I have been working on a long essay about New Orleans and may be I’ll finish it up and post it some day. Although that seems like a rather paltry contribution to make to the effort of cleaning up the wreckage. Better that I spent my time doing something concrete, as Harold has been doing. So I’m going to see about helping with housing some of the evacuees who have been sent to Otis Military Reservation.
But even as the nation goes about the business of trying to heal this ghastly wound, we need to forthrightly investigate and find out what happened. There have been news reports that Bush was briefed by Max Mayfield, head of the Hurricane Warning Center, last Sunday night, August 28.
If that is true, and I see no reason to think that it isn’t, then we have for a president either a catastrophically incompetent human zero, or a sociopathic criminal willing to let die tens of thousands of his fellow citizens out of mere petulance. My money is on the latter.
For, after hearing what the National Hurricane Center had to say, anyone who was neither a zero nor a sociopath would have done all that he could have to urge people to leave, ensure that they had the means to leave, and prepare for immediate rescue operations the moment the storm had left the region. Bush did none of these things.
What I want to know is, did Bush refuse to send help to New Orleans in order to spite the Democrat governor (who refused to cede jurisdiction)? That is my reading of the tea leaves, and it nauseates and terrifies me. Bush’s Katrina ploy is looking more and more like a political action from the Saddam Hussein or Hafez Assad playbook.
The congress of the United States has no higher duty right now than to investigate this matter. I hope I’m wrong about Bush’s motives, but God help us all if I’m right.
You know the old saying…. “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
This admistration has repeatedly underestimated events. Remember “we’ll be greeted as liberators”? Rumsfeld’s statements pre-war on how we won’t be in Iraq for an extended time? How we won’t need more troops? How the troops would be adequately supplied? How Social Security is on the verge of falling apart? How global warming isn’t happening?
This is just another in that chain. I suspect that someone (maybe Bush, maybe Rove, or some other advisor) took a look at the hurricance forcast, and proclaimed “Oh, it won’t be that bad.” Maybe because it wasn’t going to be a direct hit on New Orleans. And since it was Spoken, it must be true. No need to scramble military troops with helicopters to be on the edge of the hurricane zone, ready to swoop in. No need to mobilize forces that could get food and water to the victims in short order. It Just Won’t Be That Bad.
Of course, reality, in New Orleans and in Bagdad has its own ideas. They get it wrong, and the people serving in the miltary and those on the ground in Katrina’s wake pay with their blood and their lives.
For those of you who have not seen it, Boing Boing had a link to a scathing criticism of the administration’s handling of the Katrina aftermath by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann (see _keith_olbermann_h.html” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.boingboing.net/2…). His point: these are the people who scared us into reelecting them by saying they could make us safe. And they failed miserably to save people from standing water. I feel it’s because of their inability to deal with reality. They repeat their talking points over and over again, to the point that it is inconceivable to them that anything *not* in their tidy little speeches may come to pass.
Gary,
I’ll address this in my next post. Basically, I do not feel that stupidity can adequately explain what happened because of the strength of the warnings issued by the Hurricane service. Yes, it’s true that some of the most strong wording comes from the Monday warnings, but it’s inconceivable that the Hurricane chief did not tell Bush that this was what was coming.
.HURRICANE KATRINA…A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH…RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.
MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS…PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL…LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.
THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE…INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.
HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY…A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.
AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD…AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS…PETS…AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.”
We liberals like to think that Bush is so dumb that he couldn’t understand this kind of warning, but I think that that’s just our superiority complex talking. He’s a shrewd guy and he certainly has brains enough to understand
PERSONS…PETS…AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH
I think we have underestimated both his shrewdness and his malice. Sure, his intelligence is limited, but so is a shark’s. But that doesn’t mean that when the shark attacks that it’s doing it by accident.
More on this later.
jrs
I think it is really sad that you would feel that anyone would do this out of malice. This is a terrible tragedy that the govenment response was not sufficient for. I feel that the only reason for the lack of response was insufficient knowledge of what to do in a situation such as this. The warnings were given to evacuate, and although there were many who did not have the means to do so, many CHOSE to stay. As unfortunate as it is that those people lost their lives, what had they done to prepare? Why does everyone feel that it is solely the govenment’s responsibility? Did they have 72 hour kits and food storage? If they have done nothing to prepare for something like this, they have no right to condemn the government for not being there with handouts, whether it’s being run by Bush, or any other person.