The Eye Of Another Storm

As far as Trudy Rubin's excellent column is concerned, Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich can both take a long walk off a short pier (never thought I'd say that about Giuliani after 9/11, but he's shown himself to be a shameless opportunist unfortunately), but otherwise, this is definitely food for thought.

There's something ghoulishly fitting about talking by phone to Baghdad while watching the chaos in New Orleans.

In my ear I'm hearing about the absence of electricity or water in 120-degree heat and daily shooting in Baghdad's streets. On CNN, a doctor from New Orleans' Charity Hospital is relating how nurses are giving each other IVs so they can keep working because there's no more water or food. Meanwhile, there's gunfire in the hospital's garage.

How is it possible that Americans have been watching victims of Hurricane Katrina clinging to rooftops for days? How is it possible that we watched, like helpless voyeurs, as mothers and babies roasted in the Superdome without food or water - while women were reportedly raped in the restrooms?

Do we not live in the richest country on earth? How dare anyone claim that it is "playing politics" to ask why officials weren't prepared to cope with this hurricane.

The Baghdad and New Orleans debacles lay bare the dangerous American aversion to long-term planning. Lack of planning for the postwar gave us the current mess in Iraq. Lack of preparedness for a New Orleans flood produced a disaster that makes America look like a Third World country. Offers of help are pouring in from around the world as if we were Bangladeshis; even Cuba offered more than 1,000 doctors.

Who can believe, after the New Orleans fiasco, that the Bush administration is prepared to handle another terrorist outrage? As former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich asked bluntly on Friday: "If we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf [of Mexico] for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?"

There were plenty of predictions about a catastrophe in New Orleans (just as there were plenty of warnings about violence in postwar Iraq). In 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked a hurricane strike in New Orleans among the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America. In July 2004, federal, state and local officials carried out a drill, called Hurricane Pam, that predicted 10 to 15 feet of water covering much of the city and evacuation of one million people.

Many studies predicted that the levees might be breached by a hurricane; the New Orleans Times-Picayune did an award-winning series three years ago called "Washing Away." But federal officials were never willing to spend the money to fix the problem.

The Bush White House axed funding requests from the Army Corps of Engineers to improve the levees. It lobbied against plans to rebuild coastlines and wetlands that serve as buffers against hurricanes.

A former Republican congressman and assistant secretary of the Army named Michael Parker told the Washington Post that the governnment resisted long-term investment in projects like flood control. Parker was fired by the Bush White House after accusing it of shortchanging the Corps of Engineers.

Parker nailed the problem. Federal flood-control projects offer protection against future dangers but provide no political gains in the short term. Especially if the money would be spent on New Orleans, where the population is largely poor and black.

Such projects aren't attractive to an administration that wants to "starve the beast," i.e., shrink federal government. Flood control costs big bucks at a time when the administration prefers to cut taxes for the rich.

In a sane world, the New Orleans tragedy would sound a wake-up call. The failure of national planning has shocked the world as well as American citizens. It has raised questions about America's internal strength. Osama bin Laden must be chuckling; one Kuwaiti newspaper published an article by a religious official praising Hurricane Katrina as a "wind of torment" sent to punish the American empire.

In a sane world, the White House would rethink its aversion to rebuilding America's infrastructure. It would finally provide adequate funds to secure America's ports, railroads and chemical plants.

It would rethink its method of organizing for natural disasters. It would rethink the doctrine of "regime change" - which has strained the military and National Guard. It would reconsider tax cuts that will strap the country in its rebuilding effort.

And the White House would appoint former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to head up disaster relief for New Orleans and the South. This was Newt Gingrich's excellent suggestion. He knows Giuliani could rally the country for a massive reconstruction effort in a way the President has failed to do during these crucial days.

That would be the first sign of a long-term plan by an administration whose planning failures have disgraced our country.

Who'd have imagined a situation where Castro would be offering charity to the suffering people of New Orleans?