[Mb-civic] Katrina's Global Lessons

[William Swiggard]

Katrina's Global Lessons

By Jim Hoagland

Wednesday, September 7, 2005; Page A25

MOSCOW -- Hurricane Katrina has raked a vivid scar across America's 
image abroad -- and left its marks on President Bush's ambitious foreign 
policy agenda as well. Overcoming these setbacks will require a 
demonstration that the United States under Bush is not an irrevocably 
weakened and divided nation about to turn inward on its own problems.

The stories and images of lawlessness, refugees dying of deprivation or 
mayhem, and the desperation of befouled human sanctuaries in New Orleans 
have at times resembled dispatches from Darfur or Afghanistan. The 
initial shock abroad comes not from the sights of such human misery but 
from the fact that it occurred in the United States, which has always 
been quick both to help and to lecture those swept up in natural and 
man-made disasters in foreign lands.

The feet of clay of a nation that has regularly vaunted its standing as 
the world's only remaining superpower have been in plain view in recent 
days.

Here in the Russian capital and elsewhere abroad, the focus is shifting 
quickly to take in political consequences as well as relief efforts. 
European embassies in Washington are already reporting back to their 
capitals on how the disaster may further impair Bush's effectiveness as 
he slips toward lame-duck status. Diplomatic cables raise the key 
question of which America will emerge from this harrowing test of 
national resolve and compassion.

Will post-Katrina America be humbler, more cooperative and more 
understanding of other nations' problems and failures? Or will the 
United States let its active engagement in the world's human and 
political crises become another casualty of Katrina's winds and 
floodwaters -- and of the political turmoil they have triggered?

"I look at this and cannot believe my eyes," Russian President Vladimir 
Putin said when I asked him Monday evening about Katrina's damage. "It 
tells us however strong and powerful we think we are, we are nothing in 
the eyes of nature and of God Almighty. . . . We are all vulnerable and 
must cooperate to help each other."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/06/AR2005090601362.html