Thursday, November 14, 2013

The Blame Game Begins


No one could have prepared for this. If the President ordered the whole of Leyte evacuated, everyone would have thought he's crazy. And even then, Yolanda would have gone easily north to Samar or south to Mindanao.

In the same way, no disaster relief operation will ever be satisfactory. Even if we have 300 C130s on standby, there will still be at least one old lolo we cannot reach on time. And you and I will still be up in arms for the sake of that one lolo. And that is understandable.

It's never quick enough, never prepared enough, never coordinated enough. It was never so for the US, for Haiti, for Bali, for Japan and it will never be for any other country. People have died and are dying, and you and I are frustrated. We want someone's head to roll for this. And guess who's head is the easy target?

You and I are trying to make sense of this calamity by looking for a villain. There has to be one, right? It has to be the President, right?

It's not. And the sooner you and I get over that fact, the better we can cope with the reality that no person will have the singular honor of being blamed for this mess.

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