If you Google for “disaster management graduate courses” you can find many fine institutions of higher education in the US and elsewhere that offer just such training. So you might think that the person appointed by Prez Bush to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency– the lead federal agency coordinating responses to Hurricane Katrina– might be someone with some, uh, background or experience in this important field?
Think again. As Laura Rozen of War and Piece revealed yesterday, Michael D. Brown, who has headed FEMA since 2003, “has no qualifications.” Rozen wrote that before he won the FEMA job, Brown,
- was an estate planning lawyer in Colorado and of counsel for the International Arabian Horse Association Legal Department.
The fact that Brown has terrifyingly little experience of managing disasters did not prevent him from going on CNN last night and, in essence, blaming the people who did not get out of New Orleans when the instructions to evacuate were issued for the fate that subsequently befell them.
No word from Brown, though, about how the scores of thousands of people without cars, or the hundreds of patients and staff in the city’s hospitals and nursing homes, were supposed to leave the city without any adequate logistical help being offered them.
Readers who haven’t read much yet about the situation in the city’s hospitals can get a general picture of what things were like in the large, publicly-owned “Charity Hospital” today– five days into the city’s trauma– from this AP account.
The US military/ National Guard was finally able to get some good convoys into Norlins today. Hopefully the humanitarian situation of those still in the city can improve as public order is restored and– just maybe– a rational plan for relief, belated evacuation and recovery gets underway.
But things will continue to be really tough for the two million or so (former) residents of the Gulf Coast for many months or even years to come. Can and should all of those towns and cities actually be rebuilt? How will the water- and storm-management plans be improved to deal with the even heavier storms that will be coming in over the decades ahead, thanks to global warming?
In addition, the consequences for the US economy will most likely be huge.
Paul Krugman had a strong column in the NYT today. He concluded it with this:
- I don’t think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn’t rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn’t get adequate armor.
At a fundamental level, I’d argue, our current leaders just aren’t serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don’t like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.
Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly that risk.
So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can’t-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those excuses, Americans are dying.
This idea that the Bush administration– and many other members of the US political elite– has a fundamental lack of understanding, or even an active contempt, for the fundamental demands of good governance is something I’ve been arguing for a while now. It’s a theme I hope to explore more here in JWN in the weeks ahead.
You see it (as Krugman noted) both at home and abroad.
I think one of the things that the Bushies and most other members of the US economic hyper-elite here seem to lack is any solid concept of egalitarian, democratic governance. They seem to have no concept of “we’re all in this together”– or even of the “we” to which such a statement might apply. I think that rather than thinking of themselves as fundamentally co-equal members of a democratic citizenry, they see themselves more in the way feudal leaders used to: people who because of their privileged economic and social position are “born to rule”– while the rest of us poor suckers are left to scrabble on our own for what we can get.
You see this in so very many aspects of US life: the lack of any national health insurance or social safety net; the intense privatization of so many functions that in other–much more developed– countries are carried out by the government; the deeply engrained hostility to taxation; the general climate of entitlement, hyper-individualism, and meanspirited-ness that those feudalists foster.
For my part, I’m going to be an optimist. I’ll certainly do everything I can do to provide help to the poor, the sick, the lame, and the disadvantaged of Norlins and the other Gulf Coast communities. But I think the best thing that any of us inside the US who really care about the fabric of our society can do over the longer haul is to commit to the struggle for deepseated structural change… All the Red Cross collection bins in the country can’t substitute for what a truly accountable (and decently resourced) network of national and state-level governments needs to do in a situation of major disaster. And nor should private organizations have to do these things… Not in any fundamentaly egalitarian national community in which people truly felt that “we are all in this together.”
My family and I happened to be in Cuba earlier this summer when the country was hit by Hurricane Dennis, a Cat 4 storm. The day before Dennis arrived we were out on a day trip touring around the south coast near Cienfuegos. As it turned out, this was almost exactly where Dennis made landfall.
Everyone knew that day that the hurricane would arrive soon. Our tour guide, Eric, explained to us that the Cuban government takes care of the people in these circumstances. He contrasted this to the US where, he explained, hurricanes cause thousands of deaths. When we returned to our hotel I told my wife that he was surely wrong and that hurricanes don’t cause very many deaths in the US. The statistics backed me up then. But not any more; after Katrina it now looks like Eric was right after all.
Coincidentally, Cuba conducted a scheduled nation-wide hurricane drill about a week before Dennis arrived. So the government was well prepared and managed to evaculate about a million or so people out of its path. There was heavy property damage which is very tough for such a poor country. The loss of life, while tragic, was comparatively light, about 15 people.
Three days ago, one American soldier went into hysterics upon hearing of the death of the three members of his family in New Orleans.
Corporal Nick Lancer shouted:”This is the curse of Iraq. My family paid for my crimes in Iraq. Send us back to help our families. God damn you Bush and Rumsfeld”.
Matters escalated when an officer tried, by force, to calm Lancer down. Lancer was then joined by other soldiers who started to beat the officer. The fighting escalated when other officers tried to intervene in the melee and the soldiers began attacking and hitting them with their riffle butts. This included the beating of Iraqi senior army officers who attempted to help the American officers.
The soldiers were shouting:”You scoundrels. We will throw you out to the Resistance to kill you. It is because of you that we are getting killed here”.
At one point, one of the soldiers radioed other fellow soldiers, who were out on patrols, to stop their mission and to return quickly to join them.”
People without cars, or the hundreds of patients and staff in the city’s hospitals and nursing homes,
Helena, not just that, I saw hundreds of prisoners locked up and the water almost reached to the tope of their shoulders no one can get out simply because they locked up!, who is responsibility of this dram?
Helena,
Question. What professional background and training have previous FEMA directors had?
I posted earlier a reference to a senior officer in the Army Corps of Engineers who stated that upgrading the levees to survive a cat 4 or 5 storm would take 30 years.
Question. What was the Federal Government doing 30 years ago? (BTW, that was about the time of the Jimma “the Idjit” Carter administration.)
Finally, read the CNN report that you yourself link to and cite. Brown did not “blame” the people who did not get out, he simply stated that those who did not heed warnings share in the responsibility. Big difference.
Salah, what is your source for the story on the US soldier?
JES: when you have no money, you cannot get out of city except by walking. In the event of a hurricane, even with three days notice, you can not walk fast enough to get away. Plus, they need to have somewhere to go!
RE: Cuba
In November 2001, hurricane Michelle hit Cuba. It was a category 4, recently downgraded from a category 5. Over 700,000 were evacuated. Mostly by buses. Electricity and gas are turned off for the whole area, which means water is also off. FIVE PEOPLE DIED.
And I wonder: why are Americans so stupid?
Today, I called my Senators, Representatives and two people in my Governor’s office. I have never called the Governor’s office before, but I figured that the federal government is useless if a hurricane hits NC. I discussed Cuba and how they handle things in a hurricane. I told them how I thought evacuations could be handled in NC by school buses and how people could be housed at schools. I told them that putting 20,000 or so in one big room (after they have been through a lot of trauma) is beyond stupid. It is getting down on your knees and begging for trouble.
Why are Americans so stupid?
JES wrote:
“Brown did not “blame” the people who did not get out, he simply stated that those who did not heed warnings share in the responsibility. Big difference.”
Nice argument. Those who drowned on the Titanic because there was no place left in the lifeboats so they couldn’t escape share in the responsibility of their own deaths because they were warned to leave ship when it was still floating on the ocean.
As usual Menno, the logic of the analogy is stunningly brilliant!
The source for Salah’s story about a mutiny is the Free Iraq blog
http://abutamam.blogspot.com/
based on an Arabic source, of which the English report is a straightforward translation. I rather think though that the original is the English.
There’s no independent confirmation. But then there would not be, would there? Centcom is hardly going to confirm mutiny events, nor the MSM.
JES, your objective comments are quite enlightening. In fact they make me think of something I should ask my father: When your mathematics professor asked you 60+ years ago, when you were a teenager, for a place to hide after he had been given the all-expenses-paid vacation awarded to all of his religion by some insistent roving travel agents, instead of crazily saying yes, why didn’t you say – “Well, you had ample warning, and means to get out? – I am not blaming you for not getting out earlier – there’s a big difference between this and blaming – but clearly, don’t you – and the local authorities of your wealthy community – share the responsibility? Don’t you bear a hell of a lot of responsibility for your own actions? Oh – and why did you join those partisans later and do all that awful looting? Didn’t you know it was criminal, even if necessary to survive, didn’t you know looters and terrorists should be shot on sight, wasn’t it just an excuse to take advantage of the situation, make money stealing and have fun as you said you had? Aren’t you ashamed your innocent little sister was tortured for your lawbreaking?”
I leave to others for now the wearisome task of casting doubt into your and others’ minds that perhaps this objectivity is not so objective after all, that perhaps it is desperate and above all irrational marshalling of meager evidence for an irrationally desired conclusion, when true rationality and objectivity and concern for the welfare of both countries you have lived in dictate conclusions about them far closer to Helena’s than your own. I’m getting drunk.
John R,
You’re getting drunk? Sounds like you already are drunk.
So, here’s what I think about your historical analogy. There were many who, after receiving the warning, did try to leave. Problem is they had nowhere to go. Do you remember the story of the SS St. Louis? Seems that there were a few countries who were willing to take in a few…”but not too many”.
Beginning in 1934, the Yishuv in Palestine began absorbing refugees. This was, after all the purpose of the Zionist movement, and, further, was the intention of the League of Nations Mandate (i.e. it was international law). At the same time, the Palestinian Arabs, first under the influence of the “foreign” member of the ikhwan, Iza ad-Din al-Qassam, and then under the leadership of Haj Amin al-Husayni began protesting violently, demanding that the British stop all immigration (which, in effect, they did by 1939).
So much for the Holocaust being a “European thing”. (You might want to check in with Salah on the farhud – also instigated by Haj Amin al-Husayni and his local lackey Fawzi al-Qauqji – that carried out in Baghdad and Basra in 1941.)
So, sir, why don’t you take your inappropriate analogies and your simplistic reasoning and…. The Holocaust was not a natural disaster. It, unlike a huricane could have been prevented by the actions of men.
BTW John R,
Did your father loot big-screen TVs, booze and jewelry, and then rape young girls?
Did your father loot big-screen TVs, booze and jewelry, and then rape young girls?
JES, are you suggesting that all the (black) refugees are morally responsible for their own plight because of their “irresponsibility”? Are you suggesting that all the (black) refugees are looters and rapists?
It certainly sounds like that.
With all due respect, how is that sort of thinking different from the sort that presages violence against a particular ethnic group?
Please explain, because I really don’t see the difference at all.
I believe personally that the terms people would be using to describe what has been happening in New Orleans (along with the type of emergency response) would be very, very different if it were a white, affluent population that were affected — if you can imagine for a moment that a white, affluent population somehow didn’t have access to cars, funds or alternative places to go, or weren’t required by their employers to keep working until the last minute, etc.
Question. What professional background and training have previous FEMA directors had?
Clinton’s head of FEMA, James Lee Witt, had been head of the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services for four years. Bush appointed two campaign staffers with no emergency experience.
For a comparison of FEMA under the Clinton and Bush administrations, see the WSJ article Hurricane Tests Emergency Agency At Time of Ferment.
. . .By 1993, there were calls on Capitol Hill to abolish the agency. The Clinton administration revitalized it instead. New FEMA chief James Lee Witt adopted what’s known as an all-hazards approach, based on the theory that responding to a disaster is essentially the same whether it is natural or manmade. The focus turned FEMA into an agency widely regarded as one of the government’s most effective.
. . .
(Under Bush) long-serving FEMA employees, unhappy with the loss of independence and in some cases with new policies, have been leaving FEMA in droves — taking their years of experience with them. Once the highest-ranked government office for worker satisfaction, FEMA is now dead last, according to surveys conducted by labor unions and the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management. . .
By the way, Brown certainly did sound as though he was complaining about those people who stayed in New Orleans, creating such problems for him.
vv and others,
FOR THE LAST TIME. WHERE DID I SAY ANY OF THIS. WHERE DID I EVEN IMPLY ANY OF THIS. WHERE DID I MAKE IT AN ETHNIC, SOCIO=ECONOMIC OR POLITICAL ISSUE? PLEASE SHOW ME. AS FAR AS I CAN TELL, YOU ARE THE ONES WHO MADE THIS AN ISSUE OTHER THAN WHAT IT WAS (WHICH WAS A NATURAL DISASTER) FROM THE VERY START BECAUSE IT SUITED YOUR OWN POLITICAL AGENDAS.
FOR YOUR INFORMATION, THIS MORNING WAS THE FIRST TIME THAT I ACTUALLY SAW VIDEO COVERAGE OF THE DISASTER.
JES, you know those kind of people at social gatherings who seek to hog all the discourse, and repeat the same arguments again and again getting shriller, more belligerent, and more ad-hominem all the time?
I’m afraid, friend, that you presence here is becoming increasingly like that.
I see that you’ve posted ten of the 31 comments on this recent post, and four of the 13 on this post so far. Oops, make that five out of 14. This is known as hogging the discourse.
In fact, you might want to (re-?)visit the commenters’ guidelines here, in which case you could note that numbers 3,4, 5, 6, and 7 all seem to be things you need to bear in mind. Including this one:
Try not to comment more than once in every five or six comments in any single discussion. If you have more to say, post those lengthier thoughts on your own blog or website and put in a hyperlink to them.
Perhaps your next comment would simply consist of that hyperlink, and anyone who wants to could come over and read your thoughts on your website rather than mine.
No Preference. Thanks for that information and for taking my question seriously, which was my intent.
Regarding Brown, I don’t know what he sounded like, because I didn’t hear him.
At any rate, I’m going to get off this thread simply because so many attribute things to me that I did not say, and apparently did not take the trouble to actually read what I wrote (and even ask questions if things were unclear).
Let me sum up by saying this. What happened on the Gulf Coast was a terrible tragedy. It was, in my opinion, a natural disaster that, by all accounts that I’ve seen could not have been avoided given the current state of affairs that apparently is the result of years of neglect. It did not happen because the US backed out of Kyoto. It did not happen because of the war in Iraq. It did not happen because of cuts in Army Corps of Engineering funding. It happened because of the unfortunate mixing of warm and cold air somewhere out in the Atlantic.
It is a tragedy for people irrespective of their race, ethnicity, religion or political affiliation. There are criminals operating in those areas (although from what I have heard on TV most recently, this thankfully appears to have been exaggerated in many cases). I do not know (or assume) anything about the race, ethnicity, religion or political affiliation of those criminals, and they should be dealt with harshly, in my opinion, for taking such cynical advantage of the tragedy of others.
Finally, and this has been my point all along, I think that it is highly cynical and crass of people to use this tragedy to bolster their partisan political arguments. As I have said several times, there is plenty of blame to go around – at the Federal, State and Local government levels.
Well Helena, it seems that you haven’t even considered the possibilty that I had to repeat myself, because people have not taken the opportunity to, or accorded me the courtesy, of actually reading what I have written, instead preferring to attack me for what they assume I have said. (If you look back, you will find that when I misread something that Shirin wrote, I was quick to apologize.)
So, I’ll just vacate the premesis, so you won’t have to tolerate my shrillness (and the diversity of opinion). If you want to see what I think about a variety of things, including your analyses, you are free to visit
Now that JES has made his final point, maybe somebody should state in direct terms what most of us know to be the case.
The mortality in natural disasters of given magnitude is statistically proportional to the material and social wealth of the afflicted society.
That’s a fact, for sure, but it is not the only way of looking at the matter.
Human beings secure their own survival by the work of their hands. That, together with their social nature, is what makes them human and different from all other animals.
In terms of the design of dwellings and cities, this means designing for the anticipated worst situation in the life of the city. This would be quantified as the fifty-year rainstorm or the 100-year hurricane, or something of that sort.
This hurricane (Katrina) may possibly have been outside the design limit of the regulations, but I don’t think so. The levees and all the other works and provisions of forces, rations, water supplies, generators &c were based upon the anticipation of precisely this event, which is normal for the area, and only unpredictable in terms of its timing and exact point of arrival.
That is why it is correct to say that the deaths are to be blamed on humans, and not on nature.
The orderly and planned Havana evacuation of 700,000 avoided death for all except 5 people. I’m sure the Cubans would be the first to say: Five is too many! One is too many!
We don’t yet know how many have died. My guess is that it will be roughly the same as the Iraqi death toll by US/British military violence since March, 2003, which is about 20,000. It is very sad.
What is of interest now is to study the subjective US reaction. It seems, for example, that there is an outbreak of overt racism on the Internet, directly stimulated by the New Orleans disaster.
The argument I have set out above is not controversial. All designers of buildings are familiar with it, for example. Yet it will probably be repudiated in the USA loudly and publicly, by the likes of JES, because it is politically inconvenient. So we return inevitably to the political dimension. Millions of people in the USA know what is right and wrong. But somehow, the lunatics remain in charge of the asylum. The consequence is death. What is to be done? You tell me, good US people.
For Clarity:
I wrote “The mortality in natural disasters of given magnitude is statistically proportional to the material and social wealth of the afflicted society.”
I mean that societies with more material and social wealth will lose fewer people, pro rata, than societies with lesser resources.
Sorry if that was not clear.
This may be a breach of blog etiquette, I’m not sure. But I thought the following comment posted by Anonymous at Today in Iraq was intriguing and wanted to share it with y’all:
“New Orleans
here’s the plan ship the poorest as far away as we can they will not ever be back keep reporters away so the extent of damage is not known. Payoff homeowners et al with federally subsidized insurance. Total Loss. bulldoze large tracts of real estate for “health concerns” contractors/developers buy up these parcels at federally subsidized low rates intended for reconstruction. visible developers are financed by cash money from silent partners in Texas. No bank financing needed because of large cash on hand. don’t tell them I told you because I will be sleeping with Huey Long. I am not joking.
Anonymous | Email | Homepage | 09.02.05 – 2:23 pm |”
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/yankeedoodle/112562268649608912/#226797
No breach that I know of, John C. You gave due attribution.
Susan.USA:
Report of a Mutiny amongst Occupation Soldiers
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/62067
independent Democrats who are not
JES, you know those kind of people at social gatherings who seek to hog all the discourse, and repeat the same arguments again and again getting shriller, more belligerent, and more ad-hominem all the time?
helena, your comments page is filled with shrill repetitive nonsense from the likes of salah, shirin, etc. please get a clue.
arbuthnot
Can you and all like you leave without be ugly, this is the sort of people we hear again and again they keep repeats the lies and presented some stories to gain the sympathy showing they are so innocents and charmed in reality they aren
‘it was always the terror of the Delta”
By Donna Tartt
04/09/2005
The doctors and nurses and rescue workers who stayed at their posts haven’t had their repeated pleas for relief answered. There doesn’t seem to be any centralised information.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/09/04/do0403.xml
By Simon Jenkins
“Seeing looters filmed on the streets of New Orleans reminded me of an American official outside Baghdad
Those who like JES keep defending the Bushies even in their inapt response to the hurricane should hear what the mayor of New Orleans thinks about the actual federal government (this links to an mp3 file).
Those who blames the victimes for what succeeded them should read testimonies at the live journal I wasn’t able to find permalinks. So here is the example of a bar owner :
“Whether you think I’m a stupid bitch for staying or not, the fact remains that because of us staying dozens of people got fed for free on Monday and early Tuesday as we cooked up the food in our kitchen and served it without asking for money. People were able to come and get water, food, drinks and good spirits because we stayed. And when we did decide to leave, we took people with us that otherwise had no means of getting out of the city, even though they were piled on top of each other in the van and we had to drill holes in abandoned cars’ gas tanks to get enough fuel to leave the city. We were on the road for the past two days, dropping people off where they needed to go, staying with friends and family, or catching flights home. You may think Flanagan’s is just a bar to me and that we only stayed so we could “party” or something. We stayed because it is OUR FUCKING BUSINESS. Our lifeblood, our home and our family. We couldn’t leave it any sooner than you’d chop off your own arm. It was hard enough to do it out of absolute necessity, and god only knows if there will even be anything to come back to. Not to mention the people I know who may or may not still be there that I couldn’t take with me because they weren’t holed up with us, and I hope with all my heart that they are all alive and well and will be in touch when they can be. Sooner or later, everyone has a life changing event, catastrophic or otherwise. At least I got to choose mine. I chose to stay and I chose to hope and I chose to help. We didn’t hurt anyone and we defended those who stayed with us from anyone hurting them. No matter what you say, you can’t take that away from me.”
If you don’t see the testimony of Gregory S. Henderson, make a search on his name. His testimony is too long to quote here, but poignant. He is a physician and helped to set up a makeshift hospital. Among other things, he describes how the people are looting in Canal street, but also why they have been doing so. Near the end he asks : The biggest question to all of us is where is the national guard. We hear jet fighters and helicopters, but no real armed presence, and hence the rampant looting. There is no Red Cross and no Salvation Army.
”Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.”
Vacation is Over… an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush
Why Tikrit? born city of Saddam, first city returned to the hands of local police, when US troops entered the city all we saw the 72 Russian Tanks parking no damage no battel that Republican Grads should do their job as Saddam asked Iraqi to fight the American, all Iraqi expected that this city will be vanished because the most heated city in Iraq for there rudeness of its people and the long suffering of Iraqis from their born dictator.
Tikrit saved by American as Ministry of Oil, All Oil Fields and All Saddam Castles…..!!
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php
Surely the only concept Bush has of governance is that of occupying the White House for sufficient time to allow the Federal treasury to be looted by the well-to-do and other members of his constituency. Bush just takes up space, standing in the way of any reform, while the high end looting takes place.
Helena I think you might like to have a look here:
http://corrente.blogspot.com/2005/09/piratization-of-emergency-management.html
It is also well worth opening the comments following some of the links given there.
Also the do want some help in tracking this down so some googling would be useful.
“Piratization of Emergency Management” seems to me to exactly describe what went on.
As i’ve remarked elsewhere an accountability moment or two might be no bad thing. As I’ve also remarked google’s cache is invaluable
cache:url
Christiane,
Thanks so much for posting that, and for the link to more. On the other thread here, we were arguing about the ‘responsibility’ of those who did not leave, and I thought at the time of all the reasons why one would choose to stay, even if you had the means to leave. Staying to help, and staying to protect your home or business were two that came quickly to mind – it’s good to ‘hear’ the voices of people who made the choice for those, and other reasons.
occupying the White House=So long as I’m the President, we will stay
President Addresses Military Families, Discusses War on Terror
Idaho Center
Nampa, Idaho
My apologies to Helena and all dear friends.
apology NOT accepted. .. [Some more aggressive bla-bla-bla from this first-time commenter]
[Some hostile bla-bla-bla from this first-time commenter, too. My, what a coincidence!]
Arbuthnot, Wender, you are not saying anything yourselves, only taking up space with your impatience with Salah, who is well tolerated here and has been for a long time.
Or maybe you are saying there is no connection between the Iraq and the New Orleans disasters under George W Bush’s presidency?
I think the correct response to you in that case is to sa: “Go and tell it to the marines”.
In response to a post titled “Katrina, accountability, and structural change”, which also includes discussion of Iraq, why would a post about the outcomes of Bush’s policy in Iraq be considered off-topic? Unless of course you adhere to the theory that what the Bush administration does in one area has nothing to do with what it does in others, or that ‘accountability’ is not something that applies to them. Need I spell out what kind of people share those attitudes?
but then who confused any of you for serious people?
Ha! Yeah, you’ve offered plenty of evidence for you serious YOU are … all those substantive, insightful posts consisting of substantive personal attacks on Salah.
If you’ve decided to leave, could you take the other idiots … ah, serious people with you?
If you believe (as I do) that the first and formost duty of governement is to protect its citizens, then you can only see NO as a dismal failure of govermental duty on both the state and federal level. Of course some of it is the Presidents responsibility! After all, he is the one who turned FEMA into a place for political hacks. It was HIM that fired the previous FEMA director and replaced him with a purely political appointee. It is the Presidant that ‘sets the tone’ for his administration. Isn’t it far to hold him accountable when that tone is ‘dilettantism’ that leads to loss of life?
One of the main worries about military over-extension in Iraq is that the first responders to natural diasasters in America has always been the National Guard and Reserve units. The worry has been that if they are in Iraq (or have been ‘over-worked’) American’s could die HERE from a lack of needed man-power. At least some of this could be true. If it is true, don’t you want to know?
Some of the people who post here are obvoiusly Republican partisians who prefer that no discussion on these issues takes place. That is why the discussion gets ‘switched’ to ‘non-topics’ (for instance personal attacks and whether the Pres. is responsible for the weather). I am a conservative, not a Republican, so i LIKE discussions on tax money uses and efficent delegation of manpower. I WANT to know if overseas adventures have lowered natural diasaster readyness, don’t you?
Irregardless of that, New Orleans was a failure, and thousands have died needlessly. Many of those deaths were NOT ‘natural’ because prompt action could have saved at least some of them. Government officials, even the highest ones, should not be allowed to take the credit for things that go right if they are not willing to take responsibility for when things go wrong. But unfortunately that is the society we now have. There will be no ‘accountability’. In fact, judging by the past, the people who were asleep at the switch will get promoted (or get medals). No one will be fired.
When i was young that was anathema to the ideals of the Republican Party. Alas, no longer. It has ALWAYS been anathema to the ideals of Conservatism.
And THAT my friends, cannot be disputed.
.
Helena, was anything hostile in my commentary. Why was my entry paraphrased/deleted? I have no hostility for Salah, but you have to admit that none of his or her commentary bears very much on the topic of New Orleans. Why do you continue to tolerate it, in violation of your own posting rules? [ed: forget it, we know why!]
As for first time commentators, this is sure to be my last time, since your editorial standards apparently permit EDITING and REVISING comments of which you don’t approve. Shame on you, Helena. You are simply an ideologue, neither a fair journalist nor a fair arbiter of debate.
It’s really not fair to accuse the Republicans of failing to show leadership in a crisis. In fact, the party’s stalwarts in Congress are forging bravely ahead, completely undeterred by natural disaster, in the relentless pursuit of their agenda: repealing the estate tax, making the upper income tax cuts permanent, cutting spending on health care and education, and maybe even taking another swipe at Social Security. “We will be hitting the ground running next Tuesday and be very active,” promises The Hammer.
It’s hard work, but they’re determined to stay the course. Remember, we’re fighting them in New Orleans so we don’t have to fight them in Kennebunkport.
John C,
Ha! Well said. Of course we shouldn’t be so harsh on the Repubs, who really just want the best for us (as the father of the house always does in that quaint value system they want to reinstate). After all, aren’t all their attempts to dismantle the country’s institutions only intended to turn us all into those self-reliant ‘rugged individualists’ (i.e. homeless veterans, for those who weren’t around to experience the reference first hand) the Gipper toasted?
Warren,
(I am leaving behind all the irony of the above here, so what follows is sincere) We should all take something very positive, and perhaps inspirational, from your remarks. A generation ago, liberals and conservatives could disagree vehemently but civilly, and still cross the aisle to shake hands and get things done. If we’re at the point where we can once again agree that we have a problem in the current regime, then perhaps we’re closer to working together to fix it than it seems to us all now. Maybe that’s an optimistic take, but comments like yours lead me there … to an optimism that’s worthy of the best of the conservative tradition. Thanks for that.
Maybe a generation ago things were different. But about 70 years ago there was a president who was as reviled as is the current president. He was accused of wasteful spending because, as we say today, he thought
There’s a good article by Peter Preston today at http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1562733,00.html (“Team Bush’s bad day in Wyoming”).
JES,
You had me going there, for a minute. I’m finally getting around to Philip Roth’s latest, “The Plot against America”, so I was especially attentive to your post’s historical setting.
But you lost me in your closing, and now I am not quite sure what your point was. You’ve said before that you objected to the politicization of the disaster by the left, so I guess you mean that it is the left (to generalize beyond your post) that is guilty of this irrational hatred and that the administration and its allies have been engaging in ‘acceptable political debate’? Please clarify.
If that’s the case, then there are so many refutations of this that maybe I ought to start a separate blog just to catalogue them. They run the gamut of debate from public rhetoric and Orwellian policy pronouncements to private, back-door eliminations of rules and procedures meant to ensure proper debate in congress. Here is where the linkages between Iraq (and a host of other issues) and Katrina really do come into clear focus.
From the “Australian”:
“At least five people shot dead by police as they walked across a New Orleans bridge yesterday were contractors working for the US Defence department, according to a report by The Associated Press.”
See http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16494579%5e12377,00.html .
As authorities struggled to keep order, police shot eight people, killing five or six, after gunmen opened fire on a group of contractors traveling across a bridge on their way to make repairs, authorities said.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168473,00.html
You’re right, JES, there are different readings of this. One thing’s for sure, it is not as it stands a “looter” story. My guess is that the “Australian” has got it right and Fox is dissembling.
Bur we shall have to wait and see if it gets any more clear or whether it ends up in the “memory hole” as they say.
Yes Dominic. I’m sure that Fox is “dissembling”. So, probably, is the Army Corps of Engineers spokesman who said that his contractors were fired upon while under police escort.
But I’m sure they’re all “dissembling”. Can’t argue with that.
As you know, JES, the Australian reports as follows:
“A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers said the victims were contractors on their way to repair a canal, the new agency said, quoting a defence Department spokesman.”
Somebody’s “disassembling”, as G W Bush would put it.
No Dominic. If you bother to look at both sources (which I have), you will find that both the Australian and Fox are simply quoting stories from the AP wire. I originally saw this story on two, rapid-fire CNN alerts I received via email. The first read as follows:
“– AP: Army Corps of Engineers says police killed some of its workers as they crossed a bridge on the way to repair a canal.”
The second, received some twenty minutes later was as follows:
“– AP: Army Corps of Engineers says its contractors were not killed by police, but gunmen who fired at them were killed.”
Apparently AP screwed up with their initial report and then corrected it. Sorry, but it doesn’t look like it’s the “mad dog lackeys of the pig power structure” who are offing emergency workers.
If the story is as you say, JES, then it is a mystery.
Your version: A big group of snipers, out in the open, without a motive, start firing on government contractors and are then easily shot down by government troops.
It doesn’t sound right to me.
On the other hand: A group of civilian contractors running across a bridge carrying equipment comes under fire from troops under orders to “shoot to kill” any looters they see. Eight contractors die in the hail of fire on the open bridge.
The second version is understandable. Your version does not make sense.
Now, that doesn’t mean your story cannot be the correct one. It just means we had better wait for further and better particulars before we believe it.
In the mean time, I personally think that the plausible story, the “friendly fire” story, is the likely one, if only because it has so often happened before.
And lest we forget Donald Rumsfield’s take on the Iraqi looting: “Freedom’s untidy and people are free to make mistakes and do bad things. . .Stuff happens.”
I think this website stinks
Very interesting blog!