American resilience

I find the cartoon on Opinion page (Nov. 1) a bit disgusting. The cartoon shows a lightning striking the Statue of Liberty (dressed as Obama) while hitting its torch (shown as an arrow to depicting a warmongering mentality).
On surface it may look an innocent depiction of what the US experienced in last few days, however, there are people who are terming the destruction the Hurricane Sandy has brought as a revenge of eternal forces for the Americans’ deeds.
Natural calamities could hit anyone anywhere on this globe whether it’s devastating earthquake in Pakistan (2005) wherein more than 75,000 people died or tsunami in 2004 which brought widespread destruction on Ache, Indonesia killing around 170,000 people while above 500,000 were left homeless.
In fact, we need to learn lessons from Sandy that how the Americans are able to precisely predict the direction, intensity and timing of this superstorm which helped them evacuate millions of people to safety, how come they are so quick and efficient in the repair and cleanup operations, how a natural calamity does not turn into a political blame game between federal and state governments. — Masood Khan, Jubail