| Subject: Katrina's aftermath - what can we learn? |
Author:
Ned Depew
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Date Posted: 12:37:59 09/02/05 Fri
Friends -
in a recent article Gerald Baker (rightly) takes exception to those who have characterized the recent events in New Orleans as some form of "the chickens coming home to roost" for US Energy and Gobal Warming policies. You can read his comments here: The London Times
Of course Baker is right that calling the events of Katrina "God's revenge" against the US or the Bush Administration is as silly as Pat Robertson calling AIDS God's punishment on Gays, or whoever it was calling 9/11 God's punishment for America's "Godlessness." That is an obvious punching bag - but a very simple and totally defenseless one.
What he fails to address is the very real fact that the "looters" arrived in the US and in New Orleans long before Katrina did.
It is documented fact that the Bush Administration excoriated the Army Corps of Engineers budget for repairs and improvements to New Orleans' protective system - cutting more than 60% in the 2004 budget, and altogether eliminating funding in 2005. This in spite of pleas from the Army Corps who argued that the spending was necessary for the safety of the City.
And the reason? The money was "needed" for the Iraq War™, Homeland Security™ and the boondoggle formerly known as The War On Terror™ - now renamed the Global Offensive On Blah-Blah-Blah™. So American citizens didn't get needed money to keep them safe, while the Military got billions to reduce some distant part of the globe to rubble similar to that now found in New Orleans, for reasons that are not at all clear - least of all to the architects of that program.
But one may argue whether or not the spending by the Army Corps (whose track record is several levels below perfect) would have protected N.O. It would at least have had a chance of doing so - but nevermind that. Let it go.
But what of the Federal Government's abysmal failure to anticipate and respond to the possible consequences of Katrina's visit? The vaunted "Homeland Security" Department, the largest bureaucracy created in government since the New Deal, was caught flat-footed, despite more than a week of tracking Katrina's possible courses.
They had no evacuation plan for N.O. other than to get on radios and TV and tell people to "get out of town!" without providing the poor, the infirm, the elderly with the means to do so. Imagine if this had been a real, terrorist orchestrated emergency? Is there any reason to believe they would have done any better? And if not, where is all that money - billions and billions (as Carl Sagan would have said) of dollars - going? Is it making us "safer?" Judging from the Department's response in this case, it certainly seems not.
Where were the needed machinery and equipment - the needed personnel who might have been called out to deal with this emergency? Why - most of it had been sent abroad to Iraq and Afghanistan - "to make the world safer," and "rid the world of evildoers." And no back-up plan was in place to deal with the absence.
Certainly those who "blame" the US or even the Bush Administration for Katrina make themselves ridiculous - but so do those who ignore the real problems Katrina exposed, and the real and clear causes of those problems. People are dying because the budgets of our Emergency Management Agency, our National Guards, have been "looted" for other purposes, and the billions of dollars funneled into our "Homeland Security Agency" appears to have been appropriated from programs that actually might have done the citizens of N.O. some good, while in fact doing no one much of any demonstrable good at all.
The Big-Time Looters are not in the night-streets of New Orleans - they are sitting comfortable and secure in the center of the Government, having devised a much safer and more effective method of looting than that being practiced in the streets.
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