Open Letter to the US

Now, as you all will know by now, Old Ken is not the most political guy out there. But, as I have recently happened across the letter below with this strange snapshot above (which I imagine is a stylized view of the planet earth), but including neither address nor signature. Nonetheless, I figured I might as well post them here as a kind of "open letter." Heaven knows, we need all the ideas we can get at the moment. Anyway, enough of my yappin.' Here it is:

"While I am currently living in England, I continue to follow news at home assiduously. Yet, watching the horrific images of my brothers and sisters dying in the Gulf Coast region over the past week, I am now moved to write—to share my deep sadness at both this overwhelming human tragedy and the disgraceful way our country has reacted to it.

"Many commentators in the American media have connected the ravages of Katrina to the war in Iraq. They have noted how budgets allocated to reinforce the levees around New Orleans were slashed to fund defense spending, despite ample warning that the weakened dykes might burst. They have noted how significant portions of the local National Guard were unavailable because of their deployment in Iraq. Further analogy might well be made between the abominable conditions to which New Orleans’ residents were subjected and the power outages and lack of basic services through which average citizens of Baghdad have been made to suffer since the U.S. invasion.

"Yet, such connections between the deplorable spectacle in New Orleans and the seething morass of current Iraq aside, one central question has been repeated over and over by the press here in Britain. That is: how could the United States—the richest country in the world and its sole superpower—abandon its own people in their moment of such dire, desperate need?

"Certainly there were logistical difficulties in communicating between storm-battered communities. Damage to physical infrastructure no doubt hampered delivery of critical aid to the destitute along the Gulf Coast. Yet, having recently documented the Asian tsunami—a disaster of far greater magnitude, which struck a broad swathe of highly impoverished nations—many British reporters have been flabbergasted by the lethargic, inefficient and generally lackadaisical American response, one which suffers mightily when compared with the efforts made in South Asia.

"Why has this happened? Whether we voted for the present administration or not, we have allowed this disgrace to happen. Watching the suffering ravaged upon our nation’s poorest, weakest, and sickest (many of them African American), I have felt such shame and sickening rage that we have allowed the efforts of the civil rights movement and progressive campaigners to be brought to this sickening nadir—from the 'War on Poverty' to a straight-up war on the poor.

"Would that we might truly remember the words of Emma Lazarus inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty: 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses … the homeless, tempest tossed, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.' When the lights went out in New Orleans, where were we? The shocked eyes of the world are on us as we search for some answers."

London, UK