Karen H. Pittman
The blame game
By Karen H. Pittman
I have heard it all now. While illegally threatening the President of the United States with bodily harm on ABC's This Week, Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) accused him of visiting hurricane-decimated Louisiana merely in order to stage a "photo-op." She ranted and raved hysterically during her appearance on the televised news show last Sunday, at one point bursting into tears. No doubt about it — her levee broke, big(easy)-time.
It's always something. If President Bush works out, he exercises too much. It never occurs that perhaps this is his only means of relieving the enormous stress and pressure he's under. And now comes this latest bit of antic fabrication, straight from the big brassy mouth of a bureaucratic bass caught in Katrina's rip current. If he tours the hurricane-ravaged coast, he's posing for a photo-op. If he stays away, he doesn't care, isn't "personally engaged," and is perpetrating nothing short of indirect "murder."
Sure, Mary, why not? Just pile on! Since George Bush is literally the most convenient scapegoat on the planet, why not blame him for the whole dam thing? For the love of jazz, did those levies not need shoring when Bill Clinton was President? By most estimates, any effective reinforcement of the canal system there would have taken at least a decade or two, probably more, to complete. How then could Bush have fixed the whole dam problem in a lousy five years, while waging war? Is it any wonder New Orleans is now a literal cesspool, considering it has been one figuratively for as long as anybody can remember?
Less absurd but more egregious is the charge being leveled at him by racist black demagogues like Al Sharpton. According to noted rapper-sociologist Kanye (Noyekant) West, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."
Well, maybe he does and maybe he doesn't. What he thinks matters less than what he does. As relentlessly as politicians pander to minority groups, the notion that any pol worth his weight in votes would purposely neglect a powerful constituency is patently absurd. Even if George Bush were a racist, he is no fool, and is far too wizened politically to commit so flagrant an act of self-destruction. The political consequences for such behavior would simply be too dire.
Or, to put it another way: If he refuses to seal the borders for fear of losing Latino support, why on earth would he knowingly encourage or permit the targeted genocide of impoverished African-Americans in New Orleans?
Furthermore, the Crescent City wasn't built in a day. How, then, can it be salvaged in one? If, with prior warning and advance planning, Mayor Nagin and other local and state officials couldn't figure out a way to evacuate their own city in three days, with all of its infrastructure intact, how can they reasonably expect the feds to rescue every last straggler, put out every raging fire, tamp down all the senseless looting and shooting, and seal nearly 1000 total feet of breached levee, with the city drowning and de-nerved, in less?
Nagin and local pols can't say they weren't told. In a watershed article published in Risk & Insurance in December of 2000 by Lori Widmer (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BJK/is_15_11/ai_68642805), Shea Penland, geologist and professor at the University of New Orleans, reveals himself to be a veritable Cassandra: "When we get the big hurricane and there are 10,000 people dead, the city government's been relocated to the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain, refugee camps have been set up and there are $10 billion plus in losses, what then?" he queries. Penland laments the Francophile city's laissez faire attitude, which in the end proved fatal: "These are things I've been preaching for a number of years. This town has never planned ahead. They've always reacted and not pro-acted."
Notice what Penland does not do — blame the feds for a localized problem. Ultimately, there's no getting around the fact that New Orleans is responsible for itself. All across this country, cities and municipalities face their own peculiar exigencies, and must reckon with them themselves, with limited or no federal aid. San Francisco is at high risk for sustaining a major, devastating earthquake. If it does, will that act of God be magically rendered an act of George too? Should the federal government not also subsidize reinforcement of that city's buildings and infrastructure, and if so, to what extent? How much responsibility do state and local entities bear for their own disaster prevention, preparedness, and funding? I mean, my goodness, if you choose to live in Frisco, you'd better have quake insurance or learn to sleep soundly without it. You know that going in. And you learn very quickly to accept the grim reality that if the Big One does hit and you die, you die. You won't get time to evacuate.
The bottom line is, if the federal government subsidizes every high-risk community, it will go broke in no time. Just ponder for a moment all that has happened in the past half-decade alone: Coordinated terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, and now, after numerous severe storms in Florida that combined to wreak costly havoc, a calamitous hurricane on the Gulf Coast. When 9/11 occurred, armchair quarterbacks everywhere rose up from their easy chairs and demanded accountability. Why were we asleep at the wheel while this storm was brewing in the Afghan desert? Why were we unwilling to spare no expense to prevent it? And now that nature itself has dealt New Orleans a warrior's blow, the journalist-naysayers are whining and nagging, "Why was the federal government spending all its time, money, and energy fighting the war on terror when it knew all along that The Big Easy was doomed to drown?"
And is our choice as stark, really — as black-and-white (if you'll pardon the pun) — as Bush's most vehement critics would have us believe? Should we neglect to defend ourselves abroad so that we can amass enormous numbers of troops stateside, just in case a natural disaster happens? Should we not exert ourselves in the world so that we can have the ever-ready capability of instantly marshalling all of our resources in our own country in the event that a given outcome occurs? (And remember, this is slim comfort at best, since there is no such thing as perfect preparedness.) What happens if we are attacked? What — we don't avenge an act of aggression because we might be needed here? Like bag upon bag of sand deposited in the levee's breaches, disaster can always be piled upon disaster. Heck, for that matter, the terrorists could choose to kick us now, while we're down. Whose fault would that be? Must it be anyone's, other than theirs? As far as we're concerned, maybe it's just our own rotten luck or bad timing.
What all of the emergent criticism post-Katrina against this president's prosecution of the war on terror seems to suggest (with the added fillip of hindsight) is that — oops! — as it turns out, he should not have undertaken to defend us overseas, after all. Instead, he should have been more attuned to domestic problems and potential natural disasters and less preoccupied with international imbroglios. (Never mind the limited central role the federal government is supposed to play in this aggregate of empowered states we call a republic. The preeminence of state and local governments in their own affairs is conveniently forgotten by the advocates of socialism who fuel these diatribes.) In other words, he should have been more worried about a phantom problem over here than the very real one right in front of him. What choice did the man have, given the stakes and urgency of the moment? One has always to weigh the probabilities in life and make tough decisions based on what one can and cannot reasonably anticipate. And, while it is the federal government's job, and thus the president's, to ensure the safety of the republic, it is not its task, nor is it his, to make sure that every single state and local government is taking care of business and faithfully discharging its duties to its residents.
Given all this, then — given the choices and probabilities with which George W. Bush found himself confronted unawares on the morning of September 12, 2001 — what do you think was uppermost in his mind: Standing up as Commander-in-Chief for all the people of these United States (of which Louisiana, last I looked, was but one) by doing all he could to prevent another terrorist attack, or playing Lifeguard-in-Chief by single-handedly saving New Orleans? (And one is tempted here to add, "from itself.") After all, what is more likely — that the terrorists who have killed us already will kill us again, if given the chance, or that a Category 5 hurricane will wipe out a solitary city that is but one of many along a coastline stretching for thousands and thousands of miles?
If the Big One strikes California tomorrow, you can bet that out of the smoke and rubble will rise the clarion complaint: "Where was George W. Bush while all this was getting ready to happen to us? While he was waging 'his war' against terror and drying out Bourbon Street, he was ignoring our need for the kind of infrastructure that would hold out against the worst Mother Nature can give."
On and on it goes. In Washington, the blame game is the only game in town.
© Karen H. Pittman
I have heard it all now. While illegally threatening the President of the United States with bodily harm on ABC's This Week, Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) accused him of visiting hurricane-decimated Louisiana merely in order to stage a "photo-op." She ranted and raved hysterically during her appearance on the televised news show last Sunday, at one point bursting into tears. No doubt about it — her levee broke, big(easy)-time.
It's always something. If President Bush works out, he exercises too much. It never occurs that perhaps this is his only means of relieving the enormous stress and pressure he's under. And now comes this latest bit of antic fabrication, straight from the big brassy mouth of a bureaucratic bass caught in Katrina's rip current. If he tours the hurricane-ravaged coast, he's posing for a photo-op. If he stays away, he doesn't care, isn't "personally engaged," and is perpetrating nothing short of indirect "murder."
Sure, Mary, why not? Just pile on! Since George Bush is literally the most convenient scapegoat on the planet, why not blame him for the whole dam thing? For the love of jazz, did those levies not need shoring when Bill Clinton was President? By most estimates, any effective reinforcement of the canal system there would have taken at least a decade or two, probably more, to complete. How then could Bush have fixed the whole dam problem in a lousy five years, while waging war? Is it any wonder New Orleans is now a literal cesspool, considering it has been one figuratively for as long as anybody can remember?
Less absurd but more egregious is the charge being leveled at him by racist black demagogues like Al Sharpton. According to noted rapper-sociologist Kanye (Noyekant) West, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."
Well, maybe he does and maybe he doesn't. What he thinks matters less than what he does. As relentlessly as politicians pander to minority groups, the notion that any pol worth his weight in votes would purposely neglect a powerful constituency is patently absurd. Even if George Bush were a racist, he is no fool, and is far too wizened politically to commit so flagrant an act of self-destruction. The political consequences for such behavior would simply be too dire.
Or, to put it another way: If he refuses to seal the borders for fear of losing Latino support, why on earth would he knowingly encourage or permit the targeted genocide of impoverished African-Americans in New Orleans?
Furthermore, the Crescent City wasn't built in a day. How, then, can it be salvaged in one? If, with prior warning and advance planning, Mayor Nagin and other local and state officials couldn't figure out a way to evacuate their own city in three days, with all of its infrastructure intact, how can they reasonably expect the feds to rescue every last straggler, put out every raging fire, tamp down all the senseless looting and shooting, and seal nearly 1000 total feet of breached levee, with the city drowning and de-nerved, in less?
Nagin and local pols can't say they weren't told. In a watershed article published in Risk & Insurance in December of 2000 by Lori Widmer (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BJK/is_15_11/ai_68642805), Shea Penland, geologist and professor at the University of New Orleans, reveals himself to be a veritable Cassandra: "When we get the big hurricane and there are 10,000 people dead, the city government's been relocated to the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain, refugee camps have been set up and there are $10 billion plus in losses, what then?" he queries. Penland laments the Francophile city's laissez faire attitude, which in the end proved fatal: "These are things I've been preaching for a number of years. This town has never planned ahead. They've always reacted and not pro-acted."
Notice what Penland does not do — blame the feds for a localized problem. Ultimately, there's no getting around the fact that New Orleans is responsible for itself. All across this country, cities and municipalities face their own peculiar exigencies, and must reckon with them themselves, with limited or no federal aid. San Francisco is at high risk for sustaining a major, devastating earthquake. If it does, will that act of God be magically rendered an act of George too? Should the federal government not also subsidize reinforcement of that city's buildings and infrastructure, and if so, to what extent? How much responsibility do state and local entities bear for their own disaster prevention, preparedness, and funding? I mean, my goodness, if you choose to live in Frisco, you'd better have quake insurance or learn to sleep soundly without it. You know that going in. And you learn very quickly to accept the grim reality that if the Big One does hit and you die, you die. You won't get time to evacuate.
The bottom line is, if the federal government subsidizes every high-risk community, it will go broke in no time. Just ponder for a moment all that has happened in the past half-decade alone: Coordinated terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, and now, after numerous severe storms in Florida that combined to wreak costly havoc, a calamitous hurricane on the Gulf Coast. When 9/11 occurred, armchair quarterbacks everywhere rose up from their easy chairs and demanded accountability. Why were we asleep at the wheel while this storm was brewing in the Afghan desert? Why were we unwilling to spare no expense to prevent it? And now that nature itself has dealt New Orleans a warrior's blow, the journalist-naysayers are whining and nagging, "Why was the federal government spending all its time, money, and energy fighting the war on terror when it knew all along that The Big Easy was doomed to drown?"
And is our choice as stark, really — as black-and-white (if you'll pardon the pun) — as Bush's most vehement critics would have us believe? Should we neglect to defend ourselves abroad so that we can amass enormous numbers of troops stateside, just in case a natural disaster happens? Should we not exert ourselves in the world so that we can have the ever-ready capability of instantly marshalling all of our resources in our own country in the event that a given outcome occurs? (And remember, this is slim comfort at best, since there is no such thing as perfect preparedness.) What happens if we are attacked? What — we don't avenge an act of aggression because we might be needed here? Like bag upon bag of sand deposited in the levee's breaches, disaster can always be piled upon disaster. Heck, for that matter, the terrorists could choose to kick us now, while we're down. Whose fault would that be? Must it be anyone's, other than theirs? As far as we're concerned, maybe it's just our own rotten luck or bad timing.
What all of the emergent criticism post-Katrina against this president's prosecution of the war on terror seems to suggest (with the added fillip of hindsight) is that — oops! — as it turns out, he should not have undertaken to defend us overseas, after all. Instead, he should have been more attuned to domestic problems and potential natural disasters and less preoccupied with international imbroglios. (Never mind the limited central role the federal government is supposed to play in this aggregate of empowered states we call a republic. The preeminence of state and local governments in their own affairs is conveniently forgotten by the advocates of socialism who fuel these diatribes.) In other words, he should have been more worried about a phantom problem over here than the very real one right in front of him. What choice did the man have, given the stakes and urgency of the moment? One has always to weigh the probabilities in life and make tough decisions based on what one can and cannot reasonably anticipate. And, while it is the federal government's job, and thus the president's, to ensure the safety of the republic, it is not its task, nor is it his, to make sure that every single state and local government is taking care of business and faithfully discharging its duties to its residents.
Given all this, then — given the choices and probabilities with which George W. Bush found himself confronted unawares on the morning of September 12, 2001 — what do you think was uppermost in his mind: Standing up as Commander-in-Chief for all the people of these United States (of which Louisiana, last I looked, was but one) by doing all he could to prevent another terrorist attack, or playing Lifeguard-in-Chief by single-handedly saving New Orleans? (And one is tempted here to add, "from itself.") After all, what is more likely — that the terrorists who have killed us already will kill us again, if given the chance, or that a Category 5 hurricane will wipe out a solitary city that is but one of many along a coastline stretching for thousands and thousands of miles?
If the Big One strikes California tomorrow, you can bet that out of the smoke and rubble will rise the clarion complaint: "Where was George W. Bush while all this was getting ready to happen to us? While he was waging 'his war' against terror and drying out Bourbon Street, he was ignoring our need for the kind of infrastructure that would hold out against the worst Mother Nature can give."
On and on it goes. In Washington, the blame game is the only game in town.
© Karen H. Pittman
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