare anyone blame president George W. Bush for this disaster. The left-wingers have criticized the Bush Administration constantly. How can anyone—politician or member of the news media—not support our government? The critics have gone too far. We must work together, and those who can’t must stay out of the way. I am tired of the divide in this country.
Suzann Soliday
Fresno, California, U.S.

Bush’s slow response to Katrina was a national disgrace. Officials knew that the storm was coming and that there was going to be massive devastation. The President should have been mobilizing troops and supplies long before the hurricane ever hit. After it struck, poor people died because they had no food and water and no way out. Hospital patients, including infants, died because hospitals had no supplies or power. Looting was rampant because troops were slow to be mobilized and there were too few of them. I bet that if Bush felt he needed the military in the Middle East to protect an oil facility that he said was vital to U.S. interests, he would have had more than enough troops there immediately!
James Sloane
Las Vegas

The media just couldn’t wait to criticize Bush and pick apart his response. Even in this time of crisis, you jump in and politicize the situation. Have you ever heard of pulling together with the rest of the country and keeping your mouth shut for a while?
Barbara Welsh
Houston

Nancy Gibbs’ article described the U.S. government’s inept response to the hurricane disaster. That’s one report we should all keep close at hand when Administration officials go on TV and try to rewrite history to save their political skins.
Marjorie Hertelendy
Grafton Township, Ohio, U.S.

Bush uncharacteristically said the initial relief response to the devastation along the Gulf Coast was not acceptable. Given the past reluctance of the Administration to hold anyone accountable for failure, it only remains to be seen who will be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom after this tragedy.
Buck Rutledge
Knoxville, Tennessee, U.S.

I am a white person. As I looked at TV images of the throngs of black people in New Orleans wandering aimlessly with no food, water or shelter, I wondered if our government would have reacted with the same negligence and incompetence if a natural disaster like Katrina had occurred in a city where the population was predominantly white. If white people put themselves in the place of the black people in New Orleans, we might better understand how racial prejudice, as demonstrated by our dulled response to the plight of those hurricane victims, is harmful to us all.
Greg Gianas
Redmond, Washington, U.S.

How can the U.S. muster a military force to invade a foreign country but be unable to quickly provide aid to its own hurricane victims? Could it be that these predominantly poor victims are considered unworthy of a massive deployment of our military to provide for their basic needs? Bush is a Christian, as am I. Is this really a Christ-like response to people in need?
Norman E. Gibson
Sacramento, California, U.S.

I was alarmed by the televised scenes of people looting stores in New Orleans. Panicked and helpless citizens had to evacuate their homes and businesses in the flooded city, yet some people took to stealing from unguarded shops. Aren’t they ashamed? I thought Americans were more considerate of those in trouble.
Makoto Takahashi
Yokohama, Japan

Bush declared a policy of zero tolerance for lawbreakers in New Orleans, evidently on the grounds that good citizens can go without food and water until the government can supply them at some undetermined time in the future. That is probably not what he meant, but as the world knows, what Bush says does not necessarily have much connection with what he means.
Paul Kunino Lynch
Katoomba, Australia

It’s one world, and we here in Europe are with you in the U.S. The suffering in the wake of Katrina will not have been in vain if it helps bring Americans and the Bush Administration to their senses about climate change. The U.S. should either ratify the Kyoto Protocol or propose an equally effective alternative. Promoting technological innovation to reduce climate change without reducing greenhouse gas emissions will not eliminate the risk of more Katrinas. When bankruptcy threatens, one does not simply study how to cut expenses; one actually cuts expenses. Besides, there is no better incentive for technological innovation than an increased demand for it.
Jan Bernheim
Brussels

Enough is enough! I saw the scenes of utter devastation in the newspaper and on television, and my blood is boiling! Shame on Bush. Why did it take so long for him to aid the victims? How many people died waiting for help? The buck supposedly stops with the President, but he was not in Washington and left the task to others, who failed miserably. Maybe his response would have been faster in different circumstances, but it seems Bush lacked the motivation in this case, in which the majority of people concerned were poor and black and the prestige attached to such a rescue mission would not be seen as particularly great.
Susan Cooper
Perth, Australia

Haven’t there been enough warnings about global warming in the past few years, with more droughts, more floods and more disasters predicted if we don’t start taking care of the environment? And what about the meeting in Kyoto at which all nations were urged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and greenhouse gases? Didn’t President Bush say the U.S. would not sign the Kyoto Protocol because it would hurt the U.S. economy too much? How many Hurricane Katrinas will it take to make the U.S., the world’s biggest emitter of pollutant gases, figure out what it can or cannot afford?
Anne Fraser
Ladybrand, South Africa

As ghastly as the hurricane catastrophe has been, perhaps it is the very wake-up call that the U.S. and President Bush need to make them address the real possibility of devastation caused by global warming and what should be done about it—now.
Hally Hardie
St. Ives, England

Levels of Barbarism
“The New Bin Laden?”, your notebook item on Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq [Sept. 5], said that al-Zarqawi’s organization “is believed to have been behind barbaric attacks in Iraq.” It seems only fair to ask where, on the spectrum of barbarism, we would locate the killing of Iraqi civilians, the razing of Fallujah, the depravity at Abu Ghraib prison and the self-righteous obscenity at Guantánamo Bay. And how about the abandonment of the desperate hurricane victims in Louisiana and Mississippi? In Iraq, limitless U.S. resources are deployed while at home poor Americans, thirsty and starving, founder in toxic effluent. All around the globe, people are watching, incredulous, as the Bush Administration displays its unique abilities to turn a natural disaster into an issue of law and order. It can be only a matter of time before criticism of the federal response to Katrina is declared unpatriotic. If you see barbarism in Baghdad, perhaps you will recognize it, too, on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Nigel M. Chambers
East Holm, Scotland

Healthy Hearts
I want to thank you for your story on the new, noninvasive heart-scanning technology that makes blockages easier to detect [Sept. 5]. But I must also damn you in the same breath. Although I’m a 59-year-old smoker, I’ve been fit most of my life. These days I scull three times a week and work out at the gym four times a week. Having read your article, however, I expect I might drop dead at any moment. You were absolutely right to publish this report, but you painted a dark picture by suggesting that this new technology is hard to find and brutally expensive. My search starts today—for a counselor.
Alan Orpin
Hamburg, Germany

Meetings Must Continue
It is gratifying to note that the private discussions between the U.S. and North Korea about Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program [Aug. 8] actually took place and seemed to indicate that the Bush Administration is, after all, willing to deal directly with Kim Jong Il’s recalcitrant regime. That is a valuable and significant move toward world peace. But can one expect honest dealings from a despotic nation that persists in saying what it does not mean and meaning what it does not say? Putting aside the lack of candor, such contact (even if it doesn’t bear fruit immediately) must go on at all costs. The world cannot afford to witness yet another disastrous conflict.
Tan Boon Tee
Trengganu, Malaysia

The Sudan Situation
your article “who speaks for her?” [on the violence against women committed by the Janjaweed militiamen in Sudan’s Darfur region; Sept. 5] was badly out of date and portrayed the situation in a sensationalist and inaccurate manner. In recent months the government of Sudan, in cooperation with others in the international community, has taken significant steps that have stabilized and improved the situation in Darfur. The government agreed to take concrete measures to protect women against rape and violence. We are implementing those actions in cooperation with the U.S. and others. Sudan will address the problems of Darfur and permit our country to enter a new era of peace, national unity and reconstruction after more than two decades of war.
Khidir Haroun Ahmed, Ambassador
Embassy of the Republic of Sudan
Washington

Rap Superstar Kanye West
your article on hip-hop musician Kanye West [Sept. 5] was a brave and smart choice. You gave insights into who West is and, more important, why we should care. West does everything a true musical artist should do: write, produce and perform. He not only employs the traditional hip-hop technique of sampling but uses samples of influential artists like Nina Simone, Shirley Bassey, Marvin Gaye and Luther Vandross. West’s songs pay homage to the origins of hip-hop while simultaneously giving today’s generation a chance to experience legendary musicians.
Justin Li
Ottawa

In the same week I received two great things in my mailbox: season tickets to the opera and TIME with its report on Kanye West. While I don’t profess to be an expert about opera, and hip-hop is far from my typical genre, I do know what I like—music that awakens a deeply emotional chord in my being. West’s The College Dropout rotates in my CD player between operas by Puccini and Bizet, although I listen more now to West. His lyrics and music are soul-baring and thought-provoking and speak to the human spirit like great opera.
Roberta A. Shoulberg
Neshaminy Valley, Pennsylvania, U.S.

Who cares about Kanye West except other hip-hoppers? I’ll bet that 90% of your subscribers have never heard of him.
Homer C. Lamborn
Redding, California, U.S.

You noted that West dropped out of college and made something of himself. Kids are going to read that and think they can do it too. But his success is just lucky. And what about West’s lyrics? He claims he tried not to use “nigga,” but he does—frequently. Perhaps West should have done the classy thing and stuck to his convictions. Just because a man wears a polo shirt and wingtips does not make him a class act.
Brie Daigle
Melbourne, Florida, U.S.

Aiming for the Top
Angela Merkel’s bid for Germany’s chancellorship (Aug. 29) was just the latest attempt by a woman to win a country’s top elected position. And when the subject of a woman in the top job comes up, the person most talked about is Margaret Thatcher, who was on TIME‘s cover of May 14, 1979, when she became Britain’s first female Prime Minister. Here is an excerpt from that report:

“For the first time in history, two women were the principals in the traditional ‘kissing hands upon appointment’—a ceremony in which the leader of the winning party is summoned to Buckingham Palace, there to be designated Prime Minister of Britain by the monarch and asked to form a government. The monarch, of course, was Queen Elizabeth II. The Prime Minister was Margaret Hilda Thatcher, 53, a grocer’s daughter from the English Midlands, who last week led her Conservative Party to a decisive victory … Thatcher thereby became not only the first woman to head a British government but the first to lead a major Western nation … In keeping with British tradition, Thatcher will be addressed simply as ‘Prime Minister.’ Even before she paid her first visit to Downing Street, her campaign aides had arrived, their arms loaded with paperwork. The government of a determined woman whose work ethic had been forged in the heartland of England was taking shape with no delay.”