Ranting to /dev/null

Jumping the gun

Let's step back for a minute. A lot of noise has been generated - some by me - criticizing the the Federal government in general and the Bush administration in particular for their response to hurricane Katrina. I'm starting to wonder if this is justified.

First off, we're facing one of the worst natural disasters in our nation's history, and possibly the world. Last year's tsunami was terrible, but in a sense it was a lot easier to deal with: the water came, and the water went, and that was kind of that. No major economic infrastructure was destroyed as far as I can tell (the destruction of fishing boats is a personal tragedy, but doesn't interfere with economies on a wider scale), and there wasn't standing water much of anywhere. The disaster took a grand total of a few hours from start to finish, and once it was over there wasn't any real reason to evacuate anyone. There were hundreds of thousands of fatalities, but it was a once and done deal. Yes, there continue to be problems and displacements, and it will take some time for the region to fully recover, but essentially, the damage was acute, not chronic. There are no major population centers that remain uninhabitable.

New Orleans is entirely different. The breaking of the levees introduced a chronic problem, and as the song says, when the levee breaks you have no place to stay. The water needs to be removed, as it won't go away on its own. New Orleans wasn't just damaged or destroyed, it was actually drowned. This is a disaster on a whole new level, and one which creates long-term, entrenched problems. When teh tsunami hit, some people were relocated, but not many and not for very long. In New Orleans, hundreds of thousands of people aren't dead, but they do need new homes. Though we're all happy they survived, dead people are easier to deal with than live ones.

Secondly, what, exactly, are we griping about in terms of slow response? The only way we could have had troops and supplies in New Orleans in the first few days after the hurricane is if we had had them standing by, ready to deploy at a moment's notice. This is a hideously expensive proposition, and one that no one seems to be willing to endorse. And about the issue of reinforcing the levees: everyone knew it was a potential danger. Come on, they're able to look up at the water line. That can't be good for morale. But if the state or government had tried to spend money on reinforcing them, do you think it would have happened? Heck no: people would have cried foul that the government is "wasting" millions of dollars on levees that are holding just fine, thank you. Of course the engineers recommend they be strengthened: that's what engineers do, isn't it? Ask us to spend more money on cool public works projects, right? Doesn't mean we listen to them.

And it's my understanding that most Americans - and liberal types especially - are opposed to a large, standing army that's ready to go at the drop of a hat. That's what it would have taken to get the tens of thousands of needed troops to New Orleans overnight. And this nonsense about bringing troops home from Iraq to New Orleans... Do you have any idea how expensive that would be? And how stupid? Besides, Pentagon troops operating on American soil has always been a sketchy business from a legal perspective. The National Guard belongs here, but the Army is best left to its own devices. One of the fundamental doctrines of Federal armed forces is that they don't do domestic police work, which is on a historical level, quite an enlightened idea.

So before you decide that this is all Bush's fault (come on now, he now controls the weather? What are you smoking?), think about what we're dealing with.

Posted by ryan at September 3, 2005 09:32 AM | TrackBack