Katrina and the unbearable lightness of politics

Curt Mudgeon

September 2005

Watching television reports from New Orleans these past few days reminded me of the worst scenes of war that I had witnessed in a past now distant.  Actually, it was even worse, because those gut-wrenching images did not come from some distant hellhole untouched by civilisation.  They came from a major American city with a rich history, a city reputed for its good times, good food, happy music, and a style of its own.

Behind the cheery façade, New Orleans has been from times immemorial one of the most corrupt, crime-ridden cities of the country.  Thus, to see looters at work right after the passage of the storm did not really come as a big surprise, as we had seen similar scenes whenever there is a breakdown of authority.  Some people walked out of grocery stores with carts loaded with food, boxes of diapers, and bottled water.  That was a matter of survival, and no one could blame them.  But the hoodlums seen pushing entire racks of three-piece suits, or running away with flat-screen television sets, or raiding liquor stores and gun shops had no excuse.  Armed gangs were breaking into pharmacies to steal drugs and threatened to loot hospitals.  In other times, this kind of thuggery was punished by death right there and then.  Still worse, shots were fired at rescue teams.  As a soldier put it, “This is worse than Iraq.  Here, we are shot at by Americans.”

Natural disasters are a bit like war.  Even with the best of plans, the organisation of evacuation, rescue operations, and the maintenance of law and order are bound to be a little bumpy. But in this case, everything started from a sorry state of play.  Predictably, well before the facts are out, the Left and its friends in the press are making of it as much political hay as possible by placing the blame on the White House, either directly, or through FEMA. Mr Nagin, mayor of the Crescent City, and Mrs Blanco, governor of Louisiana, also blame the federal government and FEMA for delayed action.  Their argument, however, has serious chinks, which makes their complaints look more and more like a preemptive attack designed to cover their precious derrières.

As an account of the chain of events leading to the disaster is unfolding, it appears that both the city administration and the office of the governor are guilty of gross incompetence, if not odious negligence.  While it was known days in advance that the hurricane would hit New Orleans very hard and that the levees were likely to break, the mayor waited a full day before ordering the evacuation of the city after a call from the White House urging him to act.  His plan relied primarily on the use of individual means of transportation.  The alternative was to seek refuge in the Superdome.  In any case, the order, which should have been enforced, was not, and no transportation was provided to the sick, the old, the handicapped, and the helpless, although a thousand school and transit buses could be made available for that purpose.  Meanwhile, in Baton Rouge, Mrs Blanco for some unknown reason did not feel any urgency to send to New Orleans the Louisiana National Guard. She did not seem either to have started implementing some state emergency plan or to have called federal agencies ahead of time for help.  It is the state responsibility to provide FEMA with proper facilities to set up command posts, supply bases, and emergency centers---the who-where-when that the locals are supposed to know better because they are local. That is supposed to be part of the emergency plan.    

When the levees collapsed, it was obvious that the Superdome had neither the logistics nor the personnel necessary to take care of the influx of the most helpless, while Red Cross trucks with food, water, and basic necessities were kept at bay on the governor’s orders.  In no time, the refuge turned into a hellish, insalubrious prison where sanitary installations had failed.  People died there amidst piles of trash.  No semblance of order was maintained---two rapes and two murders were reported.  Federal help started coming in, but did not find much local preparation to facilitate operations.  Meanwhile about two hundred city police officers had turned in their badges, others did not report for duty, and armed gangs were roaming the flooded streets.

The liberal press has been blaming the federal government for about all that went wrong in this catastrophe, including a failure to reinforce levees designed for level-3 hurricanes. Although the seriousness of the risk had been known for a good twenty years, no action had been taken.  For all its current posturing, the same liberal press had opposed the funding of flood-control works, which it had denounced as a boondoggle of the Army Corps of Engineers.  Environmentalists also opposed an upgrade for reasons of their own, which had to do with the usual fuzzy theories about “natural” habitats and ecologies.  In addition, a takeover by the Army Corps of Engineers did not sit well with the local administration of the levees, a bureaucracy designed to provide cushy jobs for the Louisiana politicians’ cronies.  The Bush administration has been generous in allocating funds for Louisiana public works, but levee reinforcement was not the state officials’ priority.   

Underlying this tragedy is the unmentioned toxicity of the politics of race.  About seventy percent of the population of New Orleans is black.  A substantial fraction of it is poor and uneducated.  The murder rate is one of the highest in the country, if not the highest.  Drug use is rampant, and AFDC has been the only legal support of successive generations of families headed by single mothers.  Corruption and ineptitude dominate the city’s administration.  Does that dismal portrait look familiar?  Of course it does.  It describes life in many American inner cities, the life of those most vulnerable to natural disasters and administration incompetence and corruption. Yet, for about forty years, a national effort to bring these seemingly forsaken fellow citizens into the mainstream of our society has failed, in spite of an ever-expanding system of laws backed up by a myriad of public or private programs especially created to make the dream of a Great Society a reality. 

Why such a failure?  For a large part, its cause rests with the crude but effective propaganda generously spread by self-appointed leaders and their cronies who draw political power and riches from the existence of a black underclass.  For decades, these parasites have charged that whites constantly conspire to keep blacks poor and powerless---if not worse---and that any individual effort to improve one’s lot is futile.  They have also claimed for their wretched constituency a moral entitlement to unlimited government support, which only they can wrest from the white establishment.  This rubbish has carefully cultivated a culture of paranoia, dependence, despair, rejection of traditional values, lawlessness, and self-segregation.  Far from trying to break the noxious myths, Democrat politicians have shamelessly exploited them in their election campaigns.

Levees can be fixed, and the Crescent City can be rebuilt---preferably on safer ground---but the misery of the inner cities will remain.  For all its ravages, the New Orleans disaster may have revealed to the doubters that America is good and just.  A black man, in recounting his rescue, said that he had changed his mind about white people, adding that they had been exceedingly solicitous and generous to him. 

Meanwhile, nasty as ever, the Washington Democrats have wasted no time to start accusing the president and his administration of negligence, if not malice, against all evidence.  Their shrill calls for an investigation may well backfire.  In the end, the accusatory finger will point at the state of Louisiana and its representatives in Congress.  Now, would it not be a noble gesture on the part of Congress to redirect the pork of the highway appropriations to the Katrina relief operations and the reconstruction of Biloxi, Mobile, New Orleans and other coastal towns?  Well, I will not hold my breath, because I doubt that these projects can compete on Capitol Hill with essentials like bicycle paths, parks, nature preserves, and such.