Don’t call us, we’ll call you
Mexico offered to help with the response to Harvey, and Trump’s administration responded with “We’ll call you if we need you.” Apparently that’s where it remains: Mexico offered help and the administration didn’t accept it.
They helped with Katrina, and Bush wasn’t such a shit that he said no thank you.
The U.S. government and Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to Katrina was widely criticized, but Americans came together to offer housing, clothing, meals and monetary help to the affected. President George W. Bush even accepted a huge offer of aid from Mexico.
The aid Mexico sent was no small thing — it was an extraordinary gesture, and it may have saved many lives. Marking the first time that Mexican troops had set foot on U.S. soil since the Mexican-American War in 1846, President Vicente Fox sent an army convoy and a naval vessel laden with food, water and medicine. By the end of their three-week operation in Louisiana and Mississippi, the Mexicans had served 170,000 meals, helped distribute more than 184,000 tons of supplies and conducted more than 500 medical consultations.
On Sunday, as Harvey was drowning Houston and environs, Trump was busy tweeting about The Wall.
With Mexico being one of the highest crime Nations in the world, we must have THE WALL. Mexico will pay for it through reimbursement/other.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 27, 2017
Late on Sunday, Mexico’s foreign ministry issued a statement responding to Trump’s tweets, as well as offering assistance, though without any specifics. The statement reiterates the Mexican government’s long-held position that it will not pay for a border wall “under any circumstances,” and that drug trafficking and related crime are a “shared problem.”
Then it moves on to Harvey. “The Mexican government takes this opportunity to express its full solidarity with the people and government of the United States for the damages caused by Hurricane Harvey in Texas, and express that we have offered the US government help and cooperation to be provided by different Mexican government agencies to deal with the impacts of this natural disaster — as good neighbors should always do in difficult times.”
Did Trump put the needs of people in Texas ahead of his own stupid fight-picking with Mexico? Of course he didn’t.
The offer would put Trump in a bind. Should he accept the generosity, which, to some of his supporters, might ring of hypocrisy and weakness? Or should he deny it, while Texans cope with a nightmare?
For now, the U.S. government is deferring that decision, essentially saying, “If we need you, we’ll call.”
In a statement emailed to The Washington Post late Sunday, a State Department spokesman said, “It is common during hurricanes and other significant weather events for the U.S. Government to be in close contact with our neighbors and partners in the region to share data and cooperate as needed and appropriate. If a need for assistance does arise, we will work with our partners, including Mexico, to determine the best way forward.”
As if the need for assistance were some distant contingency as opposed to what was happening right then.
Maybe Trump is holding out for aid from Russia.
JFC. Mexico is RIGHT THERE, offering help. Instead we’re going to send naval vessels from VIRGINIA that will take five days to arrive, when the Mexican aid could be happening right now. Trump, you petty fool.
Trump probably figures if he lets the Mexicans come in to help, they won’t go home.
I wonder if they can cut the federal government out and just deal with Texas. Slap them with a hurricane and even Texan politicians may come down with sense.
I guess that clinches it – Europe, Asia, and now Latin America all hate us, thanks to Trump. What a nasty evil man. Time to impeach him. He is unfit to serve in the office.
If he accepts Mexican help, he can’t paint all Mexicans as rapists and drug smugglers. Part of the power of the story of the Good Samaritan was that Samaritans were looked down upon and despised by Jews, yet the Samaritan ends up being the good guy. Trump’s anti-Mexico stance loses impact if Mexicans are allowed to do something laudable despite his abuse. Can’t have that.
@Claire Ramsey (#5), as a European (Dutch, but having lived for extended periods in four EU countries, so I can obviously speak for all of us without fear of controversy) I can tell you I don’t hate the USA. I don’t love it either, nor am I indifferent to it. The US is simply too big a thing to have a single emotion about. Sure, your current political landscape is fucked up and I’m pretty worried about both the short-term and long-term effects it may have on everyone, everywhere, but it’s hard to blame Republicans for being evil. It’s just what they do. I wish my cats would stop hunting and eating parasite infested rodents, but I can’t get mad at them for doing it. If anything it’s the Democrats who really anger me. Bunch of namby-pamby, neoliberal, sell-out cowards who can’t even bring themselves to fight for what should be their core beliefs on the brink of annihilation. And it’s much the same in Europe, except here the opposition is just naked amoral capitalism rather than an overtly racist, misogynist, anti-intellectual, religiously fundamentalist ruling class.
Republicans are not cats. They do what they do not because of some inherent Republican gene that makes them crap on the “lower” orders. They are self-entitled gits who benefited from very liberal policies that existed in the schools they attended, the jobs they worked, and so forth, and now want to destroy that for everyone else. In short, after they get across the bridge with the help of the Billy Goats Gruff, they kill the Billy Goats, then burn the bridge, so everyone else can stay on their side or get eaten by the troll. I don’t blame my cat for hunting; I do blame the Republicans for their actions. They have worked and schemed to get here.
And yes, I blame the Dems for being namby-pamby. They need a backbone, and once in a while, it looks like they’re getting one, but then someone looks at them cross-eyed and they melt back into a worm-like blob of protoplasm and let the Repubs run amok.
I also think the media has a great deal of the blame. The ratings chase makes the Republicans more interesting (particularly when they are nasty), and they have a sense of “fairness” that assumes that they need to overcome the so-called liberal bias of the media by giving equal air time to Republicans. But that didn’t stop there – the Republicans are like my older sister, who used to hide Christmas presents behind her, and then everyone would look at the tiny pile, forget how many she’d opened, and feel horrible that she’d gotten fewer than anyone else. So the next year she would get more…and do it again. And then again. The Republicans could literally be the only voices allowed on TV or the Internet and they would still complain that they didn’t have a voice. They do that because it works. It makes people feel bad about treating them badly.
And finally, I blame the American sense of “fair play”. This idea of “fair play” is so simplistically rendered it skews the view of the world. The fallacy of the golden mean – our pundits continually talk about “moderates” and “centrists” as if that were the only position that could possibly be right, and are not required to present a single shred of evidence to support that position because we are so immersed in the culture of the golden mean that everyone wants to “split the difference”, assuming that extreme views could never be accurate. Then the Republicans, with the help of the media, and the Dems trailing along behind, move the middle further and further right until Richard Nixon looks liberal comparatively.
Yes, I blame the Republicans, and I blame them every single day. The others are guilty, yes, but the largest share of guilt lies with the Republicans who have been deliberately remaking this country and the narrative of this country to ensure that people are scared witless, vote for regressive politicians, and think all taxes are going to make sure that women of color have zillions of babies without any consequences (no evidence to support that last one, but people will point you to some anecdote about a Cadillac-driving welfare queen, and never both to check if it’s true. It fits several prejudices – prejudices against people of color, prejudices against the poor, prejudices against women). They have taken what for some may have been vague, abstract fears and whipped them into a frenzy.
How to prove that 2 + 2 = 5:
You say it’s 4.
I say it’s 6.
Therefore the “neutral”, “unbiased” answer is 5.
Q.E.D.
“… the first time that Mexican troops had set foot on US soil since the Mexican-American war…”
I couldn’t help laughing. It was the US troops who set foot on Mexican soil and never gave it back.
RJW, that’s actually a really good point!
Rob,
I learned, only recently, of the huge area of land that the US conquered from Mexico. It’s roughly what is now the Southern and Western US, excluding the area of the Louisiana purchase. It’s interesting that Canda escaped a similar fate to Mexico. Presumably the reason it was part of the British Empire, the Mexicans were on their own.
RJW, i’d known for some time, but for whatever reason the sentence didn’t jar with me until you pointed it out.
It wasn’t even a straight out issue of conquering. There are parallels with Russia’s behaviour over Crimea or Ossetia (or any number of other regimes really). There was a period of encouraged migration of settlers into the region, who then start agitating to become part of their home country. Acts of what would these days be described as terrorism, but are passed off as oppressed minorities fighting for their rights and finally an army of liberation turns up to protect ‘their’ people.
The only way to hold a high moral ground is to acknowledge the past and demonstrate that you will not repeat it. Too many countries and people say one thing and do another. Repeatedly.
Rob,
I disagree, the process you’ve described was definitely conquest, by infiltration and subversion with the occasional outbreak of violence.
I’ve noticed some concern by right wing groups in the US that the process could be reversed by the large Hispanic population in the south of the country. A reconquista in the Americas perhaps, only history will tell.
I agree with your final sentence, particularly when a large serve of hypocrisy is added.
Oh it’s conquest for sure. My point was simply that the process differed from the more conventional troops on the ground as the first event type of conquest.