Introduction:
Both events mentioned above had a long lasting impact on the United States with the former arguably causing much death and destruction than the latter and arguably the farthest reaching in terms of psychological losses.
However Hurricane Katrina which was also a natural event and not man made damaged the psyche of invincibility in the United States which also exposed glaring deficiencies in the organization of homeland security in the US and showed that the country suffered from a considerable malaise as regards organizational capabilities in this respect.
With 9/11, the problem was different as it laid bare the vulnerability of the United States to terrorist attacks which, one has to say was carried out with incredible audacity and an organizational capability which was second to none. This revealed the US had a lot of problems in assessing its own internal security problems which were pretty glaring and which showed that terrorists could infiltrate the country’s airports with impunity and without much problems.
The death toll for 9/11 exceeded 3000 persons but it also meant that the American psyche was hardly well prepared for what was to come. In fact the decisions to invade Afghanistan and Iraq were obviously partly rooted in the problem to control access to oil so 9/11 could have said to be an initial reaction to that and the money it cost was absolutely incredible and on a vast scale. Thus the American people ended up paying huge amounts of money to sustain two separate wars which did not bring about any material benefits accordingly.
With Hurricane Katrina one could observe the glaring deficiencies which existed in the US South were black people continued to suffer sub -standard housing and had difficulty to access several basic services. The rescue operation was terrifyingly incompetent and also led to the firing of several top officails who were responsible for homeland security. The hurricane’s effects were also devastating in the sense that it led to a mass exodus from certain states such as Louisiana were population displacements of several blacks led to a lessening of the Democratic leaning voters in that area. So the hurricane had a demographic effect on the United States too. Similar situations arose in Mississippi and Alabama who also suffered terribly as a result of the hurricane.
While both events cannot strictly be compared holistically, they do have many similarities deep down. First of all they were events which demolished the invincible myth of the American psyche and apart from that they elicited a strong reaction from the government which also led to the tightening of US security in various areas. The natural effects of Hurricane Katrina also led to population displacements on a scale never seen before. The huge costs of both events which were man made and natural is still being counted today although the indirect costs of 9/11 are pretty awesome to say the lreast and have impacted the budget deficit on an unprecedented scale which was never ever seen before. One may argue that Hurricane Katrina was a natural event but the unpreparedness of the nation to confront such a huge disaster was quite deplorable to say the least.
Works Cited:
Bin Laden claims responsibility for 9/11". CBC News. October 29, 2004. Retrieved 2011-09-01. "al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden appeared in a new message aired on an Arabic TV station Friday night, for the first time claiming direct responsibility for the 2001 attacks against the United States."
1 World Trade Center (Freedom Tower)". Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. Retrieved 2011-09-04.
9/11 Commission Report, pp. 4–14.
"The Attack Looms". 9/11 Commission Report. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. 2004. Retrieved 2011-09-01.
