Originally Posted by Strange Famous

The human cost of the tragedy in New Orleans is surely huge, and the imcompetence of the government in dealing with, not to metion the latent racism that this disaster has unleasged, has I'm sure been covered in depth in many places.

But my thought is, is this the decline of America itself as a superpower? (in the same way that Russia has declined since the 1980's)... what is the pyschological damage done to a nation by not only its utter powerlessness to protect its people, but by the fact that as a nation it is possible to fill the area with new's crew's and media reporting, but not to get enough food or water there, ot to be incapable of evacuating a large sports stadium in a majort American city.

The financial and social cost will be huge, in my opinion New Orleans is not recoverable - or at least the cost of recovery is far higher than that of relocation. But for a city of 1.2 million to be destroy - this has to have a huge impact.

A lot of people have talked about America's economy being on dangerous ground, the financial cost of the campaign in Iraq has been huge.. my feeling is that America cannot endure this disaster and remain a superpower on a global scale.

America will not become poor overnight, nor will it become without military power... but I dont think America can dominate the political agenda as it has done. Already China and the EU are challenging America economically.

All history teaches us that every empire in history will collapse, every superpower will either be toppled or will fade. I believe we are now witnessing the fading of American power. This disaster has shown weaknesses in the American society that may have been effectively covered up, it will cause pyschological damage to the general will of the nation, the economic and social damage is massive.

Of course, first and foremost before any of this... this is a human tragedy of great magnitude. It would be wrong to make comparisons to the Boxing Day tsunami, but a massive amount of innocent life has been lost.

But I think also, the long term effects now are starting to be considered.

I am also interested to see if Bush can survive the backlash to his handling of events,,, it seems that perhaps he has survived the worst... but he may now be a liability to his party they cannot afford to carry into the next election?