[Mb-civic] Where to Point the Fingers - Charles Krauthammer - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Where to Point the Fingers

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, September 9, 2005; Page A25

In less enlightened times there was no catastrophe independent of human 
agency. When the plague or some other natural disaster struck, witches 
were burned, Jews were massacred and all felt better (except the witches 
and Jews).

A few centuries later, our progressive thinkers have progressed not an 
inch. No fall of a sparrow on this planet is not attributed to sin and 
human perfidy. The three current favorites are: (1) global warming, (2) 
the war in Iraq and (3) tax cuts. Katrina hits and the unholy trinity is 
immediately invoked to damn sinner-in-chief George W. Bush.

This kind of stupidity merits no attention whatsoever, but I'll give it 
a paragraph. There is no relationship between global warming and the 
frequency and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes. Period. The problem with 
the evacuation of New Orleans is not that National Guardsmen in Iraq 
could not get to New Orleans but that National Guardsmen in Louisiana 
did not get to New Orleans. As for the Bush tax cuts, administration 
budget requests for New Orleans flood control during the five Bush years 
exceed those of the five preceding Clinton years. The notion that the 
allegedly missing revenue would have been spent wisely by Congress, 
targeted precisely to the levees of New Orleans, and that the 
reconstruction would have been completed in time, is a threefold 
fallacy. The argument ends when you realize that, as The Post noted, 
"the levees that failed were already completed projects."

Let's be clear. The author of this calamity was, first and foremost, 
Nature (or if you prefer, Nature's God). The suffering was augmented, 
aided and abetted in descending order of culpability by the following:

1. The mayor of New Orleans. He knows the city. He knows the danger. He 
knows that during Hurricane Georges in 1998, the use of the Superdome 
was a disaster and fully two-thirds of residents never got out of the 
city. Nothing was done. He declared a mandatory evacuation only 24 hours 
before Hurricane Katrina hit. He did not even declare a voluntary 
evacuation until the day before that, at 5 p.m. At that time, he 
explained that he needed to study his legal authority to call a 
mandatory evacuation and was hesitating to do so lest the city be sued 
by hotels and other businesses.

2. The governor. It's her job to call up the National Guard and get it 
to where it has to go. Where the Guard was in the first few days is a 
mystery. Indeed, she issued an authorization for the National Guard to 
commandeer school buses to evacuate people on Wednesday afternoon -- 
more than two days after the hurricane hit and after much of the fleet 
had already drowned in its parking lots.

3. The head of FEMA. Late, slow and in way over his head. On Thursday, 
Sept. 2, he said on national television that he didn't even know there 
were people in the convention center, when anybody watching television 
could see them there, destitute and desperate. Maybe in his vast 
bureaucracy he can assign three 20-year-olds to watch cable news and 
give him updates every hour on what in hell is going on.

4. The president. Late, slow, and simply out of tune with the urgency 
and magnitude of the disaster. The second he heard that the levees had 
been breached in New Orleans, he should have canceled his schedule and 
addressed the country on national television to mobilize it both 
emotionally and physically to assist in the disaster. His flyover on the 
way to Washington was the worst possible symbolism. And his Friday visit 
was so tone-deaf and politically disastrous that he had to fly back 
three days later.

5. Congress. Now as always playing holier-than-thou. Perhaps it might 
ask itself who created the Department of Homeland Security in the first 
place. The congressional response to all crises is the same -- rearrange 
the bureaucratic boxes, but be sure to add one extra layer. The past 
four years of DHS have been spent principally on bureaucratic 
reorganization (and real estate) instead of, say, a workable plan for as 
predictable a disaster as a Gulf Coast hurricane.

6. The American people. They have made it impossible for any politician 
to make any responsible energy policy over the past 30 years -- but that 
is a column for another day. Now is not the time for constructive 
suggestions. Now is the time for blame, recrimination and sheer 
astonishment. Mayor Ray Nagin has announced that, as bodies are still 
being found and as a public health catastrophe descends upon the city, 
he is sending 60 percent of his cops on city funds for a little R&R, 
mostly to Vegas hotels. Asked if it was appropriate to party in these 
circumstances, he responded: "New Orleans is a party town. Get over it."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/08/AR2005090801667.html?nav=hcmodule
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