As the story about the attack on Westgate Mall in Nigeria,
Kenya continues to unfold; witnesses, victims and reporters have testified that
the government has been slow to respond. It has been noticed that the first to
respond to the attack was actually “neighborhood watch volunteers, off-duty
police officers, armed Samaritans and friends and family members who were
notified by victims of the attack”. It took government officials and national
security hours to respond to the attack while victims were still inside of the
mall. The lack of urgency to respond to the situation gave the assailants even
more time to terrorize and murder innocent victims. It was stated in New York
Times “police officers and soldiers could not communicate with each other”.
From that statement we can assess that the response turned out to be chaotic
and unorganized and officials on a national level were simply not prepared for
this act of terrorism.
The government’s late response to the attack reminds me of
the natural disaster that occurred in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina
struck. It took hours, days, weeks and close to months for victims to be
rescued from the horrendous conditions that the storm left behind. Later, it
was revealed that there might have been some underlying factors of why there
was a delay in the response. Of course, a natural phenomenon and an intentional
act of terrorism are different in their aspects and we do not know as of yet
the cause of why it took as long as it did for national security to respond to
Kenya. However, the response from U.S. government and national security is
similar in both scenarios.
10/3/2013
12:07PM
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