Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: New Orleans vista dall'Asia

From The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 9/15/05:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/240688_friedman15.html
U.S. losing 'world leader' luster
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
SINGAPORE --
There is something troublingly self-indulgent and slothful about
America today -- something that Katrina highlighted and that people
who live in countries where the laws of gravity still apply really
noticed.
It has rattled them -- like watching a parent melt down.
That is certainly the sense I got after observing the Katrina debacle
from half a world away here in Singapore -- a city-state that, if it
believes in anything, believes in good governance.
It may roll up the sidewalks pretty early here, and it may even fine
you if you spit out your gum, but if you had to choose anywhere in
Asia you would want to be caught in a typhoon, it would be Singapore.
Trust me, the head of civil defense here is not simply someone's
college roommate.
Indeed, Singapore believes so strongly that you have to get the
best-qualified and least-corruptible people you can into senior
positions in the government, judiciary and civil service, that its
pays its prime minister a salary of $1.1 million a year.
It pays its Cabinet ministers and Supreme Court justices just under $1
million a year, and pays judges and senior civil servants handsomely
down the line.
From its early years, good governance mattered in Singapore because
the ruling party was in a struggle for the people's hearts and minds
with the Communists, who were perceived to be both and non-corrupt
caring -- so the state had to be the same and more.
Even after the Communists faded, Singapore maintained a tradition of
good governance because as a country of only 4 million people with no
natural resources, it had to live by its wits.
It needed to run its economy and schools in a way that would extract
the maximum from each citizen, which is how 4 million people built
reserves of $100 billion.
"In the areas that are critical to our survival, like Defense, Finance
and the Ministry of Home Affairs, we look for the best talent," said
Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy.
"You lose New Orleans, and you have 100 other cities just like it. But
we're a city-state. We lose Singapore and there is nothing else. So
the standards of discipline are very high. There is a very high degree
of accountability in Singapore."
When a subway tunnel under construction collapsed here in April 2004
and four workers were killed, a government inquiry concluded that top
executives of the contracting company should be either fined or
jailed.
The discipline that the Cold War imposed on America, by contrast,
seems to have faded.
Last year, we cut the National Science Foundation budget, while
indulging absurd creationist theories in our schools and passing
pork-laden energy and transportation bills in the middle of an energy
crisis.
We let the families of the victims of 9/11 redesign our intelligence
organizations, and our president and Congress held a midnight session
about the health care of one woman, Terri Schiavo, while ignoring the
health crisis of 40 million uninsured.
Our economy seems to be fueled lately by either suing each other or
selling each other houses.
Our government launched a war in Iraq without any real plan for the
morning after, and it cut taxes in the middle of that war, ensuring
that future generations would get the bill.
Speaking of Katrina, Sumiko Tan, a columnist for the Sunday edition of
The Straits Times in Singapore, wrote:
"We were shocked at what we saw. Death and destruction from natural
disaster is par for the course. But the pictures of dead people left
uncollected on the streets, armed looters ransacking shops, survivors
desperate to be rescued, racial divisions -- these were truly out of
sync with what we'd imagined the land of the free to be, even if we
had encountered homelessness and violence on visits there.
"If America becomes so unglued when bad things happen in its own
backyard, how can it fulfill its role as leader of the world?"
Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his
Asian readers how the U.S. is changing.
"Today's conservatives," he wrote, "differ in one crucial aspect from
yesterday's conservatives: the latter believed in small government,
but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government
that it needed.
"The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that
there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it
does have.
"But it is not only government that doesn't show up when government is
starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't
show up either, sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't
show up, 'we're all in this together' doesn't show up."

 SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
Bell'articolo.
Interessante che il Seattle PI abbia deciso di pubblicarlo, specie
considerando che nel 2000 caldeggiavano per Bush (non mi ricordo nel
2004)