There is a reason that the President’s misfortunes multiply faster than the germs and mosquitoes breeding in the quagmire that infects New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The Gods must be angry, as well they should be.

The Gods favor the poor above all others. Bush, on the other hand, has favored the rich above all others. President Bush obviously does not understand the words of John F Kennedy who said:

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

Bush has given the wealthy tax cuts and wants to repeal the estate tax, a huge gift to the very rich. The poverty rate has increased under his administration to 12.7 per cent of the population, as the US Census Bureau pointed out on the very day that hurricane Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans, where 23 per cent of the population, mostly people of color, was living below the poverty line. The poor emerged for all to see as they suffered so horribly in the Superdome, which became the inner circle of Dante’s hell. The world was watching with eyes wide open as the world’s richest power in terms of creature comforts showed it was one of the poorest in terms of concern for its most vulnerable citizens. It is not only the poor within the American family that the Bush administration has ignored, the poor of the human family are treated with almost equal disdain. The United States ranks a lowly twenty-first on a list of countries by amount of foreign aid offered per capita, ranking just below Italy and above Lesotho.

Stewardship of the environment is a common value of all the world’s religions yet Bush has seen fit to pray at the altar where oil companies are gods. His energy bill provides tens of billions of subsidies to oil companies and does precisely what Bush intended when he said: “we want an energy bill that encourages consumption.” The so-called Clean Air Act is less about clean air than about protecting the interests of heavy industry. The Kyoto Treaty set pollution abatement goals that would improve the quality of live of millions. Bush’s response was to ignore the good of the many because the treaty would “hurt the US economy.” The Gods support an environmental justice that combines concern for the earth with concern for the poor, in a world where a safe environment is viewed as a humanitarian right.

Above all the Gods are angry because the last remaining superpower has chosen to wage an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq. Bush has not noticed that the anguished faces of the poor in New Orleans are replicated every day in Baghdad. The Gods have noticed. Their anger brings to mind the old Negro spiritual:

God gave Noah a rainbow for a sign
No more water,
The fire next time.

Peter Spalding is a retired senior Foreign Service Officer writing a book on how to achieve a moral foreign policy. He can be reached at pfs202@aol.com.