Hurricane Dubya

Geov Parrish
WorkingForChange.com
09.09.05
Hurricane Dubya

Katrina: an epic disaster plus the epic cluelessness of the Bush administration

There's a lesson in all this.

Lots of lessons, actually, but one of the most basic things we've learned from the flooding of New Orleans is that a generation of politicians ideologically hostile to government's very existence cannot do the basic jobs we rely on governments for.

There is no telling how many people died unnecessarily because of the delay, of several days, in the arrival of critical supplies of food and water, medical help, and the establishment of some minimal level of security. It may well run into the thousands -- people killed not by the hurricane, but by the ineptness of government's response to it. Bush Administration cronies are trying to shift the blame to local and state (Democratic) leaders, but it is the federal government that has the lead responsibility for triaging natural disasters. And as all the world could see, the Bush team failed. Miserably.

They failed because for years they've been treating FEMA as a political football, appointing unqualified Bush pals to leadership positions and whittling away at the budget. Resources were diverted to terrorism prevention and the war in Iraq; the result was, among other things, that 35% of Louisiana's National Guard was in Iraq, including all its high water vehicles. High water? In Iraq?

Stories are now emerging: moving, blood-curdling stories from the survivors of not just the hurricane but the official response to it, of the callousness and hostility officials displayed once they did get on site. There is no way around it: the quality of the relief effort, and the attitude of officials toward victims, would have been very different if the victims had not been mostly poor and black. Survivors who looked to the official "shelter" sites at the Superdome and convention center for relief were subjected to conditions not fit for animals, spending days in squalor, desperately waiting for perpetually promised food and water.

This was on full view for the rest of America, and the world, to see. And for once, mainstream media has not been shy about criticizing this administration. They could scarcely avoid it, because the shortfallings of the official response were so obvious. It remains hard to believe that citizens of the wealthiest country in the history of the world could be reduced so quickly, by the hundreds of thousands, to a desperate struggle for survival.

For years, critics who have responded to the ideological extremism and cronyism of the Bush administration have failed no highlight an equally disturbing trait, its often staggering incompetence. Now, we all know. Efforts to spin this as a local failure notwithstanding, it's hard to see how George Bush will ever live down his response to Katrina, his epic cluelessness -- "Nobody ever anticipated a breach of the levees!" -- combined with a lethal delay in understanding and responding to the scale of the disaster. Credible estimates are now putting the death toll as high as 10,000 – that's three times the number of lives lost in 9/11. I don't think George Bush ever wrapped his mind around the idea that there could be so many people who were too poor to have the means to evacuate the city as a level 5 hurricane approached. Bush let those people down, and a lot of them died, unnecessarily, as a result.

Now comes the hard work of managing the dispersal of over a million people from greater New Orleans, people who are landing in a strange city, whether housed by relatives, friends, strangers, or official shelters, people without jobs, money, or the lives they once had. After the universal outcry over the failed initial response, keep a careful eye on how the Bush administration manages this diaspora. If its previous record is any indication, look for a lot of promises, a good deal of profiteering by corporations friendly to the administration, and very little help that actually reaches the people who need it.

For years, conservatives have tried to argue that social functions of government can in fact be managed by volunteerism and the non-profit sector. The outpouring of generosity from ordinary Americans in the wake of Katrina has been staggering but only the government has the resources to deal with the displacement of so many people, and with the virtual rebuilding of what was once a major American city. In its other major social disaster, the war in Iraq, the Bush administration has managed to reduce most ordinary Iraqis to a quality of life far worse than they endured under Saddam Hussein. The often poor and black survivors of New Orleans must not be left to a similar fate.

Bush's failings in response to Katrina will continue to haunt him because they are consistent with how he has governed throughout his five years of power. The wealthy will be enriched by government; everyone else will be left to fend for themselves. In New Orleans, we saw what happened when that governing philosophy met reality head-on. Remember how many lives were lost or ruined, and remember who could have made a difference, but didn't.


Geov Parrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle Weekly, In These Times and Eat the State! He writes the daily Straight Shot for WorkingForChange. He can be reached by email at geovlp@earthlink.net -- please indicate whether your comments may be used on WorkingForChange in an upcoming "letters" column.


There is no telling how many people died unnecessarily because of government delays.
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