[From the diaries by susanhu. What a coherent, concise LTE.] This will be going to my local paper in response to someone who wants to know why so many of us are holding Bush to account over New Orleans. The fact that I even have to write this speaks volumes about the Kool-Aid. Arggh!
Bush and Katrina Accountability
Why have so many critics spoken out against Bush on Katrina rather than looking at local officials? Here are three reasons, each adequate in itself.
More on the flip:
- The simple civics lesson, the one I learned in grade school. Very few Menomonie locals are citizens of New Orleans, or of Louisiana. The local officials there do not work for us, nor do we pay their salaries with our taxes. They are not accountable to us. Bush is another matter.
- Bush built his campaign around the premise that he was the candidate most qualified to protect the American people. We couldn’t turn around without being reminded what a wonderful protector he was, and how he would be ready if another American city faced a disaster like 9/11. Well, Katrina was that disaster. The levees could just as easily have been destroyed by terrorists. The biggest difference between Katrina and another major terrorist attack is that terrorists wouldn’t have given the nation three days warning to preposition Federal resources around the major American city they intended to bring down. The government would have been expected to hit the ground running with zero warning. Since this is the place Bush sold himself as superior, it’s more than reasonable to grade him on it. He failed.
- It’s already become clear that if we the people don’t hold this administration accountable. no one will. In the Senate, a bill was introduced to create an independent, non-partisan commission to investigate the failings of government after Katrina. Every single Democrat voted for it. So did the one independent, a former Republican. The bill was defeated on a party-line vote in favor of a Republican-controlled, Republican-staffed, joint investigation with the Republican-dominated House where the vote was also party-line.
The response to Katrina was an American disgrace. I want to see every official involved in that disgrace held accountable regardless of whether they have a D or an R after their name. I’m starting with Bush because I pay his salary, because his claim to reelection was protection of the American people, and because his Republican allies have made it clear they won’t.
Good letter! Might I suggest adding to the “why is bush accountable” that he cut funding for the levees and as a direct result they were not ready to handle a cat 3 storm, let alone a cat 4 or 5… that’s something the feds handle, not the locals… that’s why we have a fed, because collectively our tax dollars pay for all our security vs. individually as they do on a local level. for example, mobile will not have the same resources available as los angeles.
sorry for the tangent, shifting blame onto the local gov’t while absolving the feds is way too close to libertarianism with a neocon bent. fun.
let us know if it gets published would you?
Thanks for the suggestion. It’s a good one, and I’ve got it covered. I had an 800 word opinion piece detailing the many Katrina failures of the Republicans at the Federal level published last Sunday. I hit the funding cuts, the guard diversion, the environmental failures, etc.
That’s part of why I went totally ballistic and wrote this when I read the letter asking why so many of us hold Bush responsible. I’d already held their hands and taken them through it more than once. I’ll keep doing it as many times as it takes, but it does wear after a while. If I have a lull in that task I might diary the eight or ten most recent letters I’ve had there, both Katrina and more general in one big clump with intros.
The local paper will publish pretty much anything I send them since I’ve got an established track record with them, so I expect this will make it in. If it doesn’t, I’ll mention it over at Froggy Bottom. I’d actually been planning a letter that looked at all the Republican failures and malfeasance that has fallen out of the news during the Katrina coverage, but my blood pressure required I write this one instead. Maybe in a couple of days…
done that.
I’d already held their hands and taken them through it more than once. . . .but it does wear after a while. . . . but my blood pressure
I wrote editorials for years until I burned out on it. Don’t let it get to you too much. Develop ways to process it through so you don’t internalize all the awfulness and pain and horror too much. Laugh.
There’s a reason for the bawdy and vulgar newsroom gallows humor.
Thanks for the comment and the concern.
Mostly I do try to use humor to keep the lid on. A writer friend who has read a ton of my fiction once described what he saw as one my main themes as, “the world is a dark and brutal place, and isn’t that funny?”
But with the current Republican power structure and its many willing supporters (enablers?), I am sometimes driven beyond the capacity for laughter and find myself with a need to grab them and shake them until their teeth rattle and they actually see reality.
That’s usually the point when one of my small herd of cats climbs into my lap to demand affection and remind me of the finer things in life. Go cats!
to slip this in — it’s from a quaint document known as The Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Was anybody else singing along to the schoolhouse rock version of this as they read it?
Or am I the only crazy one that does that whenever I read those words?
Excellent letter my friend. I was flipping through the channels last evening and stopped at Hannity/Colmes last night. Sean tried his hardest while interviewing the guy in charge from the coast guard to get him to say Nagin was an idiot and should be fired. The Admiral wasn’t taking the bait whatso ever and it was so good to see Sean put in his place.
I agree that all involved in this disgrace should be held accountable but the rightwing minions continue to try and play the blame game and point to Nagin and the Gov.
play the blame game
Don’t get sucked into the neocon talking points. Watch the language, it does matter.
Excellent point my friend!
loved the letter….good move….keep it up….hold their feet to the fire.
It seems to me, the strongest rhetorical angle on this is that it could have been a terrorist attack. The GOP talking points on this are all about kicking responsibility back down to the state and local level. So to respond, would those of us with poor state and city leadership also be hung out to dry in a terrorist attack? FEMA was put under the Department of Homeland Security, which was constructed and organized by the Bush Administration. This was a failure of that department, which is ostensibly about national security. Therefore, this was a breakdown in national security. They dropped the ball when we had days of warning, which would not have had in a terrorist attack. Doesn’t that ultimately reflect badly on “war-time President?”
Excellent letter. There is also something to be gained by stepping back and really looking at the on-the-ground reality. I live in Chicago, one of the better-run US cities (despite the constant hum of corrupt contracts and such). For the most part it really is The City That Works, as claimed.
According to the local weather guy, a flood the size of the one in NOLA would have covered the city from about Argyle to 79th St (about 15 miles N to S) and west beyond the city limits to Harlem Avenue (about 10 miles). Even with all his resources, skills, and energy, there’s no way in hell Mayor Daley could have dealt with a disaster of this magnitude. It wasn’t just a flood, it was also a hurricane, don’t forget. Where were all the people supposed to evacuate to? The suburbs, which would also be blowing away? The exurbs? Milwaukee? Gary? South Bend? How the living hell could Daley possibly arrange all that? He only has jurisdiction in the city. How in hell would the governor be able to handle that? He only has jurisdiction in the state, and hasn’t nearly the people, equipment, and organization for disaster of this magnitude.
It’s ridiculous to even discuss what local and state officials failed to do. Of course they failed. Only the federal government is equipped to deal with huge catastrophes like this. No city or state anywhere could do it with worthless fucks like Bush and his symbionts failing utterly to do the job they’re getting paid for. If it wasn’t their job, and if they didn’t fail, then we need to just forget about having a federal government at all. What it’s come to under Bush is, humorously enough, precisely the “conservative” nightmare: a totalitarian regime that spends us into historic levels of bankruptcy yet returns nothing to the people who finance it. An engine of waste and arrogance run out of control, attacking the very people and institutions it exists to serve and protect. I lived in a banana republic for some years. The only thing different about the US now is that we still have some accumulated capital for the Bushist insurgents to plunder until it’s as dry as the Haitian treasury.
I’m grateful, flattered, and caught completely off guard. Not necessarily in that order.
Thank you!
BTW, anyone who has any desire to scavenge talking points or prose from this for their own letters or whatever, please, please, please feel free to do so.