I was a single-issue voter in the last election. I voted for President Bush because I felt he was right about Iraq, and more fundamentally, about our security. I overlooked just about everything else that I disliked about his presidency on that single issue.
Since 9/11, President Bush has made a compelling case that we need to rebuild our security mechanisms, at home and abroad. The Department of Homeland Security was formed here at home, and we were put on a war footing abroad. I believe that this is sensible given the levels of terror threats that we face. Unfortunately, I had to turn away from my own party to vote for someone who I believed took my nation's security more seriously.
I think there were a lot of Ciceros at the 2004 polls -- security-minded Democrats who voted for President Bush. As that kind of voter, I am having trouble with what I see going on in New Orleans.
After all the emphasis the Bush Administration has placed on this nation's security, exporting freedom abroad to Iraq, and the dire warnings about WMDs on our soil, my expectation in the era of terror -- the era of holding back chaos -- is that the Bush Administration can thwart chaos effectively. On the Federal level. That's what the game plan has been for the last five years: The Federal Government has stepped in with huge spending increases to prepare the United States for the chaos of terrorism. It has been a nationalized priority, costing billions.
New Orleans is devolving into anarchy, death, pillage and disease, nearly five days after Hurricane Katrina came ashore. Things appear to be improving only incrementally. Clearly, this is a crisis of unprecedented magnitude, with immense logistical challenges. It is reasonable to ask, however, if for the last five years the 'anti-chaos' mechanisms that have been put into place are as effective as advertised.
The Bush administration's credibility is on the line. There is a direct correlation between managing the chaos of natural disasters, and the chaos of terror events. So far, the Federal Government's management of Katrina's aftermath is confused, unfocused, and uninspired. Seeing President Bush call the Federal response "unacceptible" does not absolve him of responsibility. He runs the country. His job is to run the Federal government. The buck stops at his desk.
There are debates going on about responsibility for this disaster -- whether or not it lies with the Federal Government, state or local government. There's an argument that New Orleans made its own fateful choices when moneys went into expensive projects like the Superdome, that might have been better spent on securing the city for a category five hurricane. Choices were made at the local level, and the people of New Orleans bear responsibility for this crisis.
But for five years, the Federal Government has adjusted its priorities in the era of terror by taking on more responsibility for managing calamity at home. This time around, cataclysm has come from tropical waters, not from an Islamic nuke; it is not unreasonable or unfair to judge the Federal Government's management of Katrina as a test of its commitments over the last five years. There is Federal culpability that overarches state and local responsibility.
So now begins a new political era. People will reasonably ask if our commitment to Iraq comes at the expense of security at home. They will ask if the Bush Administration's efforts at protecting the homeland are credible, using Katrina as a litmus test. These questions are fair, and reasonable. President Bush's entire political strategy is being tested. Effectively, we got nuked. And now we see the response.
I am willing to see this as a dry run for a deliberate catastrophic attack. I am willing to admit that this crisis is unprecedented on our soil, and the Federal response is building. I hope that what is learned here can help buttress our long-term security against catastrophic terror. But rhetoric always has a fail safe point; it's effectiveness lasts only as long as it is untested. Ultimately, New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is a test of President Bush's credibility in the war against terror. If we lose credibility, we lose leadership in the war.
Cicero, you are missing a very important point. All administrations since the 60's have been putting this issue on the back burner. You can't just blame Bush but all the pervious administrations.
#1 Frank
I understand your point. Except it has no political legs. The President making the point that "the failure goes back to successive presidents to the 60s" has no political merit whatsoever.
That's the point. If we want to win the war on terror, credibility starts with taking responsibility. The time is now.
Cicero,
The hurricane obviously overwhelmed the state and local officials who had primary responsibility for the preparation for and control of the aftermath.
I think its a shame that you are buying into the excuses that New Orleans and Louisiana politicians are making for their own failures - failures that the Bush administration could not and should not have had to anticipate.
No, and it may not have been possible to fix in advance, anyway, given local non-cooperation and corruption, environmantalist lawsuits that blocked some plans, etc. For good perspective on the scale and consequences of local abdicaton, and what real preparation might have looked like, check out Pundita, and Belmont Club's Imperfect Storm series. Some of the most effective and critical measures will surprise you. Needless to say, they didn't happen. For a long time.
Cicero still has a point, though, and it's this:
The federal backup isn't performing yet. Now, it's possible that this is just because the state and city are useless, and so the feds have to survey everything up themselves before effective action can commence. Plus, the military bases that will be the hubs of this effort are just now coming back online (mostly). If that's all it is, things should get much better over the next week.
If not, we are led to a logical and important question:
Have the domestic efforts of the last 4 years been used to make us more secure, or to fund "security theater" that costs a lot, and look like action, but either offer no real solutions or solve the wrong problems?
There's a good case to be made for "security theater" in many cases. And yes, blame is bipartisan given that large portions of that security theater were pushed by Democrats as well as Republicans (TSA, anyone?)
Nevertheless.
The buck really does stop at the top. George W. Bush has a lot of priorities. The upside is that some of them will stick, and each does address an important problem. The downside is that some things require very sustained attention and pressure from the top at both private and public levels, and too many 'priorities' makes that impossible. Public leadership of the war effort as a war is one example. This may be another.
And at that point, leadership questions as a whole become appropriate.
W. is not a rhetoritician like Blair. His archetype is the guy who speaks rarely but directly, and takes care of stuff. The most heartening thing about his Presidency thus far is that at several junctures when I've thought he was going to cave to foolishness, he has consistently stood firm.
But if you're gonna be the guy who speaks rarely but directly, and takes care of stuff, you have to make people feel like it really is being taken care of.
The next week or so will tell.
I agree.
But, it's not like we didn't know that the homeland security stuff wasn't being taken care of. And it's not like we didn't know that the best and most rapid responce is the unplanned decentralized one, and that centralized authorities just can't cope with this sort of thing. Anyone that studied 9/11 in detail would know that, and it's been pointed out at this site in particular in admirable detail many times.
I just wish that they'd gotten a chance to have a dry run at this before actually facing the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. Practice makes perfect. The highly imperfect and unnecessary evacuation of NO do to Ivan, ended up saving thousands or ten's of thousands of lives in Katrina. That's life. You learn from your mistakes.
Mistakes were undoubtably made at every level, and are undoubtably being made. People are dying because of those mistakes. The blame does go straight to the top, and not just to Bush but also to Blanco. That may or may not be fair, but its true. But I seriously doubt that it would have mattered who was at the top, and I doubt anyone could have put together a team that would have done much better. It still would have happened, or else it would have happened elsewhere or in a different fashion. Anyone who'se done any work in logistics at all understands the real nature of friction in these sort of events, and knows why this isn't just happening instantly. From my vantage, the ammount of resources brought down here already is staggering, but so is the scale of the problem.
But, just because you learn from your mistakes, doesn't mean that Bush is going to or should weather this politically. I only hope that as he goes out of office, he makes the job easier for the next guy and makes him - or her - look good, regardless of the party they belong to.
As far as disaster preparation, I feel the need to reiterate a point from the previous thread...
Why should the federal government take local issues more seriously than the directly effected local governments? Where was the the political push by New Orleans and Louisiana authorities to resolve the hurican threat, at least beyond the political pork level?
Like I said, the local powers that be found political will to build a new speculative basketball arena, and then found the subsidies to lure the NBA Hornets to town. Can someone point to a similar local effort for flood protection?
Things like this will not be a Federal priority if they're not even a local priority. Sorry. That's just how it works.
There's plently of blame to go around here. The Huricane preparations were worfully inadequate from many standpoints. This likewiase seems to have much to do with human nature. We have a great capactiy to ignore infrequent yet catastrophic threats.
Are the people complaining about this now prepared to call for the abondonment of Portland, Oregon which is built directly over a fault. Should all of the mansonry buldings there be condemned, their occupants thrown out into the streets? This is a disaster waiting to happen! Bush is derelict in his duties! Impeach him before they all die!
The disaster response is much more valid target for criticism. The problem is, I haven't seen one. They've all been unserious politcal hatchet jobs. I promise all the critics that there will be a bipartisan comission investigating all this. I'm sure they will get much closer to the truth than the various BDS sufferers are getting now.
Cicero, Joe and others of my fellow WOC team members miss a couple of key points when trying to draw analogies between WOT and Katrina.
First - and this is so big it is hard to overstate - the federal government's hands are tied legally to a great degree in national disasters until they are requested by state authorities to intervene.
This is ESPECIALLY true with regard to the use of troops to maintain and restore order. Just how comfortable are y'all in insisting that the administration decide for themselves it was time to overrule or bypass the law on this point and deploy troops willing to shoot looters -- who in some cases probably were drug addicts going cold turkey, from the timing and the targeting of drug stores and hospitals for violent breakins? Because that is what would have been involved in restoring order quickly.
Second, the same point is true in a more subtle way with regard to relief and rescue operations when there is no military emergency declared. In another 9/11, congress will move rapidly to allow federal authorities to take command where they aren't already doing so. Congress did NOT authorize martial law in Louisiana, which means the feds are limited to working with the emergency relief laws and mechanisms. Had the governor of the state and the mayor of New Orleans been dead or missing, I suspect that the feds could and would have taken charge more quickly. But with both alive and in power, it was both their responsibility AND THEIR RIGHT to control when and how the feds intervened.
Third, that intervention cannot be turned on in an instant. Goods cannot be moved, ships moved, rescue workers brought into an area well inside the disaster zone, instantanously. Not outside of Star Trek episodes and even there the crew of the Enterprise was not able to beam up or down thousands of people or tons of equipment immediately.
I am still a registered Democrat. I can just imagine the screams of anger if a Republican administration moved regular Army troops into the region, cordoned off highways, made life/death decisions about whom to move where, commandeered police powers, seized farms 20 miles away for landing strips and shot those who tried to intervene, all in the name of being efficient because the local and state authorities totally abdicated their responsibilities in this situation.
That abdication has been going on for years, not days or a week. It had real, and tragic, consequences for people that have finally hit home.
The denial that New Orleans was geologically and hydrologically indefensible against major storms has also been going on for years. And that denial had real and tragic results.
And may I mention ONE MORE TIME that New Orleans is NOT the be-all and end-all of this disaster? That entire towns have been destroyed and that FEMA is ... for some strange reason ... working there too, despite the lack of chicory coffee and picturesque French wrought iron railings or good jazz clubs?
It is not the fault of Bush that this happened. There is no way you can blame this on the administration. Thank you Mr Burk for the civics lesson for some people.
My first and largest complaint-- The mandatory evacuation should have happened on Saturday. Bush declared it a disaster area then, why did the mayor wait until Sunday to tell people to evacuate? (Of course, people share some blame for not leaving on their own, and a history near-misses like Ivan didn't help.)
Second complaint-- Why not muster the National Guard earlier? They're ordinary people with jobs; by law they have up to 72 hours to report for duty. Now, I certainly believe that most of them hurried as much as possible, but they should have been standing by. Similarly, the Governor could and should have asked for federal troops earlier.
Third complaint-- Why no buses ready and prepared to take people out of the town? (And why did Greyhound shut down Saturday night; well, they said safety.) In Florida, Gov. Bush had a fleet of buses ready; there's no reason that Louisiana and New Orleans couldn't have had the same. Of course, it would have added to the traffic-- but they should been evacuated earlier.
I have more sympathy for the surprise when the (recently reinforced) levee breached AFTER the main impact. Maybe too many people thought that the worst was over and that the city had been spared. I also have sympathy for the police and others who were surprised by the riot, though obviously they should have handled it better.
First off, these issues need to be discussed. Thanks again to Cicero and everyone at WOC for creating such a thoughtful forum.
I want to highlight two things in this post:
1) Media Focus
2) Personal Responsibility
What I am overwhelmingly hearing in the Media (and in posts like this) is this:
bq. Why aren't the Feds able to teleport food/medicine/water/police/and the rest of civilization over large distances without roads, rivers, rail or airports to 200,000 people. We need help, beam it down Capt. Bush!!
Perhaps my phrasing exposes the hidden assumptions in a more clear light than the phrasing on CNN. I don't say this just to construct a strawman arguement to argue against. I ask you to question the assumptions in today's media zeitgeist. I feel strongly that the expectations, while not clearly and numerically stated, are dripping in the sarcastic news reports and the demands of instant federal relief.
But there is a related but different black hole in the media template. How much have we heard (and have you considered) the 80% or 800,000 (that's 4 times the amount stuck in the mire) that took action and left before the storm? This is an amazing story that isn't being reported! The National Weather Service, Fed, State and City gov't provided an effective, accurate and timely warning that allowed 800,000 people to evacuate and save themselves. Astounding! What's more is that 80% of the population is able to rescue themselves. Most of them, I presume, are dealing with the extreme dislocation and loss thru their own resources with assists from friends and family. I blame, er, applaud Bush.
Clearly there are people that need help. Help from their family, neighbors, friends, strangers and even the gov't. Yes, we should do that. Yes, we should push our officials to perform better.
But what expectation do we really have toward Washington DC? Do you expect your next meal to come from DC? Do you want to be that dependant, or do you want 20% of anywhere in America to be that unable to rescue themselves or /even to make the attempt/?
I am troubled. I am troubled that I have not seen evidence that New Orleans is trying to rescue itself. Perhaps that isn't on TV (it should be) ... I hope that's the explaination. Because if there are 200,000 people, and say 100K that are able bodied, then those able should be self organizing to rescue, triage, evacuate and provide security.
Now is not the time to indict. Not Bush, and certainly not those still in NO.
So consider this; pay it forward; what can you do today to prepare to rescue yourself (and your neighbors) tomorrow?
--Fred
A lot of very good points here.
While I suspect that my bias on this is known by now, I understand the point both Joe and Cicero are making. This IS a credibility issue.
I resent the idea that because I or anyone else view this as an unfair attempt to make a particular person or party responsible, that I am unwilling or unable to level appropriate criticism when it is deserved. I think there are many ways that this could have been made better, or smoother, but one cannot seem to even get to constructive criticism, because rejection of irrational criticism is referred to as Bush worship. Personally, if I had been Bush, I would have made a personal appeal for anything that flies within 500 miles(particularly helicopters) to go down there to pick people up. But those kinds of things need to be coordinated, and as Robin pointed out, they don't just happen. Is that working as well as it should? I don't know. And I suspect that the majority of the anklebiters don't, either. And while I think that there are things that could have been better, let's get some perspective here. This is without question the worst disaster in American history. Worse than San Francisco. Worse than Chicago.
I think it is always reasonable to examine things and to see if things can be done better, faster. To see if there was some breakdown at some level, and those kinds of breakdowns can be avoided. But if we, as a nation, decide to make the perfect the enemy of the good, we can expect the same thing to happen again. And what I see now is a small group of people pointing fingers with 20/20 hindsight.
But with respect to the political issue, I think domestic security here has been laughable, and I think the term "political theatre" is apt. That has been my biggest reservation about reelecting George Bush. The borders are not secure, the ports are not secure, the power grid is old, and we are still frisking 89 year old Eastern European grandmothers at the airport.
Federal governments responsibility is to those who cannot do for themselves. But at a certain point, there are things that cannot be controlled and variables that cannot be predicted. We have to accept that, at some level. And unfortunately, all I hear right now is not how people would have done it better, but rather what was done wrong.
This is not what the Department of Homeland Security has been focused on for the last 3 years. Hurricanes have been hitting the U.S. ever since we gained a Gulf Coast. In theory, we know how to deal with them. What is new, what no one knows how to deal with is a "dirty bomb", an attack using biological weapons, or a suitcase nuke hand delivered to the downtown of a major city. These new threats are what the Feds are trying to help cities deal with.
Realistically, the creation of a new Federal Department with a budget and a whole array of previously independent agencies, is not going to do very much good. Certainly not in three years, perhaps not in 20 years. The Department of Homeland Security is just a public band-aid and something to make the terrorists think we are stronger than we really are. The real plan for dealing with Islamic terrorists is the Iraq operation. Fighting Al Qaeda in Sunni Triangle as opposed to in Times Square.
I'm sorry that the City of New Orleans has been destroyed. I'm sorry that the people there are going to suffer because of failures in planning which reach back 90 years in time. But I'm not sorry we live in the U.S. where all laws and all solutions DO NOT COME from Washington D.C. If you want an example of a country where 99% of the laws and regulations come from the capital, look at France. (more at: http://www.teleologic.com/archives/2005/09/who_to_blame_1.html)
"They've all been unserious politcal hatchet jobs. I promise all the critics that there will be a bipartisan comission investigating all this. I'm sure they will get much closer to the truth than the various BDS sufferers are getting now."
As the 9/11 commission did? Please. There will be a bipartisan commission investigating all of this, and just as with the 9/11 commission they will work together to produce a document in which information is suppressed as part of a comprimise to make both parties look good, a document filled with bad suggestions and contridictions because no one on the commission actually knows what to do, and a document which the press will laud as brilliant because they can't digest the whole thing or understand it if they could. Eventually, the President - whoever that will be at the time - will bow to political pressure and implement the suggestions of the document, and those suggestions will be the very causes of the failure of the agency when the next crisis comes around.
Does anyone here really think the creation of a Homeland security department, the TNS, and an Intelligence Czar really made the problem better and not worse? The Army knows that we've moved beyond the age of centralization, the economists know that centralization has never worked, and yet that's precisely what everyone will demand because the alternative is too complex for anyone to understand (which is the same reason why centralization doesn't work). You really think a new central planning committee is going to help the problem?
I'm down here. The biggest topic of debate in local politics lately was whether or not the State should be paying millions of dollars to keep the Saints from leaving town. Let's not pretend that anyone cared about what was important until it was too late. Heck, I witnessed denial going on even Monday as New Orleans was being destroyed. I would tell them that New Orleans was gone, and that thousands of people would die and they'd give me blank stares, and say, "Gee.. you sound pessimistic. Do you really think it is going to be that bad?"
The problem is that the motivation of fear comes too late to help. Fear is generally useless. What is needed is paranoia, but I don't have to say how much that word is denigrated in our thought and conversation.
"Personally, if I had been Bush, I would have made a personal appeal for anything that flies within 500 miles(particularly helicopters) to go down there to pick people up."
As the endless rows of helicopters that have been flying back and forth over my head since last friday can attest, that appeal has already gone out from somewhere - even if Bush or whoever didn't grandstand while doing it.
The UPI has a wire story criticizing the government for the failure to plan for the break in the New Orleans levee system. I imagine one can try to make this case, but there was one particular quote I found amusing.
"Some critics questioned whether the government's focus on terrorism had distracted from planning to cope with a major natural disaster."
Is this for real? We shouldn't have been fighting the war on terror, and instead sitting around planning for natural disasters?
"Security theatre" sums it up pretty well.
Could explain why a crony is the top dog at FEMA.
Why they obviously have not done one bit of planning prior to this although they id'ed it as a threat.
Could explain why siad dog is spending 6 hours a day on TV instead of working the phones, etc.
Could explain why Bush left his ranch, where according to everyone in the past weeks he was just as tuned in and connected as if he had been in DC. Pure theatre.
Oh, and for all the talk of NOLA being responsible for the state of the levees, last time I checked, the US Army Corp of Engineers was an arm of the Federal Government. Which under the leadership of nitwits like Hasertt has been whittling away at it and its budgets for years.
This admin is a joke plain and simple and people like Cicero seem to be finally waking up to their total lack of ability. Yeah, it is a few years late, but takes people awhile to see through the lies. It is the one thing the admin is good at.
On a CNN broadcasts,President Clinton made THE salient points:
"WE" believed NO was to be spared because Katrina turned east at the last minute,so the rescue mission right there missed 24 hours of mobilization efforts.
The levees have always been understood to be low quality and under anything greater than Cat. 3 storm would collapse.
Some of NO's own policemen have been involved in the thievery and thuggery ongoing,this is a disgusting bunch of people,shooting at rescue aircraft ,etc.
Criticism is fair game,but let us also KNOW that the corrupt regions of Louisiana are not the ONLY regions devastated,look at southern Mississipppi and Alabama and we do not hear of their cops joining gangs or shooting at rescue copters,do we?
The NO and Louisiana governments are way more culpable of graft and lack of responsibility than Bush is,IMO and they are democrats,always are as Louisiana never votes Republican.
Celebrim,
And that's kind of my point. You're there. I'm not. And my off-the-cuff statement was just that, based on the limited amount that I am able to observe. And that's my objection to the ridiculous notion of culpability to this point. We're sitting here talking about credibility---with the most limited information, and we haven't even assessed the totality of the damage yet. We're pointing fingers at each other over who was federally responsible, when a significant portion of the people who lived there weren't even concerned enough to leave the area, much less spend millions or billions of dollars of their tax money to fix this disaster which they weren't even afraid enough of to leave the city.
There will be an opportunity to improve these things, not just for New Orleans, but for every major city for which a natural disaster would be catastrophic. But if we use perfection, or lack thereof only as a club to beat the opposing party over the head with, that opportunity will be missed, and we'll all be looking at each other stupidly and pointing fingers the next time it happens.
I hate trying to summerize the problem, but if I don't, some people won't get it - so here goes.
I think the process which most lead to the current disaster was binary thinking. By that I mean that most people cannot hold more than two thoughts in there head at a same time. (In fact, alot of people have problems with more than one.) This is a human problem, and one which we will probably never overcome. It's reflected in or langauge in the binary power of words like 'either' and 'or', and 'if' and 'else'.
You could watch this binary thinking playing out Monday. The thinking, simplified to its most basic form went like this, "Either New Orleans will be devastated by a Category 5 Hurricane and the city will be gone and no plan of rescue will be able to arrive in time or matter, or else New Orleans will dodge the bullet and we will be able to move in and perform cleanup." In fact, because FEMA is headquarted a short walk from where I'm writing, I happen to know that those were basically the two scenarios that they had in mind. But in the in between spaces between those two alternatives was a different possibility, one that people only slowly woke up to. FEMA began this operation under the assumption that New Orleans had 'dodged the bullet'. Everyone going to bed on Monday, with few exceptions, felt that way. The press reported the story that way. The local government responded that way. The local people felt that way. FEMA however was in a panic. They initially moved to set up operations in New Orleans, and struggled with the task of moving into a city to which most of the lines of transportation had been removed. But as they got there they realized that while New Orleans hadn't been decapitated by the worst case scenario, it was still hit and bleeding to death and would still end up just as dead. This made it impossible to set up as near to the critically needy as they planned, and they had to reverse gears and try to come up with a plan for responding to the worse case disaster happening in slow motion.
Either/or just doesn't work, but in the infinite permutations between either and or there is just too many possibilities for planning. The only good solution is to develop the sort of 'view from the ground' decision making capacity that the American military has successfully encouraged in its soldiers. Rather than waiting for a centralized planning committee of feds to bail the city out (figuritively and now literally), more lives would have been saved if the people of New Orleans had prepared to save themselves. Unfortunately, that would have relied on a sense of community and obligation and a degree of education that it is all too obvious doesn't exist within a large portion of the people who stayed behind. Solving those problems will be the real task of the future - not the creature of new central planning committees.
celebrim,
Where exactly are you?
Does anyone here really think the creation of a Homeland security department, the TNS, and an Intelligence Czar really made the problem better and not worse? The Army knows that we've moved beyond the age of centralization, the economists know that centralization has never worked, and yet that's precisely what everyone will demand because the alternative is too complex for anyone to understand (which is the same reason why centralization doesn't work). You really think a new central planning committee is going to help the problem?
There are some things that Homeland Security and an Intel Czar can and are doing that can only be done in a centralized way. For example, rushing through and deploying advanced devices in support of security and intelligence/counter-intelligence. I have a little visibility into some of the R&D and deployment of sensors and automated security technologies that are already in many ports and airports. Not in all of them -- for one thing they are still being proofed out in some cases and in any case take time and moneies to deploy.
Ditto for the border, by the way. More than most people realize.
There are other centralized coordinations happening that have helped prevent more 9/11s so far, and other kinds of attacks. Not one major news outlet hyped the fact that about a month ago the feds, in coordination with police around the country, arrested 800 members of violent gangs, primarily associated with MS-13 network. These are cold-blooded cop, kid and civilian killers who are aggressively fighting the feds for border control, have taken over much of the hard drug trade and have their roots in the Sandanistas and other revolutionary groups in central America.
I've been trying for several weeks to find time to write an article on the wider picture here, but I'll give you a taste of it by quoting the title of an Army War College Strategic Studies Institute paper from earlier this year: Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency. And no, that monograph was not primarily inspired by the situation in Iraq. It's part of about 10 years' concern over netwars and the way in which various technologies enable gang activity and erode central authority in many city states and regions.
To tie this back to New Orleans for a moment, the city has been widely reported to have been home to a well-entrenched gang/underworld structure which made a lucrative business of drugs and gun running. I have no personal corroboration that that was the case, but I note the rapid move to cold blooded killings and rapes when/where the police were unable or unwilling to keep order after the floods.
It may not be co-incidental that in New Orleans we failed to see people pull together and organize themselves, and saw what appeared to be increasingly coordinated thuggery emerge.
I find it utterly revolting that such a catastrophe is being turned into a game of partisan gotcha before the bodies are buried. At least we had that amount of decency after 9/11. The level of contempt I feel for the opportunism on display is likely to cement my political attitudes for the remainder of my life.
The issue is logistics, not politics. We ended up with tens of thousands of people 'forward deployed' with the supporting infrastructure destroyed for tens of miles around, and a collapse of civil order. If there wasn't going to be a capital investment in hardening that infrastructure - and I have my doubts as to the feasibility of that level of control of nature - there damn well should have been a contingency plan to get folks without their own transport out of there. The busses commandeered yesterday could have been commandeered on Saturday and Sunday. Why not? I'll want answers - two months out - but right now they must come out, even if it takes harsh security measures to make sure it's possible. Failing to use force on the civil disorder is indirectly killing more than it's saving.
The cameras are focusing on the Dome and levee break, because they makes good MSM theatre. But as long as the bridges are broken, and the pipes and wires are down, we're not going to be putting civilians back in there, even if the water is drained. Every one of them is a tax on a thrashed logistical structure. The burden on shelters can be reduced as some of the northern towns and suburbs get their power back, and can starting cleaning themselves up. But it is going to be an ordeal of months to stand some version of NO and lower MS and AL back up. I can only pray that national level politicians of both parties have more patience and maturity than I see displayed on the blogs, including here. I'm terribly disappointed.
I tend to agree with those who believe this may end up being a Paul Wellstone memorial kind of moment for Democrats if they don't snap out of it.
re #17
>>>The NO and Louisiana governments are way more culpable of graft and lack of responsibility than Bush is,IMO and they are democrats,always are as Louisiana never votes Republican.<<<
While I agree with the first part of that statement, as to the second part:
2004 Presidential Election Results - Louisiana
George W. Bush
Republican 1,102,169 56.72%
John Kerry
Democrat 820,299 42.22%
http://uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/
Ultimately, New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is a test of President Bush's credibility in the war against terror. If we lose credibility, we lose leadership in the war.
To hell with "credibility" - that dog was always too gun-shy to hunt.
We don't say it often enough, because of the mindless anti-Bush yammering and the juvenile personalization of politics, but: Bush is not and never has been all that we could desire, and we all know it.
It isn't an intellectual issue. We don't even consider giving leadership to intellectuals, except for the occasional bogus intellectual from Massachusetts. Bush just doesn't have Ronald Reagan's relentless punch - the punch that went right through the flimsy political tissue and hit the bone.
Bush has his merits. He's got a heart in the right place and he's reasonably wobble-resistant. He makes good choices in the people he appoints to leadership positions (better than Reagan did; much better than FDR did). He is not an incompetent by any means.
He just doesn't set people on fire, like JFK and Reagan could do. And maybe that's a good thing, because the idea that the POTUS is supposed to do our thinking and even our feeling for us is a paradigm that needs to be overcome.
"celebrim,
Where exactly are you?"
Right now I'm sitting at a desk at LSU in Baton Rouge not doing my work.
I can't do any work either. I hope you and yours came throught this safely. I'm a 1000 miles away and I'm still a mess.
"I find it utterly revolting that such a catastrophe is being turned into a game of partisan gotcha before the bodies are buried. At least we had that amount of decency after 9/11. The level of contempt I feel for the opportunism on display is likely to cement my political attitudes for the remainder of my life."
That is laughable. Who made the ruins of the WTC a photo-op? Who put their convention in NYC and milked 9/11 dry?
Take your holier than thou act somewhere else.
Two hyperlinks concerning the forseeability of the broad outlines of this tragedy.
I hope never again to read an NOAA weather forecast like last Sunday's 10am HURRICANE KATRINA A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH (archived at Vodkapundit).
And Brendan Loy's compendium of Hurricane Ivan posts, No more lies: we saw this coming (non-Permalink here) shouldn't go down the Memory Hole:
I earlier pointed to the issue of gangs as insurgents. This account from CNN re: New Orleans is apposite:
Overnight, police snipers were stationed on the roof of their precinct, trying to protect it from gunmen roaming through the city, CNN's Chris Lawrence reported.
One New Orleans police sergeant compared the situation to Somalia and said officers were outnumbered and outgunned by gangs in trucks. ... In one incident, the sergeant said gunmen fired rifles and AK-47s at the helicopters flying overhead.
He said he saw bodies riddled with bullet holes, and the top of one man's head completely shot off.
The point? That a good deal of the chaos in New Orleans is NOT a humanitarian rescue problem at root: there are armed gangs taking control of a city they probably considered (rightly?) theirs prior to the floods. And that is not a situation that it is in any way fair or appropriate to lay at the feet of the current Administration. It goes to the heart of the local culture, to cops who joined the looting of TVs and jewelry and to a deep problem in that city long before the floods, I suspect.
Max your partisanship is showing. Clinton took advantage of photo-ops a lot more than Bush ever has. Besides, if he didn't show up, you'd accuse him of hiding at is range in Crawford or something.
Cicero,
This is the price of federalism. It’s a control issue. The federal government cannot be any more efficient in disaster relief than the affected state and local governments permit. Louisiana has the most corrupt and inefficient state government in the United States. New Orleans has the most corrupt and inefficient municipal government of any major city in the United States. The local ruling elites like it that way – they keep their power and their corrupt ways of doing business.
They’ve been driving honest businesses and people away for scores of years. This was true a long time ago and is true now. Read:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_08_31_05ng.html - Will New Orleans Recover? which says:
I read a blog post this morning (can’t remember where) by a Mississippi River shipping guy who had grown up in New Orleans saying that shipping companies had been leaving the Port of New Orleans for as long as he’d been in business, in favor of other River ports, because it cost too much to do business at the Port of New Orleans due to theft and corruption.
Then check out how New Orleans elites behaved during the 1927 flood, in this book:
RISING TIDE: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America
and compare that with what is going on now, as reported here (New Orleans live blog run by a military veteran with Iraq experience):
http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/
"The following is the result of an interview I just conducted via cell phone with a New Orleans citizen stranded at the Convention Center. I don't know what you're hearing in the mainstream media or in the press conferences from the city and state officials, but here is the truth:
"Bigfoot" is a bar manager and DJ on Bourbon Street, and is a local personality and icon in the city. He is a lifelong resident of the city, born and raised. He rode out the storm itself in the Iberville Projects because he knew he would be above any flood waters. Here is his story as told to me moments ago. I took notes while he talked and then I asked some questions:
If you've read RISING TIDE, it is obvious that the behavior of New Orleans elites and the government they control has not changed in the least since 1927. Them first and to hell with everyone else.
I.e., the reason Louisiana Governor Blanco refused to suspend habeas corpus and declare martial law for days after such was obviously necessary, and still refuses to formally ask for federal military assistance in restoring order (the first two are legal prerequisites to the third – legal words of art are required for the third), is that Louisiana & New Orleans elites would no longer be able to have special protection and most especially control over the relief efforts.
Honest, efficient, government is the last thing they want, and “federal military assistance in restoring order” would provide just that.
Look carefully at what is going on, and consider how Louisiana & New Orleans government are loathe to give up control of public order and relief to the federal government.
It’s about power. They really, really, really, don’t want to cede power to the federal government. This drastically limits what the federal government can do to help.
Anyone with experience in emergency management can tell you how essential it is that one person and one organization be ultimately in charge of major disasters. Lousiana and New Orleans elites, and the governments they control, do not want that to happen. Honest, efficient, government is their enemy.
I agree with Cicero 90%. What we're seeing right now is what would happen if an al-Quida cell blew a dam that flooded a city, but WITH days and weeks of warning ahead of time. My only 10% disagreement is his saying 'If' we lose credibility, like it's still an issue. The test has been scored and the grade is in. The administration failed: http://discussions.wsj.com/n/mb/viewpoll.asp?webtag=wsjvoices&vote=0&msg=3630
Good point, Dave, one I missed since I don't know the city well - only been there as a tourist. Suspect there were at least as many school busses to be had in the surounding districts as well - also now likely to be scrap metal.
And Max... If Bush stays away, you'll kvetch he doesn't care. If he shows up, you'll say he's grandstanding - as you just did. You're a one bit device with the output stuck. Not worth any further attention.
#33 Dave Schuler re: New Orleans' 324 city busses, unused and now underwater:
I had that exact thought early Saturday morning (i.e. 24 hours before the mandatory evacuation was called by the city's Mayor). My long-ago experience in disaster planning in a small town isn't worth much, but I can say this: by the time the event is upon you, it's too late.
Utilizing those city busses would have meant a plan that was designed, written out, approved, and practiced annually that covered:
This could have been done, if planning had started in the aftermath of the Hugo near-miss.
Obviously, it wasn't done.
Obviously, it wasn't a priority of the City, the Region, or the State.
Obviously to some, this is a microcosm of the state of planning and preparedness for a hurricane of Category 5, 4, or even a severe or slow-moving 3.
I have a hard time seeing how any Federal agency had the authority or the ability (or, therefore, the responsibility to do preparedness planning at this micro-scale. And this is the scale that matters.
That doesn't excuse failings or shortcomings in the aftermath of the storm. FEMA is a (the?) lead agency in the pick-up-the-pieces phase that began on Wednesday. See comments #7 [Robin Burke] and #32 [Tom Holsinger], above. Bringing the discussion back to Cicero's initial point.
I agree with this completely, AMac. But my own experience (in a completely different field) is that the skills required to formulate a plan, the skills required to follow a plan (and adapt it as circumstances require), and the skills required to get elected to public office are three completely different skill-sets that almost never appear in the same individual. And the people who possess one skill-set rarely respect the other skill-sets.
What I've seen is that the more effective one is as a bureaucrat and politician the less likely one is to have the divergent thinking required for really creative planning.
YMMV
The scale of this disaster is 90,000 square miles (via normblog). This disaster is not just New Orleans. Just think of that scale. I think it is too soon to judge anyones credibility. IMHO.
btw. if you are still looking for a charity to give to The McCormick Foundation is matching donations $.50 for every dollar.
The democratic party machines in Louisiana and New Orleans are broken and corrupt. That is the key lesson to be gained here, the utter ineptitude of the democratic machine in Louisiana, corrupt cops, corrupt city and state officials.
We have a federal system--so the local governments are in charge here. The federal government is not the one with jurisdiction, sinquetos.
This brain dead anti-Bush yammering is about what you might expect from the aluminum foil-hat brigade. But what's it doing here?
You Americans, like we Canadians, live in a federation. Has Cicero no understanding what that means?
Those of you who live in cities that are more than 100 years old, try to look back in history at how your public utilities were established.
They came into being by either local businessmen, or local ratepayers. No state or province, and certainly not a federal government was involved.
On what do municipalities waste their money now?
Um, judging from the post, I'd say that he does...
Dave: Mayor Nagin could have bussed poor people out and simultaneously saved valuable city property—the busses themselves.
Actually, probably not. The buses are driven by Teamsters, and may not be driven by anyone else. It would be an unusually liberal union contract that allowed the mayor to call on bus drivers to perform something above and beyond the call of duty, especially when it's hazardous.
Nagin is obviously no Schwarzenegger, and he wouldn't be the mayor of New Orleans if he was.
We have a federal system.
The mayor and governor have to act first.
The media don't seem to understand this and they don't give a damn about any of the people caught up in this disaster — they just care about bashing Bush, selling soap and self-aggrandizing.
I donated $100 to the Salvation Army, $100 to Soldier's Angels and after watching a few minutes of CNN, I gave $100 to the RNC.
Cicero,
Regarding Bush and the single issue of security: I account for my vote in the last election much as you do, but for me security is as much about prevention as it is recovery - maybe more. Credibility on security shouldn't hinge entirely on a question of response and recovery.
On the other hand, New Orleans is a strategic asset of the whole country - the federal government has accountability for planning in this regard, and the lack of it.
National Geographic ran this last year - read the first few paragraphs and tell me if it doesn't raise the hairs. It's not like this was an "unknown unknown", to use a Rumsfeldism.
Tim Oren wrote:
Heh, like maybe these busses?
[links hat tip to Drudge, whose page is definitely interesting in this crisis].
Oh, damn. That picture finally made me lose it, Lewy. Sometimes it completely sucks being right.
Tim,
Damning as that photo is, I'm not making any final judgements - there may be an answer as to why those busses went unused - see celebrim's comment for example - he's closer to the situation than we are.
That said, it sure is warrented to ask the question... why weren't the school busses used?
(Composure regained for now.) There's some good backgrounding showing up on blogs from those who've been-there-done-that:
Jason von Steenwyk is FL National Guard. Has an Iraq battle ribbon, but as much time deploying for FL hurricane relief - might as well be a pro. He discusses the logistics of military relief efforts - and spanks Ann Althouse to boot.
There's some good stuff at Donald Sensing's, including this comment for a state level emergency management worker who has "been through three major floods", telling how the FEMA/state relationship is supposed to work, and how this episode compares to other precedents. Lots of other good discussion there.
Bush has a plan for securing the borders.
It is a plan I first suggested in 2001.
Unfortunately folks want a utopian plan that perfectly seals the border ala East Germany. Like so many things that are a good idea, there is competition for resources.
So the perfect plan gets in the way of a good one. The right is just as nuts about its hobby horses as the left.
As posted a few other places, this link from Sunday the 28th is ridiculous:
My number one complaint is that the city should have been evacuated at least 24 hours earlier, and that there should have been some provision for those who couldn't get out. If the President had to personally call on Sunday in order to get the governor and mayor to issue a mandatory evacuation... well, it's just insanely ridiculous. Mayor Nagin's complaints towards the Feds shouldn't dig himself out of that hole. He was the one who Bush had to prod into issuing an evacuation order that came too late.
NOLA's school buses might be waterlogged, but I'll bet there are a dozen rural districts nearby which did not flood and whose buses could provide emergency transportation.
300 buses at 40 people/bus/trip is 12,000 refugees per round trip. At that pace it would take little time to whittle the humanitarian problem of New Orleans down to a manageable size.
Except Engineer, you are under estimating the length of a round trip. If you must move people 5 or 6 hours away, you are talking about weeks to move the people left.
Many of the people whining about response time for relief seem to me to not understand the magnitude of the logistics involved.
You know, when I go back and look at the image, the buses aren't submerged above the wheelwells. Get a wrecker, a mechanic, and some drivers in there, and they'd roll again - though not if left for 30 days in brackish water. No way to send them back in time, but that's a lot of rolling stock there that could be useful in the next few weeks. There's a lot of people to move to new digs.
"300 buses at 40 people/bus/trip is 12,000 refugees per round trip. At that pace it would take little time to whittle the humanitarian problem of New Orleans down to a manageable size."
You just don't understand the scale of the problem.
There are 7 parishes in Louisiana that are completely without power (and hense water) - not just two. In those Parishes there is no neither gasoline nor at this point food. All the supermarkets lost all there refridgerated food. All the produce is going rotten. All the frozen food has been gone for days. Some people caught ill prepared are simply going hungry. No relief is expected in some cases for weeks. Local roads are blocked by fallen trees and power lines.
Even here in Baton Rouge there are deepening food and gasoline shortages. You name it, you can't buy it in town. About all we have is bottled water, because the city never lost water. We are already carrying 400,000 extra people in a metropolitan area of just over 400,000. Every spare roof has beds under it. Every empty apartment, every empty house has been rented or bought. Traffic is snarled. The supermarkets are empty of virtually all essentials, including basic items like tolietries. Trips across town that used to take 10 minutes take an hour. The snarl just increases the gasoline problem.
And the biggest problem is that all the roads out of New Orleans that aren't cut lead directly in the heart of the dark zone. You can't drive directly from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. I-10 is gone.
If you rolled 300 buses into the New Orleans surrounding area, there would be no gaurantee you'd find gas, food, or shelter at your destination. It's a minimum 3 hour trip by bus just one way to Baton Rouge, and we are running out of room to put people. If you know anything about logistics, you know you don't plan on moving all your stock at the same time because buses will break down and you'll need to transfer passengers. Plus you need to find drivers, and ideally enough drivers to take shifts. But, until recently you couldn't make phone calls through much of the region, so how do you find drivers. You could rely on ordinary people, but that just increases the chances of wrecked buses. Do you really want to be responcible for a school bus taking a dive into the Poncatrain?
Now, all of this is happening, but it isn't going to happen immediately. AMac was most on target when he said that this could only get pulled off if a well designed plan was put in place by the local authorities ahead of time, and they didn't. Instead, they spent all of thier time arguing over whether to keep the Saints in town playing football.
Celebrim, I addressed some of your objections at my blog. Buses can move relief goods in on their return trips; one person's weight in food and bottled water will keep them for quite a few days. Fuel can come by small tanker; buses can be filled outside the city and refilled after they've left, perhaps using freeway rest stops as fuelling and passenger relief zones.
A good-sized bus probably has a payload capability of at least 10 tons. Divide that into 8 tons of water and 2 tons of food, and you've got two gallons of drinking water and four pounds of food for a thousand people. That's one bus. A semi could haul in 30 tons in a go, but it couldn't haul people out on its return trip.
I know it's a hassle to find destinations for this many people, but the magnitude of the problem of just being in NO decreases a lot as soon as they get to a place with electricity and running water. First things first, even if it means pitching every tent in town and cleaning out the air mattresses, blankets, crew socks and underwear from every K-Mart and Wal-Mart in the state.
Once they're out of the disaster area, you can think about where to move them for the long term. Living in a tent in a park and showering under a garden hose isn't the Ritz, but people with food, water and basic sanitation are a lot less likely to just die than the ones we've been hearing about.
Let me add there was a massive and notable flood in 1994 during which there was about 8 inches of rain in a little over two hours which flooded out the entire city and overwhelmed the pumps.
Flooding of this sort was experienced at a lower level only 11 years ago. So New Orleans had some warning.
Partial evacuation was possible of all these very poor folks up through Friday.
However New Orleans had so many near misses that it was felt throughout the city that the Hurricane would once again like Ivan and Georges take a turn and spare them. Note that Bush had to personally issue a plea to Gov Blanco to get Nagin to issue a mandatory evacuation order on late Saturday, just one day prior to the Hurricane's arrival. Blanco had to interrupt Nagin at dinner to get this done.
Once most of New Orlean's poor folk who don't own cars and have all their relatives in the city were stuck in the City it was going to get ugly. I'll note that there was NO stockpiling of portable toilets, water, food, generators, fuel etc at either the Convention Center or Superdome.
Nagin deserves about 80% of the blame.
By late Tuesday it was clear that things were ugly and a disaster, Blanco should have declared Martial Law, asked for federal help, and mobilized a massive citizen convoy to take as many people as possible at least to Baton Rouge where there was power and sewage. No sewage means deplorable conditions. While not all could have been rescued at least 10-15 thousand would have been evacuated the first day from each site which is better than nothing.
Blanco deserves about 15% of the blame.
Bush could have kicked things into gear more, however the failure on the ground of the local folks was only really clear by late Wed. So he deserves 5% of the blame (I cut him slack because he pressed for evac which saved lots of people)
I blame the people who built their huts on mud.
Below sea level.
The only thing that should be built in that area are boats (homes that can float). They should be like the ark - ready to float when the flood comes.
BTW any one on the look out for loose asteroids or comets?
it sure is warrented to ask the question... why weren't the school busses used?
Unwilling to antagonize the unionized drivers, whose contracts would need to be abrogated/overruled?
Or sheer incompetance?
Or both????
The story of the young black man who stole a NO school bus and rescued 80 people, many desperately ill, from New Orleans, is inspiring. He drove them all the way to the Houston Astrodome, stopping for gas 3 times, all of them pooling their resources. Car thief saves dozens! Probably the best headline from Katrina.
The local leadership in New Orleans and Louisiana failed the intelligence test they were given. Average IQ among the leadership of the area is at least 1, perhaps 2 standard deviations below what it would need to be to deal with a crisis of this magnitude. Folks, stupid people do not meet a crisis well. If the stupid people are also corrupt and naturally incompetent, the situation is truly ominous.
I am glad others immediately thought of that damning Drudge photo of the parked busses. That, if beamed around the world, would immediately take the blame off Bush that the liberal world media is trying to propagate here in Europe. You can be assured that they won't be showing that photo in Europe. But half the people here will "get it" anyway. Europeans are 50% conservative like in the USA.
Problem is...Bush, unlike Reagan, would never point this out. He will never really attack liberals and pin them to the wall. Just like his father...too "gentile" (sic).
How do you spell that anyway?
Anyway, Cicero is pointing out that he didn't really learn on 9-11 NOT to be a liberal anymore at all. He is acting like the security of untenable, anachronistic cities full of nihilistic liberals...really matters so much anymore.
He thinks that amounts to "credibility" for Bush when what really matters is democracy around the world.
Cicero brings it all back to the security of liberal American cities. And that is a problem.
I was a Manhattan metrosexual before 9-11. I was as liberal as they came.
But 9-11 made me leave the coffin called Manhattan! Now, I cannot ever live in a Blue State, much less a city full of nihilistic leftists who don't give a damn about democracy in other countries.
I don't really care that much (like I did on 9-11) what happens to Manhattan now that it has become a reality-denying leftist coffin. I could change my mind in the future if the city's people get their act together. But they will probably always be leftists. Their appeasment attitude and their 71% vote for John Kerry seemed like an invitation for being attacked again.
Hassert is right. No need to rebuild the poor areas of NO unless you need the labor and, even then, NO NEED TO REBUILD A LEFTIST CENTER OF INDOCTRINATION or welfare concentration. Maybe let those who want to come back, build houseboats to replace the other homes.
Basically, I just don't buy the idea that the preservation of nihilistic and anachronistic liberal cities is supposed to be a priority in the WOT. I fully expect 1 or 2 to be nuked in this war...and, as long as the Middle East gets turned around, we will have "won."
Meanwhile, I do agree that it concerns me that it took until Friday to get the National Guard into NO when the catastrophe happened Monday morning. I would say there was a 48 hour delay in what should have been the response. Wednesday should have had the trucks rolling in. But then we wouldn't have seen how the people and police of NO were not able to save themselves in the absence of radioactivity, but instead "turned in their badges" and "joined the looters" and let 14 year old girls get raped and murdered in the Superdome (the fault of every able-bodied adult male in the Superdome who should have set up their own law).
If an American city gets nuked, we will need police that won't quit and a response that leaves the residents alone for no more than 48 hours! But we will also need to see residents deputizing their own sherriffs and policing themselves.
And I was as liberal as they came on 9-10-01
The story of violence in New Orleans, and the Superdome and Convention Center should be a warning as to how easily quasi-civilized people can revert to anarchy and "Lord of the Flies" type chaos and brutality. This is like Haiti or South Africa. How absurd that there was no source of local order in New Orleans. Virtually all the order had to come from the outside, over the resistance of state and local governments. What local incompetence!
Yes, that young man who drove the bus to Houston is the best story to come out of this precisely because it shows that what wasn't done can be done. There is a word for people who act in this fashion. That word is 'hero'. I'd like to see the president have him up to the White House and give him a medal. Now, that would be good politics.
Yup, those hundred schoolbuses let Bush completely off the hook.
Damn you, Drudge!
No one seems to be holding the left-over citizens of New Orleans responsible for their own plight. Not even a little bit.
InstaPundit has focused a couple of times on the media's past history of over-reacting to where when people are told "mandatory evacuation" everyone tended to think, "been there / done that" and assumed they could ride it out again.
But I have read other places that the people who didn't leave were the poor, and becaue it was the end of the month, they couldn't afford $40 for a tank of gas. This is an indefensible excuse for sitting still on the tracks in front of an on-coming train wreck.
People ALWAYS need to take responsibility for themselves and their own safety. If they just sit there like baby birds in a nest with their heads thrown back, waiting for the govnernment to feed them, then like blind baby birds bad things may happen to them.
And it doesn't matter if you're black or white or brown or pink -- you get what you pay for. If you pay for nothing, and you do nothing, and you plan for nothing ... then isn't it your own damned fault if you end up locked in the Convention Center with no food, water or toilets???
No, SAO, the photo of the busses do not "let" anyone off any "hook". What they do is symbolize the fact that the New Orleans city government had many resources needed to aid their citizens and squandered them. Just as they squandered important time.
As much as want to, I haven't been able to read this whole thread, but here's a bit if information that might shed light on the breakdowns that happened:
http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/plans/EOPSupplement1a.pdf
This is the Plan that the state of LA exercised with the 1st Army just last summer. This is how it was supposed to happen. Based on what you've all seen on TV, I think you can see where exactly the issue lies.
In terms of devastation, yes, this rivals and from all reports I'm seeing will most likely exceed 9/11 but the situations are NOT analogous. 9/11 was an attack on our home soil by a (at that time) unknown entity, an act of war and obviously a federal concern. Katrina was an act of nature, not an act of war, and according to the plan, a local concern unless local resources were overwhelmed. Let's stop pointing fingers of blame, get those who still survive out and the dead decently buried.
THEN lets look at that plan and say "What went wrong?"
Bill Funt --
Mayor Nagin is a smart man. As a Comcast Cable exec he led the company in growth, new services, and customer satisfaction. He wasn't just some figurehead. He was about as good as it gets, in Louisiana, and is personally incorruptible (rare in Louisiana) and during his first year or so as Mayor attacked corruption in the Morial Regime, cleared out City Hall, and tried to reform the NOPD to dump the bad/corrupt/brutal cops.
Ray Nagin was drafted by the small business leaders who still cared about the city and the benevolent associations that dated from the 19th Century and sill helped the working class and middle class African Americans in Mid City and East New Orleans. These are good, decent, hard working people who basically held the city together when the white elite fled or ignored, the white middle class fled, and the major businesses moved to Houston.
New Orleans has been dying in slow motion, made worse by the Projects around 1950, since at least 1920 or so. Corruption and violence drove off the business community and prevented enterpeneurial efforts. Wasn't always so, in the 19th Century New Orleans was the commercial and intellectual capital of the South. But the highest leadership just abandoned the notion of continued economic development and sought rent-seeking.
The problem is that New Orleans despite the efforts of small businesses and benevolent societies and good, decent smart guys like Ray Nagin has a completely dysfunctional culture. The projects have been a breeding ground for violence, despair, and poverty for generations but nothing was done. NOPD was understaffed and essentially broken but nothing was done. The true magnitude of the crisis impending seems to have put forward ennui mixed with desperation instead of heroic measures to at least minimize the crisis.
There is no objective reason so many in New Orleans were poor; New Orleans has a unique geographical advantage in shipping, so light manufacturing and transit jobs (Morial tried to develop a fresh-cut-flower commercial air express at Louis Armstrong Airport with links to Latin America but nothing happened) that paid enough to lift people out of poverty should have been a no brainer, but the political culture did not support it.
Poverty kills and the absolute poverty of New Orleans killed absolutely. THAT is the true tragedy of decades of bad leadership uninterested in the drudgery of economic development.
Jim Rockford: It's wonderfully refreshing to hear a thoughtful, balanced post that teaches us something serious about the political culture of New Orleans. Congratulations!
I'm less impressed, Jim. Perhaps you would say that Nagin couldn't be blamed for the collapse of his city government in the face of this disaster but what I've seen is Nagin blaming others for his own failures. Junk Yard Blog has this post discussing how hurricanes Georges and Ivan had already taught Gov Blanco and Mayor Nagin that they were not prepared.
I see a bunch of folks whining about what pol did what.
Well ask any of us engineers if we think any of the pols are intelligent. You won't like the answer!
Here is what needs to be done in tandem with the resecue.
We can't ship grain to Europe and points out from New Orleans or its workerless nearby ports.
We are 11 percent short of refining capacity for our current needs do the storm knocking 14% of the refinery capacity offline. That means even if we can import the extra oil from somewhere we can't use it.
So MOBILIZE ADM, BUDWISER, JACK DANIELS etc...
Turn that grain we can't ship into alcohol. Take that alcohol and bend it in to all our gas just not that in the EPA mandated areas and get us back to FULL GAS Capacity with Gasehol!!
Think about it ADM can't be supermarket to the world when it can't ship but I can put that corn into our tanks and be a savior.
Dune ranting and the pols can just shut the f... up!
Rockford, your posting on the other thread somewhat contradicts your praise of Nagin here. The other posting is much more pertinent to the present situation. No matter how "intelligent" Nagin may be, he was a total incompetent boob in this situation--and it cost thousands of lives. There is no excusing that failure by any rational means.
Here is an excerpt from your excellent post on the other thread:
Ray Nagin who I've defended in the Past and will continue to do so, simply failed in this, and deserves the blame of putting about 100,000 plus people in this mess. He failed in his duty to get them out and once it all came apart basically forted up in his office and didn't go out. Rudy and Haley Barbour and Alabama's Gov. went out and PERSONALLY smacked heads to get things going. BOBBY JINDAL told Fox that he was holding "come to Jesus" meeting with the National Guard and FEMA to force them to throw out the rule book and just save people. Properly, this is Nagin's job.
As it was to prepare both the Convention Center and Superdome with lots of water, food, emergency generators, portable toilets, and enough armed security to deter violence in the locations. Nagin failed here too.
Once the Hurricane passed through, most lines of transport were just GONE. The main roads from Kenner's Louis Armstrong Airport are gone. Metarie is gone. St. Bernard Parish is gone. Plaquemines and St. Tammany are gone. There's still many people there who are also probably dying on their rooftops or are trapped in attics. I-10 is just GONE. It's the main route to New Orleans, particularly from the West which is untouched and has power, food, sewage, and water. Trucking food, water, medical supplies, to the trapped city has to go south first, then up to New Orleans from the south. Same for evacuation.
This makes pre-positioning assets and moving them into staging areas quickly a must. This is Blanco's job and wasn't done. Helicopters, trucks, food, water, comm equipment were way out of place and not close to New Orleans where they needed to be. Blanco failed there.
Yup, those hundred schoolbuses let Bush completely off the hook.
No, SAO, but maybe this does
Along the lines of #71 I propose a new motto for the Bush administration (apologies to Truman).
"The buck stops anywhere but here!"
Tom, sorry that motto was already taken by Nagin and Blanco.
I am an engineer, and I don't think 3dc is very intelligent either. Not even as intelligent as our politicians.
The 2004 corn (maize) harvest was about 11.8 billion bushels. Suppose that we can't get 20% of it out of here due to the Mississippi being down; that's 2.36 billion bushels. At a conversion rate of 2.66 gallons/bushel, that corn could make just 6.28 billion gallons of ethanol, with energy equivalent to about 3.77 billion gallons of gasoline. The US burns about 134 billion gallons of gasoline per year; that extra ethanol would amount to a mere 2.8%, not 10%.
But it gets worse. Ethanol does not come for free once you have the mash fermenting; it has to be distilled. Distillation requires on the order of 33,000 BTU per gallon, and most distillers burn LPG or natural gas. Well, guess what?- LPG is a product of petroleum refining, and refineries are either down or lack feedstock.
- Natural gas production is down 10% due to destruction of wells and production platforms in the Gulf.
Increasing production of ethanol would mean a lot of people will be unable to heat their homes this winter. Making 6.28 billion gallons of ethanol would require about 210 billion cubic feet of natural gas, or about 30 days of the shut-in production in the Gulf of Mexico. Make more ethanol = make bigger problem.If we want to do something intelligent, let's declare a national emergency and send every Hummer which appears on a public road straight to a crusher. Thousand dollar fine for every driver of a 4×4 who exceeds 55 MPH. No movement of motor homes or travel trailers except to return to the owner's home without a letter of necessity.
And those two billion bushels of corn? If they'll burn in pellet stoves, let's let them keep people from freezing this winter.
I suspect we will see a lot of under-utilized rail capacity being utilized now. The same goes for dozens of smaller ports around the country presently going underutilized. The loss of a single port does not mean the loss of all the commodities that normally pass through that port. It means those commodities will be diverted to other ports via rail, canal, or sometimes truck. The great lakes may see more traffic before the freeze (unless global warming comes to the rescue and negates the freeze), and many minor gulf ports will increase in use.
New Orleans is simply a bad idea, in terms of location for a city. It has been a massive exercise in denial for centuries.
My response to 3dc has been extended as The ethanol mirage.
Well said, Engineer.
The President lied. Chertoff lied. Brown lied.
Brown was unqualified for his position
Bush visit halts New Orleans food delivery
Bush was able to get lots of FEDERAL help to Florida last year
FEMA abandons americans
Huge federal cuts for levee relief
Bush attempted to destroy FEMA
Potemkin relief effort for Bush NO photo op
President Bush could have federalized the National Guard in an instant. That is what his father did after the Los Angeles riot in 1992
There was and is - always has been - incredible corruption in the Big Easy. We all know this, and that's also a big part of what's going on here. But for you guys to simply shift ANY responsibility away from the Bush federal administration is insane.
JC -
Obviously you have linked to the wrong stories.
For example, the story that you linked as evidence that "Bush attempted to destroy FEMA" contains no mention of such an attempt.
The link that you cite as evidence that "The President lied" does not even mention the president. He does not feature in the story at all. Not so much as a single oblique reference.
Your somewhat confusing indictment "Potemkin relief effort for Bush NO photo op" links to a partial translation of a German television report. Being a German television report, you would expect George Bush to eat at least one baby. Instead, we get only the opinion of Ms. Christine Adelhardt, who tells us (incredibly): "The extent of the natural disaster shocked me, but the extent of the staging is shocking me at least the same way."
Granted, Ms. Adelhardt is a prima facie idiot who may very well believe that we are faking the entire relief effort, just like we faked the Apollo moon landing. However, the story does not say so.
Have you had a Rorschach test lately?
If you have any desire to grasp what is actually required for the relief effort, check Countercolumn: all your bias are belong to us! (http://www.iraqnow.blogspot.com/)
There are some excellent detailed descriptions of the logistical considerations of moving and deploying supplies and transport across hundreds of miles of blasted landscape where the roads are destroyed and blocked by debris, and fuel supplies FOR THE TRANSPORT VEHICLES must be carried in addition to the relief supplies.
Living in San Francisco Bay Area (Fremont) for a decade, I took a 12-week Red Cross course in Wilderness Emergency Response AND CERT training from the local fire department. One of the points made by the firefighter at the first session was sobering: In the event of a Mag7 quake in the East Bay (between San Jose and Oakland), it was expected that some 20,000 or more people would sustain injuries requiring treatment to prevent bleeding to death and restore functionality IN THE FIRST TWO MINUTES of the quake. Meanwhile, at any moment for the same geographic area there are on duty only about 200 trained circulating responders — police officers, firefighters, ambulance crew, etc. Hospitals and their staff will instantly be overwhelmed by damage, injuries, and new patients presenting themselves. Streets will be clogged and impassable. You can expect a period on the order of two weeks MINIMUM before any organized relief is fully established, so during that time you will probably have to rely upon your own preparations and training.
That sort of information was available to anyone who bothered to take a few minutes to skim any of the earthquake preparedness pamphlets that are distibuted in ton lots around the bay area, but who bothers?
From the IDIOTIC statements and accusations of the media, I have to conclude that those pathetickers have no more bothered to research the realities of disaster relief than they bother to educate themselves on any other issue.
Having been a President Bush supporter I am devastated by the Katrina response. I assisted in two natural disasters during my military service: NY Ice Storm and FL Wildfires. No matter what I think of everything else going on in the world, the response from FEMA has been disgusting. The President appointed a political hack to one of the most important jobs in the nation. President Bush has failed miserably and should be judged for the actions of those in his administration. After all, he appointed them and supposedly trusted them.
Maybe the President should take part in the search for bodies. He certainly helped create them with his political hacks running the show.
Really Robin** ? Just what was FEMA supposed to do that it didn't do?
It wasn't FEMA's job to evacuate New Orleans. And the explicit disaster plans inform localities that Federal relief takes 72 to 96 hours to arrive.
Evidently what Katrina has taught the Bush administration is to not do the hard work of disaster relief but instead to just make sure that they parade FEMA people infront of cable TV cameras immediately.
Glen,
Stop being a cherry-picking partisan - enough is enough. Just stop it.
The title of the article is "Destroying FEMA". This is one of the first quotes -
"Which makes it all the more difficult to understand why, at this moment, the country's premier agency for dealing with such events -- FEMA -- is being, in effect, systematically downgraded and all but dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security."
Even on the president lying, I thought this article included the Bush assertion when being interviewed by Diane Sawyer, that "no one thought the leveee would break", as his feeble excuse, which is an out and out lie.
And the german article holds up. All those resources were moved in as a stage prop.
Hey,what do you feel when you watch the Broussard video? Don't you want to fire the guy responsible?
This is beyond partisan politics - it is dereliction of duty, and I have admitted that the local democrats have blame as well. But are you truly so partisan to think that the Bush administration bears no responsibility?
And I'm assuming, since you glossed over every other article I pointed to, and didn't mention Brown and Chertoff lying, that your silence is an embarassed agreement with the other points of my post.
JC: I'm assuming, since you glossed over every other article I pointed to, and didn't mention Brown and Chertoff lying, that your silence is an embarassed agreement with the other points of my post.
Your assumption about my agreement is wrong.
As for being embarrassed, I'm not sure. I don't really know what embarrassment feels like.
I still think that the comments about being surprised by the levee break are being taken out of context completely. Meaningless mountains out of molehills in the extreme.
Yes, I must agree with the more intelligent posters above, that the local response of the Louisiana governments was atrocious. The federal response was adequate, given the obstructionism of local Louisiana governments. Next time it will probably be necessary to depose the local government of New Orleans and Louisiana in order to get the competent people in earlier.