September Second

First - another day of ghastly post-hurricane new from New Orleans. Maybe, finally, people are getting out - but the place is hell on earth. It's inconceivably horrible - horrible for obvious reasons, inconceivable because, how could this happen? Not the hurricane and floods themselves, that happens - even the destruction of the city - cities are sometimes destroyed. What's inconceivable is how, in the United States, 5 days after the storm hit, and 4 days after the levees broke and submerged the city, there are still tens of thousands of people in the city, living in utterly desperate circumstances, in a war zone. You can see the relief efforts ramping up - but how did it take this long? Nothing that has happened is a surprise - looting? people living without food or shelter or water? people dying? All of that was predictable - much of it could have been mitigated (more supplies laid in at the Superdome - immediate resources committed to keep the peace) - how did it not happen? I have seen this - a major hurricane hitting New Orleans - listed as one of the three worst case disasters we could face: terrorism in New York - a major earthquake in San Francisco - and this. Of the three - this is the one you have the most time to prepare for. We had 2 or 3 days to prepare for this one - we had a pretty clear idea of what would happen if it hit - and yet - everything about it, from the evacuation planning to the provisions for refugees to the relief efforts have been half-assed. It's horrible.

Meanwhile - unrelated (except so far as getting involved in an unjustified war has drained money and resources that could have been used to deal with domestic problems - especially so far as sending National Guardsmen overseas for extended duty has drawn them away from their primary purpose, which is to deal with events like hurricane Katrina), but horrible - it is the second anniversary of the death of my friend Todd in Iraq. A guardsman, an MP - exactly the kind of person needed at home in case of crisis. I hate to politicize disasters, personal or public - but it's hard. He had no business being there. None of our soldiers had any business being there, but it's adding insult to injury to do it on the cheap. If we were going to fight this war, we would have been far far better doing it honestly - paying as we went - not stripping domestic security, mortgaging the future, stripping money away from preventive measures like work on the levees, to fight it. What we are getting in New Orleans is worse than the taxes would be, worse than the draft, worse than whatever it would have taken to fight the Iraq war honestly. We will end up paying for it directly as well.

It's been a very bad week for America...