Bush Aide: U.S. Image Tarnished By Looting After The Hurricane
Bush aide: U.S. image tarnished by looting after the hurricane
http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs...0310/1117/news
(Gold9472: Yeah, because scrounging for survival is a horrible thing to do. Launching pre-emptive wars against other countries is looked upon favorably by other nations. That's what we need to keep doing.)
September 09. 2005 6:01AM
WASHINGTON - Karen Hughes, who officially takes her job today as head of the nation's image-building effort abroad, said Thursday that Hurricane Katrina has complicated her already formidable task.
But while much of the international criticism has centered on the Bush administration's response to the storm, Hughes said something else is a problem for America's image around the world: the crime that followed.
"The images of crime being committed in the face of an awful natural disaster is hard for anyone to understand, people around the world and Americans. It sickens me as an American," she said. "How could criminals prey on vulnerable elderly citizens and children during a time of such horror?"
Like President Bush, Hughes acknowledged that the overall government response effort has been flawed, but she did not include that as a reason why the image of the United States might further suffer as a result of the storm.
Hughes, a longtime Bush aide and confidante, takes the oath of office today as the State Department's undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, where her job is to improve America's global image.
Much of the international reaction to the hurricane has keyed on the administration's response time. A Korea Herald editorial this week said it was "unbelievable that in America, a country the envy of most of the world's people, residents died by the thousands in a flood, corpses floated in the streets, were left on curbs and even astride the entrances to emergency relief centers."
"While media crews from around the world dispatched the gruesome pictures, rescue workers had not yet arrived," the newspaper said in the editorial.
In an interview at the State Department, Hughes touched lightly on potential world reaction to the relief and recovery effort.
"We saw pictures on Thursday of people who were waiting to be rescued and didn't feel that we had arrived quickly enough," she said, adding that Bush "has acknowledged that we have to do better and we want to do better."
"But what I will challenge in any stories I see is any idea that we didn't want to help people. We certainly wanted to help everyone," Hughes said, noting that a disproportionate number of the hardest-hit victims are black.
"It's offensive to me to suggest that somehow, as I've seen some headlines and some reports do, that people, that Americans weren't helped because they are poor or because of their race," Hughes said. "That is anti-American. That is not what our country is about."
Hughes said it was "unfortunate that this natural disaster disproportionately affected people of one race and one income level."
It is the images of post-storm crime that could do the most damage to the U.S. image abroad, according to Hughes.
"People are seeing things that no one likes to see," Hughes said. "We've seen criminals try to prey on vulnerable people in the midst of a tragedy, and that's horrible."
"On the other hand, we've seen, especially in Texas, the generosity of thousands of people, an incredible outpouring," she said.
The images of Americans helping Americans will play well around the world, Hughes said. But the reports of crime will not, she said. "Unfortunately, criminals exist in America. Criminals exist in other places around the world. We are going to have to address that in our communications," she said.
