posted September 4, 2005
The Sieur de Bienville, born Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, was an early
governor of Louisiana and was the founder of New Orleans. He laid out
a city that was destroyed by hurricanes in nearly every one of its
first four years of existence. One might have taken such events as an
indicator of problems to come. We talk of "natural disasters" but as
it has been said: "While nature provides hazards, it is man who
creates disasters."
The arrogance of man in the face of natural realities is at the root
of many of his problems. We destroy forests leaving dessicated slash
destructive wildfires and mudslides that have wiped out communities.
We build resorts and huge population centers on idyllic beaches which
lie alongside fault zones then watch as earthquakes and tsunamis lay
them waste. We allow technology to give us the gifts of plastic
convenience and chemical miracles then read newspaper reports of
rivers catching fire and populations racked by leukemia from drinking
contaminated waters. We sit idly by while politicians ignore a
preponderance of good science and turn away from international efforts to address concerns of global climate change then watch the effects of such selfishness and idiocy as the results are writ on our TV screens in destruction brought by the super-storms those same scientists predicted. We restore ideologues to power even after they embroil our nation in needless conflicts, sully our national honor, kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people and undermine our very foundations of law and economic security.
There are many people engaged in Monday morning quarterbacking on the New Orleans disaster - some even displaying the height of callousness by blithely blaming the victims for staying while ignoring that it was their abject poverty which made them unable to escape the storm. Will our Republican government rescue them, or quickly move to bail out the insurance industry? We'll see.
As veteran newsman Bob Shieffer said on CBS Sunday Morning, Katrina
hit us while Washington was still in a "vacation stupor" and many of
the politicians who should have been at work bringing the nation's
resources to bear on the problem were too busy attending fundraisers
to focus on their responsibilities.
And, forget Osama bin Laden, just where the dickens is Dick Cheney?
Well, there are some facts about the run-up to this disaster that no
amount of spin will ever erase. Over years and years, the precarious
state of New Orleans has been known. Engineers laid out the needs and an economic decision was made to build levees that would protect the city from 99.5% of expected storm events. The savings have been wiped out by an event in that fateful 0.5%. Unbridled, poorly planned development, filling of wetlands, diversion of levee maintenance funds
into warmaking, socio-economic policies that have created a burgeoning underclass with little hope for a "good life," - all hallmarks of Reagan and Bush administration policies, are now before the world in the contorted faces of people with no possessions but flood-soaked clothes cradling dehydrated babies and comforting dying grandmothers. The world is shocked, as we all should be. But will we do anything about it?
Domestic television showed Bush visiting the coast to comfort the
people of Biloxi - even hugging some seemingly dazed survivors.
German TV, however, filed a much different report. ZDF news reporter
Christine Adelhardt reported the president's visit to be a completely
staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open-air food distribution
point Bush visited in front of the cameras was hastily set up for his
photo-op and then torn down immediately after he and the herd of "news people" had left. And those women Bush hugged for the camera were not even Biloxi locals. Some have even speculated that they were looters who were just individuals wandering in the area that were quickly recruited as props for Bush's faux compassion photo-op. And as we watched the CNN video of loaders and dozers seemingly hard at work to repair the 17th Street levee where Bush was visiting, he told us and the world that progress was flowing - but according to Senator Mary Landrieu, the crew that was working so hard yesterday left and has never come back.
It looks like he was lying to us - again.
This event has shown the world the America that greed has built. A
superpower in name only. A Goliath struck in the eye by a meteorological David. A nation that preaches peace, democracy and prosperity for all but lately has nothing to show for itself but violence wed with selfishness, iron-fistedness and a failed manifest
destiny.
The real work to come goes far beyond repairing storm damage. We must repair our democracy. We must restore our national respectability. We must demand the impeachment of this president and root out his many minions before their collective destructiveness completely lays waste our beloved nation. Bush says the coast will be rebuilt bigger and better than before. I wonder if he is talking of million-dollar beach houses whose owners didn't get their feet wet, or those who are still, today trapped in their stifling attics, yearning to breathe free.
Bruce Wilkey
Signal Mountain
bwilkey@bellsouth.net
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