Iraq, New Orleans, and State Responsibility (ePub)

Essay from the year 2006 in the subject Communications - Media and Politics, Politic Communications, grade: 1,3, Northwestern University, language: English, abstract: A military blunder in Iraq and a civil catastrophe in New Orleans clearly indicate that the state of the United States of America is not to the best. You might say that the United States just happens to have an incapable and neglecting federal government in hard times. There is certainly a case to make that the Bush government has de-legitimized itself by the way it runs government.
However, there is a bigger claim to make, which transcends those charges of ruthlessness and negligence on the part of the present administration. Iraq and New Orleans remind us of the disproportionate overvaluing of security and military issues at the cost of those that affect "the good living", the social resources of a community. Among these resources the most fundamental is life itself. But even life is no longer an issue for the state as should be - both in Iraq and in the U.S. proper, take New Orleans.
The post-war Iraq scenario was worth no more than a mere piece of paper to the U.S. military and its commander-in-chief, President Bush. Its main dictum: no plan is needed, the Iraqi people love freedom, so they love the U.S. and will await American soldiers with flowers.1Democracy would encroach on the country all by itself. A century from now, this assumption might serve as a ridiculous joke. Today, it is just an unbelievably sad token of the arrogance and stupidity of the superpower a whole world is relying on for universal justice and freedom. And furthermore, it shows how the government did not a piece of thinking on how to best protect its soldiers in a country with a culture so different than their own.