The United Nations Comes To Me

Composed at the Mountaineer Resort outside Pittsburgh--

The famed United Nations (UN) is a popular tourist destination in New York City.  Many people travel to visit the venerable agency, but last weekend, the UN came to me in the personage of one Romain Kohn. 

He's French, so Mr. Kohn pronounces his first name "Ro-mahn" rather than like the lettuce.  At left is a photo of Romain, me and a woman we'll call The Hat Lady.

The title on his United Nations business card reads: "Public Information Support Adviser, Advocacy and Public Information Section, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs"

How's that for an official government title?

Romain and I both spoke at a conference here.  I learned a lot from him as he put some specific world events in perspective for me. 

Americans have been extremely critical of the United States government regarding its slow response time to aid Katrina victims.  Around 2,000 people died during the catastrophe and surely we could have done a better job with the situation.

Here's some worldly perspective on the Katrina statistic.  During the same time period, an earthquake hit the Pakistan region and killed around 80,000 people.  This disaster was of a much larger scale than Katrina, but Americans don't seem to talk about it as much, perhaps because Pakistan is so far away.

A third tragedy occurred around the time of the earthquake and Katrina.  The tsunami killed around 225,000 people.  This is over twice the number of deaths from the earthquake and two thousand times more fatalities than Katrina. 

All three of these events were natural disasters of incomprehensible terror and pain, yet Americans can't stop thinking about or talking about the smaller of the three incidents, perhaps because it happened to us and our own.

Did you remember these numbers?

Comments

[Brad Walker]

All three events were tragic but I think you are correct -- Katrina happened to us.

It also seems that we made a quicker response to the tsunami event than we did our own catastrophe. Why does it seem this way?

I personally put the blame on the local governments for not providing more evacuation support prior to Katrina making landfall. Not to put all the blame on government entities, there were many people who were aware of the severity of the storm but made no effort to leave yet, they cry foul now and expect the government to fix their plight. The bottom line is we have no accountability for our actions anymore. Whether you are a high ranking government official or the poorest of our poor, it's never my fault.