Open letter from Michael Moore to George Bush at the time of Cyclone Katrina
Open letter from Michael Moore to the President of the United States
September 6, 2005
Dear Mr. Bush:
Where are all your helicopters? Do you have any idea? We are on the fifth day of the Katrina cataclysm and thousands of people are still stuck in New Orleans; they need to be hoisted out by helicopter. Damn it; where on earth could you have misplaced all your military helicopters?
Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Boy, oh boy, what a saga that was!
Oh, and also, all the soldiers of our National Guard, do you know where they went? We could really use them, right here, right now, for the kind of things they signed up to do, like "contributing to disaster relief operations in the event of a national catastrophe." How come they weren't there, to begin with?
Last Thursday, I was in South Florida. I was sitting outside when the eye of Cyclone Katrina passed right over my head. It was still only a force 1 cyclone, but it was already bad enough. There were eleven dead and even today, some households still had no
electricity. That evening, the weatherman said that this cyclone was heading toward New Orleans. And that was still last Thursday! Did nobody tell you anything? I know full well that you didn't want to interrupt your vacation under any circumstances and I also know that you don't like bad news. And on top of that, you had charity events to attend and mothers of soldiers killed in Iraq to ignore and drag through the mud. One thing is certain: you really put her in her place, that one!
I particularly appreciated when, the day after the cyclone, instead of flying to Louisiana, you went to San Diego to party with your business buddies. Don't let people criticize you for that - after all, the cyclone was OVER, and what could you have done anyway: plug the breach in the levee? How? With your finger? And don't listen to those people who, in the days to come, will reveal how you specifically cut the budget of the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans this summer, for the third
consecutive year. Just tell them that, even if you hadn't cut the maintenance budgets for those levees, there wouldn't have been any Army Corps engineers to repair them anyway, because you had a much more important project to offer them:
BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!
On the third day of the disaster, when you finally decided to leave your vacation retreat, I must say I was moved by the way you asked the pilot of your private presidential plane Air Force One to descend below the clouds, so that you could see New Orleans, and so that you could get a quick sense of the disaster. Hey, I know full well that you couldn't stop, grab a bullhorn, climb onto some ruin and play the role of commander in chief... Me have been there. Me have done that...
Of course, there will be people who will try to politicize this tragedy and use it against you. Just let your press office create a diversion. Don't respond to any attack.
Even those damn scientists who predicted that this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico keeps getting warmer and that makes an hurricane like the one that just occurred inevitable. Ignore them, them and all their global warming scaredy-cats. There was nothing unusual about this hurricane which was so wide that it was as if we had been hit by a force 4 tornado stretching from New York to Cleveland.
No, Mr. Bush, you just carry on as if nothing happened. After all, it's not your fault if 30% of the population of New Orleans lives below the poverty line and if tens of thousands of inhabitants had no means of transportation that would have allowed them to get out of the city. Don't kid yourself: they're black! I mean, it's not as if this had happened in Kennebunkport. Can you imagine: leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing, absolutely NOTHING to do with this story! Stay where you are, Mr. Bush. Just find a few of your military helicopters and send them over there. Easy: just act as if the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of Mexico were over by Tikrit.
Yours truly, Michael Moore
Dear Mr. Bush:
Where are all your helicopters? Do you have any idea? We are on the fifth day of the Katrina cataclysm and thousands of people are still stuck in New Orleans; they need to be hoisted out by helicopter. Damn it; where on earth could you have misplaced all your military helicopters?
Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Boy, oh boy, what a saga that was!
Oh, and also, all the soldiers of our National Guard, do you know where they went? We could really use them, right here, right now, for the kind of things they signed up to do, like "contributing to disaster relief operations in the event of a national catastrophe." How come they weren't there, to begin with?
Last Thursday, I was in South Florida. I was sitting outside when the eye of Cyclone Katrina passed right over my head. It was still only a force 1 cyclone, but it was already bad enough. There were eleven dead and even today, some households still had no
electricity. That evening, the weatherman said that this cyclone was heading toward New Orleans. And that was still last Thursday! Did nobody tell you anything? I know full well that you didn't want to interrupt your vacation under any circumstances and I also know that you don't like bad news. And on top of that, you had charity events to attend and mothers of soldiers killed in Iraq to ignore and drag through the mud. One thing is certain: you really put her in her place, that one!
I particularly appreciated when, the day after the cyclone, instead of flying to Louisiana, you went to San Diego to party with your business buddies. Don't let people criticize you for that - after all, the cyclone was OVER, and what could you have done anyway: plug the breach in the levee? How? With your finger? And don't listen to those people who, in the days to come, will reveal how you specifically cut the budget of the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans this summer, for the third
consecutive year. Just tell them that, even if you hadn't cut the maintenance budgets for those levees, there wouldn't have been any Army Corps engineers to repair them anyway, because you had a much more important project to offer them:
BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!
On the third day of the disaster, when you finally decided to leave your vacation retreat, I must say I was moved by the way you asked the pilot of your private presidential plane Air Force One to descend below the clouds, so that you could see New Orleans, and so that you could get a quick sense of the disaster. Hey, I know full well that you couldn't stop, grab a bullhorn, climb onto some ruin and play the role of commander in chief... Me have been there. Me have done that...
Of course, there will be people who will try to politicize this tragedy and use it against you. Just let your press office create a diversion. Don't respond to any attack.
Even those damn scientists who predicted that this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico keeps getting warmer and that makes an hurricane like the one that just occurred inevitable. Ignore them, them and all their global warming scaredy-cats. There was nothing unusual about this hurricane which was so wide that it was as if we had been hit by a force 4 tornado stretching from New York to Cleveland.
No, Mr. Bush, you just carry on as if nothing happened. After all, it's not your fault if 30% of the population of New Orleans lives below the poverty line and if tens of thousands of inhabitants had no means of transportation that would have allowed them to get out of the city. Don't kid yourself: they're black! I mean, it's not as if this had happened in Kennebunkport. Can you imagine: leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing, absolutely NOTHING to do with this story! Stay where you are, Mr. Bush. Just find a few of your military helicopters and send them over there. Easy: just act as if the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of Mexico were over by Tikrit.
Yours truly, Michael Moore
Read this. It's staggering. It's in Libération of September 6.
****http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=321618
Back to Guide Back to Home page** **
**Number of visits to this page since September 6, 2005: **