The President is in Rio de Janeiro while 1) Japan continues to suffer and reel, and 2) we attack Libya as part of a multi-national force to stop Ghadifi from inflicting pain on his own people, among other objectives. (Note: while this seems noble when it is Obama's presidency that is ending human suffering, the Bush administration suffered slings and arrows when they dared to bring this up as a good by-product of going after Saddam Hussein in a WMD hunt.) Anyhoo... the President's press secretary, in answering a correctly-put question about whether the President should be away during the Japanese crisis, bluntly said something to the effect that "let's be clear...this is a crisis in Japan - this is not a crisis in the U.S." (Paraphrasing.)
As a private citizen, and not the leader of the free world, if one of my best friends was suffering what would be the crisis of her life - gravely ill child, sudden spousal abandonment, death of extremely close family member - and I continued my trip to a workshop where, yeah, I might learn a few things, or improve my own workload, but on the whole could have re-scheduled and gone at another date, I would be considered not only a bad friend, but possibly incapable of true loyalty at all. And if I further related that to be completely honest, this tragedy had not happened to me, but to my friend, well...I might be viewed as extremely heartless, or possibly even dangerously obtuse to the world around me.
Japan...18,000 possibly dead in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami. Tragedy for a gentle nation and true friend. They deserve better.
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