Canada's tentative response to Katrina.
My Mom pointed out at dinner last night how surprisingly muted the Canadian reaction to Katrina has been. According to CBC:
Prime Minster Paul Martin offered consolation and support to U.S. President George Bush in a phone call Thursday morning.
"(Martin) began by expressing his personal condolences and those of every Canadian," during a 15-minute conversation, said Martin spokeswoman Melanie Gruer.
"And he told the president that Canada stands ready to help in any way at any time and that we're actually quite anxious to help."
Just how anxious to help are we?
Canadian relief agencies have moved to help the U.S. states hit by Hurricane Katrina.
Winnipeg-based Mennonite Disaster Service said Wednesday it is gathering donations to help send hundreds of volunteers to rebuild homes.
Lois Nickel of the Mennonite group said volunteers from nearby states could be in Alabama by the weekend, helping to clear roads of fallen trees. She said a U.S. team is heading to Gulfport, Mississippi, where they hope to establish a base camp for volunteers next to the city's Mennonite church.
Nickel said a call for hundreds of Canadian volunteers may not happen for several weeks, depending on how long it takes to set up the church camp.
Canadian Red Cross volunteers with experience in large scale disasters were being contacted Wednesday and officials hoped a handful would be travelling to the southern U.S. by the weekend.
The Mennonites and a "handful" of volunteers? At least we've finally put the army on standby (and sounded like we mean it). But, considering we're one of the world's richest countries, with no significant body of water separating us and the Americans, even this strikes me as a pretty formalistic, half-hearted response.
Granted, no Canadian politicans have taken the opportunity to mau-mau Bush about ditching the Kyoto protocol as two German Green Party politicians (one of them minister of the environment in the current governing coalition) did on Tuesday. Der Spiegel, hardly a Bush-sympathetic newspaper, condemned the Greens' comments in an editorial. But, in a separate editorial, they also get the larger issues at play pretty much right:
To be fair to Trittin, he likely wrote his editorial before the full magnitude of the disaster became apparent. And Schröder today asked his ministers to come up with an aid plan and once more emphasized that Germany "stands at America's side." But it is nevertheless apparent that many in Europe are disgusted with the United States' high-handedness when it comes to world politics and the environment. It is likewise apparent that many in America are not impressed by what is perceived as a European superiority complex.
The current exchange of niceties, of course, is barely a blip on the trans-Atlantic radar. But it is one more worrying sign that old prejudices which Germans harbor about Americans, and vice versa, are never far from the surface. One wouldn't think that a natural disaster could spark off a bout of bickering. It's a shame the opposite has proven to be true.
This isn't to say that the international reaction to Katrina's victims isn't sympathetic and that the sympathy isn't real -- it is and will probably only get more pronounced as the extent of the tragedy becomes clearer. But there's definitely a tentativeness out there to really lock in, to go beyond official gestures, or, as Trittin proves, to move beyond the larger meta-debates we're usually engaged in about the American way of life in the way the world did right after 911 -- and Katrina will probably claim more lives than 911 did in the end. Most of this is a perfectly natural reaction to the extreme go-it-alone-ness of the Americans in recent years and a fear of being insulted, of stepping on American national pride, a dangerous beast. But three days after the storm, they still haven't finished evacuating the SuperDome or the Convention Center, both of which are now, according to CNN, full of corpses, and human feces, and people without sufficient drinking water. The Administration is spinning itself mad as usual. Mississippi governor Haley Barbour seems more conerned about punishing the looters than about helping the refugees.
Possibly, a federally-sanctioned flow of medicine and goods and machinery for removing debris, and aid workers toward the south, uncalled for, might actually be rejected or turned back by the Americans. That might be a little embarrassing. But we should risk it. It would sure be a bolder, more full-blooded and far more compassionate response than this diplomatic course of just keeping our distance, placing phone calls and making the requisite gestures of solidarity, and secretly despairing of the American government. We're still in our meta-debate mode too, even if our politicians are more polite and less obvious about it than Germany's. I wish Prime Minster Martin, or somebody, would break us out of it, just for a few days.
Update Friday: This is more like it:
"We are really prepared to operate on all fronts as requested and as co-ordinated by the United States," Prime Minister Paul Martin said in Saskatoon.
"There are a large number of Canadians who are on their way down there to help."
...The offers of help could even extend to opening Canadian homes to refugees.
Speaking in Edmonton, Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan said Ottawa is looking at offers to bring victims of the hurricane to Canada temporarily.
She said Canadians have been moved by images of homeless people wandering abandoned freeways in New Orleans, carrying their possessions in garbage cans.
"People here in Canada, especially in Atlantic Canada because of that Acadian connection, felt that 'well, maybe we could take some of these people in, especially the children. We could offer them a place of temporary refuge,'" McLellan said.
Prime Minster Paul Martin offered consolation and support to U.S. President George Bush in a phone call Thursday morning.
"(Martin) began by expressing his personal condolences and those of every Canadian," during a 15-minute conversation, said Martin spokeswoman Melanie Gruer.
"And he told the president that Canada stands ready to help in any way at any time and that we're actually quite anxious to help."
Just how anxious to help are we?
Canadian relief agencies have moved to help the U.S. states hit by Hurricane Katrina.
Winnipeg-based Mennonite Disaster Service said Wednesday it is gathering donations to help send hundreds of volunteers to rebuild homes.
Lois Nickel of the Mennonite group said volunteers from nearby states could be in Alabama by the weekend, helping to clear roads of fallen trees. She said a U.S. team is heading to Gulfport, Mississippi, where they hope to establish a base camp for volunteers next to the city's Mennonite church.
Nickel said a call for hundreds of Canadian volunteers may not happen for several weeks, depending on how long it takes to set up the church camp.
Canadian Red Cross volunteers with experience in large scale disasters were being contacted Wednesday and officials hoped a handful would be travelling to the southern U.S. by the weekend.
The Mennonites and a "handful" of volunteers? At least we've finally put the army on standby (and sounded like we mean it). But, considering we're one of the world's richest countries, with no significant body of water separating us and the Americans, even this strikes me as a pretty formalistic, half-hearted response.
Granted, no Canadian politicans have taken the opportunity to mau-mau Bush about ditching the Kyoto protocol as two German Green Party politicians (one of them minister of the environment in the current governing coalition) did on Tuesday. Der Spiegel, hardly a Bush-sympathetic newspaper, condemned the Greens' comments in an editorial. But, in a separate editorial, they also get the larger issues at play pretty much right:
To be fair to Trittin, he likely wrote his editorial before the full magnitude of the disaster became apparent. And Schröder today asked his ministers to come up with an aid plan and once more emphasized that Germany "stands at America's side." But it is nevertheless apparent that many in Europe are disgusted with the United States' high-handedness when it comes to world politics and the environment. It is likewise apparent that many in America are not impressed by what is perceived as a European superiority complex.
The current exchange of niceties, of course, is barely a blip on the trans-Atlantic radar. But it is one more worrying sign that old prejudices which Germans harbor about Americans, and vice versa, are never far from the surface. One wouldn't think that a natural disaster could spark off a bout of bickering. It's a shame the opposite has proven to be true.
This isn't to say that the international reaction to Katrina's victims isn't sympathetic and that the sympathy isn't real -- it is and will probably only get more pronounced as the extent of the tragedy becomes clearer. But there's definitely a tentativeness out there to really lock in, to go beyond official gestures, or, as Trittin proves, to move beyond the larger meta-debates we're usually engaged in about the American way of life in the way the world did right after 911 -- and Katrina will probably claim more lives than 911 did in the end. Most of this is a perfectly natural reaction to the extreme go-it-alone-ness of the Americans in recent years and a fear of being insulted, of stepping on American national pride, a dangerous beast. But three days after the storm, they still haven't finished evacuating the SuperDome or the Convention Center, both of which are now, according to CNN, full of corpses, and human feces, and people without sufficient drinking water. The Administration is spinning itself mad as usual. Mississippi governor Haley Barbour seems more conerned about punishing the looters than about helping the refugees.
Possibly, a federally-sanctioned flow of medicine and goods and machinery for removing debris, and aid workers toward the south, uncalled for, might actually be rejected or turned back by the Americans. That might be a little embarrassing. But we should risk it. It would sure be a bolder, more full-blooded and far more compassionate response than this diplomatic course of just keeping our distance, placing phone calls and making the requisite gestures of solidarity, and secretly despairing of the American government. We're still in our meta-debate mode too, even if our politicians are more polite and less obvious about it than Germany's. I wish Prime Minster Martin, or somebody, would break us out of it, just for a few days.
Update Friday: This is more like it:
"We are really prepared to operate on all fronts as requested and as co-ordinated by the United States," Prime Minister Paul Martin said in Saskatoon.
"There are a large number of Canadians who are on their way down there to help."
...The offers of help could even extend to opening Canadian homes to refugees.
Speaking in Edmonton, Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan said Ottawa is looking at offers to bring victims of the hurricane to Canada temporarily.
She said Canadians have been moved by images of homeless people wandering abandoned freeways in New Orleans, carrying their possessions in garbage cans.
"People here in Canada, especially in Atlantic Canada because of that Acadian connection, felt that 'well, maybe we could take some of these people in, especially the children. We could offer them a place of temporary refuge,'" McLellan said.
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