I have a friend named Joe Burns. (Hi, Joe!) Joe watches Fox News, listens to Dennis Prager and believes George W. Bush is one of the best presidents ever, if not the best. (At least, I’ve read articles he’s given me that have said as much.)
The entire country watched in horror last week as Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf coast, and then FEMA couldn’t get its shit together. Clearly, both Joe and I were watching events unfold; I assume he, like I, was proccupied to the point of distraction by the events in New Orleans, in particular. I know he was reading and watching, because he sent me an e-mail yesterday that I’m going to post here in its entirety, with my comments intersperesed.
If you would like to place my last long winded missive on your blog, please do so. The title could be “A rant from the right for the loony left.”
It amazes me how obsessed with the “loony left” you are, Joe. There are crazies on both sides! I have always acknowledged that there are people on the Left who need to be taken with a grain of salt (your favorite punching bag is Michael Moore, and I will certainly admit this about him); are you prepared to admit the same thing about the Right? I know you read Andrew Sullivan. Sully is very good at calling out hypocrisy and the craziness of the wingnuts on the Right. You’re with him on that, right? Dobson, Robertson, Falwell? O’Reilly, Santorum?
The problem is the conflation of mainstream liberalism with the “loony left.” It’s a convenient conflation, because it allows you to dismiss “the Left” while only really having an argument with a sliver of them. And then there’s the fact that folks like Moore have very little power, whereas Dobson (for example) has tremendous pull at the very top of this administration. You might want to complain about the (relatively) powerless a bit less and focus on the crazies that are actually listened to by millions and empowered to do something with their outrageous ideas.
Let me say this, here and now: Michael Moore does not speak for me. I understand what he’s trying to do, and I daresay we probably share the same goals most of the time. But he’s too quick to point fingers, glosses over messy facts, and is much too eager to assign blame.
Now it’s your turn. :-)
The New Orleans situation is so, so sad, but the political fallout is pathetic. My favorite is the Robert Kennedy Jr. letter to Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi. The tone of the letter is that if Mr. Barbour had supported the Kyoto Treaty while working in the White House there would have been no hurricane. Where is the evidence on THAT nutty idea? We can control hurricanes? I just love environmental wackos!!! The entire US Senate (Dems and Reps) rejected Kyoto because it would have screwed our economy with no guarantee of any real environment change.
Here’s a link to the article you’re talking about, I believe. Kennedy has this to say at the end:
Well, the science is clear. This month, a study published in the journal Nature by a renowned MIT climatologist linked the increasing prevalence of destructive hurricanes to human-induced global warming.
Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and--now--Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.
That is calm, sensible language. Nowhere does he imply that anything this White House could have done would have prevented Katrina. He’s just saying that, assuming the MIT study is right and there’s a connection between global warming and hurricane strength, we’re in for more of this. And he’s saying that this is apparently the policy of this White House, to ignore climate change as a major issue.
The 9/11 attack was confined to a few acres, this recent hurricane covered THREE states. It wiped out communications networks, police departments, etc. In the specific case of New Orleans, this storm hit an area that is poor and within a political framework that is incompetent or corrupt. I have been to New Orleans twice, it ain’t California. There was no Mayor Rudy to take charge, the Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans were both over their heads. It was deer in the headlight time.
And the Asian tsunami covered EIGHT COUNTRIES. And yet, the first food and water aid got there in about two days. This disaster, by contrast, happened on our doorstep, and yet we couldn’t get food, water, ice and medical supplies to these people for four. Four days! And it wasn’t because there wasn’t food, water and ice within 5-10 hours drive of NOLA. It was because FEMA couldn’t get its shit together, consistently under-responded, and because the Executive branch was too busy arguing about who was in charge.
I don’t want to forget to mention that on the one hand you’re accepting that Katrina “wiped out communications networks, police departments, etc.” in one sentence, and in the next you’re laying the blame for the criminally slow response at the feet of the Louisiana and New Orleans governments, which were in the most disarray.
Look, all you really need to see is what the DHS is supposed to do in situations like this:
In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort.
So, there you go. By its own admission, the buck stops at FEMA and DHS. Of course they need to interact with state and local governments. But they need to advance the cause of helping people, not turn away food caravans or prevent humanitarian organizations from getting to the needy. That is criminal!
I am sure FEMA made major mistakes in this mess, but when something like this happens (a giant event that has never happened before) just about everyone plays catch-up the first few days. If this storm had happened almost anywhere else in the world the emergency response would take weeks and a big chunk of that help would be from the USA and our military. One sidebar note: if there was anyone who came close to Mayor Rudy in terms of being calm and in charge it was Gov. Barbour of Mississippi.
Well, no. As I mentioned earlier, it took two days to get the first aid to the tsunami victims. As to this event never having happened, that’s why they do simulations. They knew what to expect, they had two days’ warning, and they still couldn’t get tens of thousands of people food and water.
This is what government is for. As a conservative, surely, you’d agree with that.
I can’t comment on the Barbour reference, as I haven’t seen or heard from him at all. I’ve seen Sen. Landrieu, Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin. And none of them are in any way pleased about the speed of the federal response to this tragedy.
There is a photo from New Orleans that is rather revealing. It shows hundreds of school buses parked and out of commission in a flooded parking lot. Why didn’t the Mayor of New Orleans use these buses to move poor people out of the area? It also would have saved the buses for future use. This blame game is going to keep going but I think what happened was inevitable, New Orleans has always been a major flood waiting to happen.
I see. The fact that tens of thousands of people were effectively abandoned for four days is all the Mayor’s fault. Or it’s no one’s fault. Take your pick.
I cannot answer the school bus question, so I’m not even going to try. Mayor Nagin is the only one who can answer this criticism. All I know is that food, water and soldiers should have been there sooner, and it’s clear they would have been but for incompetence in the Executive branch.
And as to your contention that New Orleans has been a flood waiting to happen, that merely goes to prove my point that FEMA either wasn’t prepared for this, or else was prepared but seriously dropped the ball when the disaster actually happened.
We could have spent billions to make the dikes stronger but all it takes is one Level 5 storm plus one small weak point in a dike and you have major flooding. Even if there had been no flooding you would have lost the same bridges and most of the major infrastructure would have been wiped out. It is kind of crazy to see hospitals and police stations that are almost useless because they are located within the flood area.
No real argument from me here. I will never live in New Orleans. I find the idea of living in a bowl next to the sea profoundly unsettling, and I think it’s a poor choice for the placement of a city. I will say that I just saw a very interesting report (updated and rebroadcast, originally aired in 2002) on PBS’ NOW about the history of the loss of the Mississippi delta and what a broad coalition of people want to do about it. Had the delta been in the shape it was a hundred years ago, it would have helped to protect the city from storm surges. The fact that the Bush administration cut funding for these restoration programs is telling, though you won’t find me claiming that any money put into this problem in 2002 would have demonstrably changed the outcome we just witnessed last week. I think we can all agree, though, that this is a major issue that deserves more interest at a much higher level than it has hitherto received.
One final point. I hear people say we didn’t respond quickly because our troops are in Iraq. The fact is, we have lots of National Guard people still based in the USA and they usually respond to a crisis in days, not hours. When we had the LA Riots a few years ago (before Iraq) it took several days to get those soldiers in place and even then they didn’t have bullets for their guns. I think most of the Guard is a waste of money, I would rather have a larger, full-time military. In the past the Pentagon would always ask for less National Guard troops, but the Congress likes passing out the perk of a part-time job.
To quote Jon Stewart, “People say a lot of stupid shit.” The problem isn’t that there weren’t National Guard troops, the problem is that they were held up by red tape. Granted, it’s not an easy problem. But this is what the creation of the DHS was supposed to do, I thought: consolidate responsibility and make the chain of command less muddled. Make responses to disasters more coordinated.
What if this recent disaster had been a nuclear attack instead of a giant storm? The emergency response probably would have been somewhat similar: total chaos and then things would finally start to come together. The big difference is that a nuke would have killed more people, that is why being proactive in Iraq and other places is the right way to go. Let’s keep these Islamic Fascists on the run.
Wow, OK. Let’s stay focused, shall we? We have no real idea how a nuclear disaster would play out, so any discussion of that is idle speculation. And I thought this was a response to the criticism of the “loony Left” (and plenty on the Right) of Bush and FEMA for their reaction (or lack thereof) to the Katrina disaster? It’s perfectly possible to be supportive of the Iraq war and be appalled by the disaster response, just as it’s possible to be against terrorism and think the Iraq war has been grossly mishandled from the get go. But that is neither here nor there.
The Democrats want to spend more money on security involving mass transit, cities, ports, nuclear plants, etc. instead of fighting overseas. I think this approach is Stupid and Dangerous. Whatever area we don’t secure 100% is exactly where the Islamic Fascists will strike, they are not idiots. It is IMPOSSIBLE to protect a society from random acts of terror, what is POSSIBLE is to keep these nuts off balance and kill them on battlefields. I think it’s a good thing that Islamic Fascists are coming to Iraq, our kill ratio is something like 20 to 1 or 30 to 1. The exact number is a secret, and that’s okay with me.
We are in a 20 year war, the idea that we can protect ourselves with more police eyeballs is NUTS. If it were possible I would be all for it, but there is no way to totally stop a random act, especially a nut who wants to commit suicide/murder. What I would like to see is a public education campaign that asks all of us to keep our eyes open and report suspicious behavior right away. We do not have (and probably don’t want) a giant police force, they can never be everywhere anyway. So that’s my political take on the New Orleans mess.
Well, I suppose you’re entitled to your opinions, Joe. I happen to believe that the “fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here” bit is both hackneyed and dangerously simplistic, especially after the revelations about the London bombers being home grown. If we had an army to fight against, we could make some progress with this war thing. But we’re fighting an ideology, which you can’t erase with bullets.
Also, I don’t think anyone thinks we’re going to prevent terrorism just by increasing the size of police departments. It’s going to be a comprehensive effort, involving foreign policy, so-called “homeland security,” foreign aid and public education campaigns. We’re going to need to work WITH the UN. It’s a very hard problem, much too hard to be handled by just shooting some people. But one thing you’re right about: we can’t afford to fuck it up.
But, as I said: we were talking about the administration’s spectacular failure in New Orleans.
I hope the Big Easy comes back, but as a much smaller city. It makes no sense to have that many people live in a major flood plane. Hope things are going well on your end of the track.
It will be interesting to see how people respond to this disaster. I just hope the hundreds of thousands displaced by Katrina can get back on their feet in short order and start going about the difficult task of rebuilding their lives.
Oh, and things are fine over here, thanks. :-) Thanks for letting me post this!
