Asleep At The Switch
For anyone who doesn't know what has been going on in my life and is wondering why I haven't been writing lately, drop me an email. It just isn't something I want to post about.
Now, back to our long-overdue ranting, previously scheduled....
For anyone who was still under the impression that our so-called president and our Orwellian 'Department of Homeland Security' were really doing the job we all think they are supposed to be doing, I offer the sad spectacle of New Orleans. I should note that I write about New Orleans not as a distant observer, but as someone who has spent fairly large amounts of time there over the last twenty years. I am saddened, sickened, and disturbed by what is going on there now. But not surprised. New Orleans has always been a city of stark contrasts, extreme poverty (by North American standards at least), and enduring racial divides. Bu today's topic is not what is going on today, but what didn't go on over the last three years. If the emergency response which we have theoretically been pouring tens of billions of dollars into bolstering is this bad when we had several days notice to evacuate people and prepare supplies, troops, etc., how much worse will it be when a natural disaster or terrorist attack hits without warning? As I have previously written, our government seems to be dedicating far more effort to conditioning us to accept a fascist state than they are putting into actually making us safer.
People who live in New Orleans have long known the risks of living below sea level. Few people live in the city without being regularly reminded, by the site of a levee or flood-control channel, that it is only the work of engineers that keeps them safe from massive flooding. This is a city which has long been voicing concern about the diversion of federal money away from maintaining and extending this flood-control system, and into the war in Iraq. Despite absurd comments by our so-called president, people in New Orleans were expecting that the aftermath of a massive storm like Katrina would stress and quite possibly breach the network of levees and flood walls. Yet most people felt safe. The criminal negligence forced on the corps of engineers by the extensive sleight of hand this administration has used to hide the full cost of it's folly in Iraq made it hard to follow the arguments about why the city was in greater danger than it had been for years. This is also a city with a population given to extreme, unquestioning patriotism. I still remember Woody Harrelson getting uninvited from a Carnival parade back in 1991 when he dared to question Gulf War I. This was a populace that, for the most part, would have believed the Fox propaganda that questioning the management of the war and homeland security was being unpatriotic. Clearly the government abused this trust and faith.
While New Orleans burns, Michael Chertoff mumbles platitudes about how complicated the situation is, and claims that his department is doing everything it can to help out. It may indeed be true that, starting this week, Homeland Security is doing everything it can do, although even that is debatable. But what have they been doing the last three years to prepare for this? Do first responders in New Orleans have radios that all work on the same frequencies? I don't think so. Was there a plan in place to evacuate those too poor to own cars? Apparently not. Was there a regional plan to pull in resources from nearby cities? It sure doesn't look like it. What if this had been a chemical attack (easy to envision with the concentration of refineries and chemical plants in the 'toxic corridor' between New Orleans and Baton Rouge)? What if terrorists had blown a couple of holes in the levees and blown up one or more of the main roads out of town? Is our military and national guard strength really so diluted by Iraq that we really can't have gotten order restored by now? If our Department of Homeland Security is so incompetent that it can't handle a mid-size city after a natural disaster which we had several days warning of, how badly will they bungle the next catastrophe that strikes without warning? It is time for a day of reckoning about the true cost of Bush's wars, both overseas and here at home. This administration has had years to prepare, and billions of dollars to spend, and this is the best they can do? Do you feel safer?