My apologies for light blogging today. I was traveling back to D.C. and have spent the evening trying to catch up with all the developments in the Katrina catastrophe (and write a column). More tomorrow, but for now, I have to say this seems to me to be a new situation. This has morphed from a natural disaster into a social meltdown. The Lousiana governor seems overwhelmed (Barbour seems much more effective); New Orlean’s civic authorities seem non-existent (and bear responsibility for the insufficient preparation for this potential and widely predicted nightmare); and the president’s response has been decidedly weak. His call to restrain from using gas was, well, Carteresque. It seems to me inconceivable that we cannot impose basic law and order in a major American city five days after a hurricane has hit. This is a very basic governmental responsibility and all I can say is that I see no evidence of competence or effectiveness so far. FEMA had no solid evacuation plan? The feds had no plans to maintain order in such a situation? The explosion of complete lawlessness is beginning to make Haiti look like a pleasant place to live. This is America? Where order is so distant that snipers can prevent the evacuation of a hospital? The fundamental reason for my inability to support a second Bush term was his demonstrated incompetence in performing the basic functions of government. It seems to me that the people of New Orleans are now as much a victim of this as the people of Iraq. I guess we can merely be thankful that Rumsfeld hasn’t yet appeared to say “Stuff happens.” Yes, it does. When your government seems unable to do the most basic things required of it.
QUOTE OF THE DAY II: “I gotta tell you something, we got five or six hundred letters before the show actually went on the air, and no one – no one – is saying the government is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and embarrassing and far-reaching and calamatous things that has come along in this country in my lifetime. I’m 62. I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things. I have never, ever, seen anything as bungled and as poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can’t sandwiches be dropped to those people in the Superdome. What is going on? This is Thursday! This storm happened 5 days ago. This is a disgrace. And don’t think the world isn’t watching. This is the government that the taxpayers are paying for, and it’s fallen right flat on its face as far as I can see, in the way it’s handled this thing.” – Jack Cafferty, CNN, as reported on Kos. (And yes, I’m largely ignoring his cheap shot. I plead guilty to not fully getting the extent of the calamity in New Orleans when it first unfurled. But trying to use it to minimize 9/11 (which was pre-meditated murder, not a natural disaster) seemed to me inappropriate then and inappropriate now. And the notion that those of us who want to defeat Islamo-fascism are just wanting to “find an enemy” is as misguided now as it was then. We never wanted to find an enemy. They found us. And they’re still at large. We can have that 9/11 debate without relating it to Katrina. Can’t we?
The Dish 