[Mb-civic] Hindsight: A User's Guide - Michael Kinsley - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Hindsight: A User's Guide

By Michael Kinsley
Sunday, September 11, 2005; Page B07

As a good American, you no doubt have been worried sick for years about 
the levees around New Orleans. Or you've been worried at least since you 
read that official report back in August 2001 -- the one that ranked a 
biblical flood of the Big Easy as one of our top three potential 
national emergencies. No? You didn't read that report back in 2001? You 
just read about it in the newspapers this past week?

Well, how about that prescient New Orleans Times-Picayune series back in 
2002 that laid out the whole likely catastrophe? Everybody read that 
one. Or at least it sure seems that way now. I was not aware that the 
Times-Picayune had such a large readership in places like Washington, 
D.C., and California. And surely you have been badgering public 
officials at every level of government to spend whatever it takes to 
reinforce those levees -- and to raise your taxes if necessary to pay 
for it.

No? You never gave five seconds of thought to the risk of flood in New 
Orleans until it became impossible to think about anything else? Me 
neither. Nor have I given much thought to the risk of a big earthquake 
along the West Coast -- the only one of the top three catastrophes that 
hasn't happened yet -- even though I live and work in the earthquake zone.

Of course, my job isn't to predict and prepare for disasters. My job is 
to recriminate when they occur. It's not easy. These days the 
recrimination business is overrun like Baton Rouge with amateurs, who 
are squatting on all the high ground. The fetid aroma of hindsight is 
everywhere.

Sen. Mary Landrieu and other Louisiana politicians have been flashing 
their foresight all over the tube. They say they asked repeatedly for 
more money so that the Army Corps of Engineers could strengthen the 
levees, but repeatedly the Bush administration actually cut the Corps 
budget instead. The Corps itself is feeling pretty smug. It has long 
wanted money to build levees that would survive even a Category 5 
hurricane, let alone a measly Category 4 such as Katrina.

Sure, and if there were a Category 6 or a Category 473, there would be a 
dusty Corps of Engineers report in a filing cabinet somewhere asking for 
money to protect against that one, too. The Corps has done many 
marvelous things. But it would cement over the Great Lakes or level 
Mount Rainier if we would let it.

Its warnings about natural disasters are like the warnings of that 
famous economist who has predicted 10 of the past five recessions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/09/AR2005090901829.html?nav=hcmodule
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