Taking his cues from big government progressives, “conservative” columnist Andrew Sullivan takes aim at the Bushies and their handling of the Katrina aftermath, arguing—convincingly, he imagines it; inexcusably, from any objective standard (something that Andrew is no longer capable of approaching)— that the President and his administration have actually emboldened terrorists, an instance of such stunning projection that the mind practically reels at the level of self-delusion necessary even to formulate the thought, much less actually believe it: From “Katrina and the War”:
[… President Bush] is responsible for not having a national plan in place that works to cope with disasters that wipe out the capacities of first-responders. After 9/11, that’s inexcusable. This is the scenario that Dick Cheney envisaged minutes after he heard about 9/11: that terrorists could attack a major U.S. city with much more devastating weaponry. That’s why we went into Iraq. Four years later, no real plan is in place. We are still on our own. After all that money poured into homeland defense, we still have no capacity to act swiftly to save lives after a major attack. This is not only a betrayal of his campaign promises; it’s a betrayal of war leadership; and, much worse, it’s an invitation to our enemies to attack. That’s why I endorsed his opponent last November: demonstrated incompetence. Iran, unsurprisingly, has noticed. Money quote:
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been following closely the way the United States government has been handling Hurricane Katrina, and drawing strategic conclusions from it.
In remarks that appeared on Ansar-e Hezbollah website on Sunday, a top official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said the devastating hurricane had exposed America’s vulnerabilities.
“The mismanagement and the mishandling of the acute psychological problems brought about by Hurricane Katrina clearly showed that others can, at any given time, create a devastated war-zone in any part of the U.S.”, Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, the official spokesman of the IRGC, said.
“If the U.S. attacks Iran, each of America’s states will face a crisis the size of Katrina”, he said, referring to the massive hurricane which hit the southern coast of the United States. “The smallest mistake by America in this regard will result in every single state in that country turning into a disaster zone”.
“How could the White House, which is impotent in the face of a storm and a natural disaster, enter a military conflict with the powerful Islamic Republic of Iran, particularly with the precious experience that we gained in the eight-year war with Iraq?” he said.
Jazayeri said the hurricane havoc showed that “contrary to public perception, the strength of America’s leadership is like a balloon, which can easily burst”.
The Revolutionary Guards spokesman said the U.S. administration’s inability to end the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan showed the “weakness of America’s defence and state departments, as well as its intelligence and security apparatus”.
With his incompetent handling of the war in Iraq and his bungling of the Katrina aftermath, this president has emboldened our enemies, eviscerated fear of the U.S., and made us more vulnerable if terror strikes.
Until now, I’ve been content to hold my tongue on the ways in which the media coverage of Katrina and its aftermath might truly impact the war on terror, preferring instead to address the issue only glancingly by pointing out that the hyperbole (over death counts, violent crime outbreaks, starvation) and hysteria coming from a media built for sensationalizing the news was not particularly unhelpful—and led directly to the kind of partisan fingerpointing we’re seeing now. In short, such horrific coverage succeeded in turning a natural disaster into a political pissing contest, and the real losers here are all of us, and on several fronts: first, it is clearer now than ever (or at least, it will be once the water is recedes) that we cannot trust our own “objective” media to report with any kind of attention to a broader context, one that mitigates the hysteria and puts controversies into their proper perspective; instead, emotionalism trumps all, and such an institutionalized turn in the media ethos lends itself to the kind of myopic “storytelling” we saw unfold in New Orleans (at the expense of the Mississippi Gulf) from self-concerned, sanctimonious blowhards like Anderson Cooper and Shep Smith (who, from what I understand, is having his underbelly fitted with titanium plating and a rocket booster system so that he’ll be able to skim along the tree line in the aftermath of Ophelia and drop MREs to the needy folk of the Carolinas—the titanium shielding, insulated with a layer of asbestos, allowing him to fly through the flaming wreckage of Bush’s America with messing up his makeup or hair). Second, the coverage purported to “expose” flaws in our emergency response system that are— no matter how hard Andrew and his ilk try to argue otherwise—essentially localized to a particular place: New Orleans. Mississippi (harder hit by Katrina) and Alabama experienced none of the widespread breakdown of order or control we watched unfold in NOLA. Which fact forces anti-Bush partisans like Andrew to make the kinds of broad and anti-republican arguments he’s now forced to make in his efforts to affix blame at the federal level.
To wit: Sullivan thunders that the President is “responsible for not having a national plan in place that works to cope with disasters that wipe out the capacities of first-responders”—an argument that depends for its force on our acceptance of his implicit premise that the break-down of the first-responder corps was reported to them in a timely fashion by a Governor who insisted on retaining control (as she should have, being herself perfectly capable (in theory, at least) of governing). The extent to which law enforcement broke down in NOLA, therefore, can be tied directly to Governor Blanco’s hesitations (and her decision to keep the Red Cross and Salvation Army out of the city), particularly, her ignorance of her own role in the chain of command. By not requesting additional Guard troops under EMAC until Wednesday—once the situation had already begun to spiral out of control—Blanco placed the feds in a Constitutional bind; and having your counsel poring over the potential repurcussions of usurping control from a recalcitrant Governor, or sending in active duty troops under Posse Comitatus in lieu of having the Governor request additional Guard troops from neighboring states, is not the ideal situation for the federal bureaucracy to be in during a crisis.
In short, Sullivan wants you to believe that a breakdown on the local level can only be fixed—and should have been fixed—by the federal government. And it is important to understand that is just that, a local breakdown, and not a systemic breakdown, that occurred here—though I do think the breakdown highlighted potential flaws in the federal plan in the event of an actual incapacitation of a state’s sovereign authority (with Blanco’s special combination of incompetence and recalcitrance standing in for a true evisceration of local authority). Ironically, though, the legal hurdles thrown up by Blanco’s actions slowed down the feds moreso than had the Governor been unreachable or unable to govern in the wake of the hurricane.
All of which brings me to the point: pace Sullivan, et al., it is my contention that the hyperbolic and emotionally-charged coverage of Katrina is responsible for amplifying problems with the federal response, problems that are not nearly so severe as partisans looking to score political points (and having taken their cues from faulty, myopic, and uninformed reportage) make them out to be. Cleanup and rescue is proceeding much quicker than expected; like relief and rescue workers, the Army Corp of Engineers has overcome tremendous obstacles to fix the several levee breaches, using the kind of improvised ingenuity that is their hallmark; the death toll is far below the original estimates; and so on.
But what is the message our enemy in the war on terror has received? What should happen in the event they attack a city?
Panic. Divisiveness. Unpreparedness. Finger pointing —the very things that Andrew helpfully points out are likely to embolden them. That is, their perception of the situation the ground in New Orleans—which, it’s turning out, is far less dire than was reported—is what is of interest to those who wish to attack us, and they now likely believe that such a strike will lead to widescale civil breakdown and panic, not to the kind of careful and competent response we saw in MS and AL, and that we’re now beginning to see, after the hitch caused by local unpreparedness and a poor management of their city and regional plans for evacuation and first response, in LA as well.
So. Did a federal response burdened by the unpreparedness of one of the three locales hit by Katrina embolden our enemies? Or did our thirst for sensationalism and controversy, coupled with the poisoned partisanship of our current political climate, conspire to convince our enemies (to the extent that it convinced them of anything at all) that we are less prepared than we actually are, and so to draw up their plans accordingly?
You be the judge. You know where Andrew stands. And now you know where I stand, as well.
If you believe Jim Pinkerton’s thesis, the Sullivans of the world are winning this rhetorical battle, and if my thesis is correct, then that very fact alone is enough to make us more vulnerable to attack. Sullivan, however, would likely respond indignantly that his pointing up of our failures is intended to help improve flaws in the system—all well and good, if that is what he were actually doing.
But instead, what he and his ideological brethren are doing is arguing, implicitly and from a number of false premises, for a federalized response system that would pull power away from the local governments—or else must necessarily depend upon clairvoyance for its operable mandate, if it is to ever live up to the demands for the kind of response times many are demanding. Sadly, both screaming hysterics on the right and complacent moderates who believe the highest form of intellectual achievement is to parcel out “blame” equitably in a kind of crude example of socialist “analysis,” have given aid to progressive partisans in their efforts to strip state power and make the federal government—already a huge and cumbersome bureaucratic animal—responsible for the primary care and comfort of individual sovereign states.
This is a huge mistake, and an attempt at an enormous shift in our system of governance. That it is riding in on the back of a hurricane is therefore quite appropriate. Because frankly? It blows.
(h/t John Cole)
Well, one of the things left out of that whole Sullivan-Iran thing is that the reason something like Katrina seemed to cause paralysis so much more than say, 9/11, is preciswely because of federal involvement that already existed.
Since the 60s, flood insurance was a federalized deal, which encouraged people to build in areas that were clearly objectively dangerous, because they knew the federal gocernment would foot the bill if anything went wrong.
I think Ben Stein got it exactly right: the MSM rioted.
From his September 7 entry–titled, with great restraint, “THE HELL II”:
Yes, God forbid that I should have to stock a week’s worth of camp food, plan my own way out of town, and check in on my neighbors.
Gimme dat big fat Federal tit, you betcha!
How did this man ever pawn himself off as a conservative?
One point I beg to differ on is that this would embolden our enemies to attack us. I don’t think so. It is my opinion, based on the events of 9/11 and the words of Bin Laden and Co. after it, that our response to any attack was irrelevant. It was the act of attack (and the hope of the final fight wherein OBL gets to become Caliph) that was the driving force, not whether the local police department would be scooping up big screens at a looted Best Buy.
Of course, I want a full review and corrections made, but to say that this necessarily emboldens them? No, I don’t think so.
Word: Needs. “Andrew needs to take a break and chill out.”
Go back and look at the predictions prior to the disaster, then look at what happened, and tell me how the fuck anybody can consider that a failure. Is there room for improvement? Of course, and we should work in that direction. But perfection is not attainable on this plane, and we need to keep that in mind. As for Iran’s bluster, fuck them too. So they have their own version of Baghdad Bob now, good for them. They know how many people died in their last earthquake, and they know what we pulled off over here; and in Iraq and Afghanistan. I look at their sabre rattling as trying to reinforce the moonbats over here more than vice versa.
Sully’s, Mr. Earnest Lee Strident, hair is on fire.
Vote Democrat!
We will not do anything to prevent an attack, but we will be faster at the Republicans in recovering your body.
We hope?
Don’t the advanced stages of AIDS cause psychotic behavior? Just wonderin’.
TW: seem. It would seem that Mr. Sullivan has gone around the bend. A couple of times. Just this morning.
It’s all Chimpy McHitlerbutron’s fault because GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE GAY MARRIAGE ….
TW: “I should have counted to three before posting this.”
Wait a minute. Iran loses 40 thousand people to what amounts to a trembler by California standards and a major American city is completely submerged under 10 feet of water resulting in 400 deaths (half of which were already severely ill and dying), and somehow Iran is talking about our “mismanagement”? Are they serious?
Looks more to me like the Iranian general is engaging in chest pounding and poo flinging, reminiscent of Bagdad Bob’s nonsense. I’m not all that concerned about what Iranian generals are learning, any more than I’m concerned with what the likes of Andrew Sullivan are saying.
There are other concerns regarding Iran. And perhaps Andrew hasn’t considered that there are other reasons why terrorists haven’t been attacking the United States over the last 4 years, aside from their previous assumptions that our disaster responses are so good that it isn’t worth their time and effort.
I think one stark contrast is that while the media has been all doom, gloom and failure, this doesn’t change the reality of the situation. Katrina struck a large area, and for the most part, everything went fairly smoothly which is at odds with a media that is so focused on New Orleans where incompetent local government made a bad situation far worse.
If the terrorists are planning on utilizing ineptitude in dealing with the response, I hope they are aware of the agenda of the media that tells them this is the case.
I think if anything, this event has shown the terrorists that there will be no coming together after a terrorist attack, there will instead be nothing but partisan bickering and finger pointing, and a media that is all too willing to aid them in that.
Why the fuck have we not nuked Katrina yet? That would teach those impudent Iranians about who’s ass is impotent and who’s isn’t. Oh wait Katrina’s history……well let’s nuke the Iran then. I got your caliph swingin’ from the ol’ vertex bitch.
Passwoord: states – As in “Iran be a failed states an’ shit.”
I love the circular logic here. Sullivan uses Jazayeri’s statements as proof of Bush’s failures making us “less safe”, while at the same time its the narrative that Sullivan is pushing that emboldens our enemies and makes us less safe. Reading this scared me a little. Its not Bush’s “failures” that are now making us less safe. Its the damn narrative. How do we fight this?
And I thought the “progressives” were against a Bush Dictatorship?
“…the 49% of Americans who have been complaining for five years about George W. Bush being a dictator are now vexed to the point of utter incoherence because for the last fortnight he has failed to do a sufficiently convincing impression of a dictator.”
(h/t – http://www.two–four.net/weblog.php?id=P1878)
My thesis: The Left is getting even more insane by the minute.
For all of the Iranian bluster, I think its safe to safe the cooler Mullah-heads in Tehran are quietly mumbling to themselves a far different tune.
Like um, 9/11, an actual terrorist attack, didn’t quite work out so well for those who wanted to keep their dictatorships. In fact, New York, DC, and for that matter the rest of the country reacted much differently after 9/11 than we have after Katrina. This is partly due to the fact that this was a natural disaster. The mentality behind the response to a natural disaster is different than that of a terrorist attack.
So, unless the mullahs have a direct line to god, they might want to rethink that strategy.
TW: Test- as in- why don’t you go ask Saddam how well things work out when you test us like that?
FOOLS! IRAN’S MORE LIKELY TO NUKE US BECAUSE THEY KNOW THERE’LL BE A LACKLUSTER FEMA RESPONSE TO A NUKED CITY! ISOBVIOUS!
Jeff,
Please hit your “Enter” key more often. Break up those massive text blocks. Makes reading easier, at least for us fogeys.
TW: “aid.” In re: Excitable Andy, too easy and cruel.
Cordially…
RIGHT NOW SOME YEMENI’S LOOKING AT REPORTS OF FEMA BUNGLING AND IT’S INSPIRING HIM TO MARTYR HIMSELF FOR ALLAH! BECAUSE OF OUR POLICIES! AND MICHAEL BROWN!
Why is it a “money quote”? Sullivan, myopic and hysterical, accepts the speech of an enemy military official at face value, something he would never do in the case of, for instance, Rumsfeld. Gosh, Andrew, could there be a REASON for these words so widely reported in the press? Or is it just the musings of an ordinary guy? They cannot defeat us militarily and so are using the media as a weapon.
I know a moveon person who still says Europe didn’t support us in Iraq because “they don’t like Bush.” No political reason, domestic or international, no financial reason…just personal.
Birds of a feather, and whatnot.
TW: word. ‘Cause the bird is the word.
I guess I’m from the old school that puts ‘Response’ after “Stimulus”.
Sullivan et al miss the fundamental point that you, me, the federal government can’t respond to something that hasn’t happened yet.
You can prepare, but you can’t respond.
Any criticisms or blame regarding an area’s preparedness depends on the specific problems identified after the fact.
The list is nearly endless, but, generally, the problem of casualties due to the storm and the dire situation in New Orleans is purely a function of the incompetence of both the Mayor and the Governor.
Not to mention the press.
For all the heroic reporting done after the hurricane, has anybody looked into the local dead-tree issues put out by the Times Picayune in the days leading up to Katrina? (their website doesn’t show everything)
Any pull-out ‘If You’re Stuck Here, do this …’ supplements?
Heat wave in France causes 15,000 deaths Aug.,2003.
Can we take a relative comparison of disasters and government responses and try to correlate that to consequences of terrorism?
If FEMA and the federal response is the end all for blame in this recent disaster, do they get ALL the credit for positive reponses and recovery for the Colorado Haymen fire, San Diego / Southern California fires, Southern California mud slides, numerous Florida Hurricanes , and numerous other floods? If they did such an adequate job to disuade any significant critisms for these disasters, why do you think they failed so miserbly in this case?
Simple logic would indicate to me that either FEMA acted out of character during this particular response or other factors effected their influence.
Parroting our enemies’ rhetoric to score points against Bush, Sullivan has sunk to new depths. He’s also kicking Glen Reynolds in the shins these days. He needs to lay off Reynolds, and play ball with his beagle on Fire Island more often.
I suspected back in ‘02 that Sully’s conservative mask was an NYT-crew creation designed to corral gay conservatives into voting for Democratic candidates. It didn’t work for my gay-red friends, and they’re tuning him out now.
When he endorsed Kerry, on the grounds that the Dem’s should be handed the WOT for “training purposes,” (like a lioness bringing a baby impalla back to its kittens to play with) his mental incontinence, and my ‘02 suspicions were both confirmed.
-Steve
A couple years ago I went to hear Andrew Sullivan speak. Before I went, I told a gay friend of mine I was going to this lecture, and said gay friend (who is hilarious and a real sweetie) just rolled his eyes, so I said:
“Ok, I know you’re not a conservative or anything, but aren’t you at least happy about his stand on gay marriage?”(My stand is: yes, let them marry. Not to stereotype or anything, but I so want to wear the shiny new Prada bridesmaid dresses from the new ‘Will and Grace’ bridesmaid catalogue, written for the likes of me. But I digress….)
“Lord, years ago he was against gay marriage. Now, he’s for it? He keeps changing his mind. Nah, I’m not going. Enjoy your lecture.”
And oddly, I did, but that conversation has stayed with me. I still sort of like him, but I don’t take him seriously. His blog is fun to read if you just add, ‘but I’m still wrong’ to the end of each sentence.
TW: reading – as in, when you accidentally read anything on AS’s blog, just remember my helpful tip.
So…
Sully married yet? When’s the wedding date?
He who first observed that, “There is a thin line between genius and madness,” was obviously not a genius. Were he one, he would have realized that there is no line.
Here’s the reason I can’t do that, MD. When I was teaching an argument class a few years back, the text our department was recommending as representative of the breadth of opinion on 911 response had Andrew Sullivan as it’s reprentative on the right and Common Dreams presented as centrist.
Sullivan’s conservatism is as much a sham these days as Bill Maher’s (who the other day blamed the feds for not rushing in to save the black people) “libertarianism,” which so far as I can tell means legalizing pot and hookers, but beyond that, legislating the HELL out of anything that annoys liberal elites.
Jeff, I spit coke all over my screen after reading the headline to this post. A rare and perfect triple entendre!
Assuming Iran does nuke us, it will be Bush’s fault for failing to erect a protective shield over the country.
Any references to dems rejection of Reagan’s star wars programs will be met promptly with cries of racism.
Yeah, its silly to think that the terrorists are going to be emboldened by the FEMA response to Katrina. It’s just Andy Sullivan doing his Rod Dreher impression. Or is it vice versa? Anyways…
I do think that bin Laden had hoped that the aftermath of his 9/11 scheme would be an American spiral into impotence and bickering. Never forget that bin Laden was (is?) convinced that there was a deep seated rot at the core of American society. A rot he hoped to exploit with dramatic attacks that he hoped would have a secondary effect of exposing the “flaws” and “decadence” in the USA.
Well, he was wrong about the extent of the “rot” in the aftermath of 9/11, but when you look at the election results and polling lately, you can see how there would be cause for some hope in those caves in Ashcanistan.
There’s a core group of fifth columnists in this country, epitomized by Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky, that clearly hates the United States as it is currently constituted. They comprise about 15-20% of the electorate. Who knows how many more they influence at various times. Bush is hardly an eloquent and inspirational leader a la Reagan (that’s not a knock, its just the truth and I like the guy quite a bit) so the numbers skew a bit in light of that reality. But the way things went to shit in NOLA and the subsequent shameless politicization has got to gladden the hearts of terrorists and other America haters.
For that, the shameless MSM and other left-wing haters should feel nothing but shame, assuming they possess the capacity for that emotion any more. I rather doubt it.
Jeff, I think his conservatism has always been a bit of a sham, is my point, which I probably didn’t make well. Also, his history shows he changes his mind a lot, which to me, makes it seem like he doesn’t really operate from a firm set of fundamentals. Anyway, I’m not sure what a media conservative is anymore, what with the bow-tie hysterics of the Corner, Tucker Carlson’s, er, bow tied hysterics and the waffling of supposed conservatives like Andrew Sullivan. But that Hannity, he’s rock solid (actually, it’s the Geoge Wills of the world I like…..)
It’s all about emotion, not about reason or logic. It’s irritating. You, on the other hand, have been doing an amazing job the past few weeks.
As another commenter said, bona fides indeed!
TW: Makes, as in, I’m not as good as you when I tries to makes an argument, hope this makes more sense
Er, it’s the George…..etc, etc. Sorry for the typo.
See, that’s why I like reading you so much Jeff. You know how to speak self-proclaimed-liberal-elite-ish. I have the vocabulary, but I don’t know how to use the proper words in their proper order. When you say it it looks so elegant and they don’t get to pretend to misunderstand you.
Like this
You use their own argot against them. It isn’t easy to work “ethos” into a sentence without looking like a pompous icehole. You don’t look pompous at all.
That just makes me laugh.
Oh, and I like cock jokes.
Rough day and I need to babble some. I am beginning to think that I am retarded and that people only reply to me because they feel sorry for me. I have been all over the web just about begging ANYONE to post a single fact that would convince me that Bush or FEMA were derelict. Gazooba! I am treated like the brother in the attic, because evryone KNOWS that Bush and FEMA fucked up. The only problem is that none of them seem to have a clue what FEMA’a actual role in a disaster is, or just exactly what the agency consists of. I went over to that little pissant Young Curmudgeon’s site, and offered him a gold star if he could post just one actual fact to show me that something is terribly wrong. I even hinted that I could probably get Jeff to do the same if he would be the first to give me a true fact (sorry, Jeff, but I wanted him to have some REAL incentive). Well, did he ever put me in my place! Something about Jeff being my icon(?)and something else about two realities (truer than he imagines). Funny thing though, he ignored my challenge and posted no facts at all – much to my surprise! The closest he came was to say that Brown was fired, so the case is closed. Perhaps I missed something, but just exactly when was Brown fired? Was it before or after no one could say what it was that he did wrong? Like I said, I may be retarded, but I guess I’ll just continue that way until one of those who live in the “true” reality breaks down and posts one fact that backs up their claims. You’d think after two weeks that at least one of those loonies would be able to put forth one fact, wouldn’t you? No, you say?
Oh, well. I gave him another chance(big of me, huh?) I included the fact that no matter what happens, the left has won – I can’t imagine Congress can fix this without putting a huge hole in state’s rights viz a viz the feds. He still hasn’t answered me… I guess I’m just too slow to understand him. By the way Jeff, how do you find these guys? I think you and I are the only ones who have been there in two days.
By the way, I don’t usually post under this name, but it is the name I used for the curmudgeon of the towering intellect. Thanks for the babble. I really wanted to babble at him, but etiquette dictates that I wait for him to reply…
1. As The Onion helpfully pointed out, the terrorists have got nothin’ on the Lord. If the Iranians are capable of creating and delivering here something on the order of a Category 5 hurricane, we are in deep doo-doo no matter what FEMA does (at least, those parts of the US that are urban and below sea level, which I believe is just one, presently uninhabitable city).
2. Now, let’s think rationally here, in terms bin Laden would understand. You have two choices:
A. Centralize disaster-response with FEMA, with the heads of DHS and FEMA and the President personally responsible for making the crucial decisions.
B. Decentralize disaster-response, with decisionmaking power in the hands of 50 Governors and scores of Mayors.
Even the leader of a ragtag terrorist operation can tell you that decentralizing authority into local cells that can operate on their own for long stretches makes you less vulnerable to your enemies. The more we centralize our response to disasters with FEMA, the more we hand our enemies the ability to cripple our response to multiple simultaneous attacks in different parts of the country. Imagine if Flight 93 had hit the White House – wouldn’t it then have been a particularly good thing that Rudy and Pataki could put the NYPD and NYFD into action without awaiting word from Uncle Sam? Why on earth should our response to this disaster be to centralize rather than distribute our ability to respond in a crisis?
Er MD you know George Will wears a bow tie don’t you?
There’s a real simple response to any damage Mr. Mullah does to our country. And Iran won’t have to worry about disaster zones at all – there won’t be anything left to clean up.
TW: costs as in it will cost your Mullahdom big time.
Yes, but his bow-tie is most definitely not hysterical. Or something like that…..
TW: art….I ‘art to stop reading this and get back to work.
Sorry.
Looks like the QandA crew (who I greatly admire) is buying into the Chertoff Incident of National Significance “delay” meme (being pushed by Knight Ridder) that I hightlighted yesterday. Those of you who are well-versed in the particulars of the NRP and DHS plans might wish to go leave a comment.
Uhhhhhhhh…okay. Sure.
I think Murel had this covered earlier in the thread…
Well said, Crank.
An AWESOME post, Jeff, and yet another sad reminder of how far Andrew has fallen.
Jeff,
What all this really proves is the necessity to elect leaders who can lead and not just promise the people another hand in the candy jar.
The citizens of NO elected a mayor who frankly was not qualified to be a mayor of a city. He made poor decisions from the time he was elected, and built his hope on nothing bad happening in the way of a disaster, especially a hurricane based on the vulnerability of NO.
I have noticed over the past five years especially that the infrastruture of the city of NO was on the decline. The school system had collapsed, murder and violent crimes such as armed robbery and rape was rampant, and the city was in full decline.
I last visited the city in 2003 and vowed not to return even though I had always had a soft place in my heart for wacky NO. Seedy is a more apt description now.
The point I want to make is that the election of local officials in a city is probably the single most important election a person can participate in. We must elect competant leaders who will take the steps to avoid the mess we now have in NO.
Sometimes democracy doesn’t work. If the voters are irresponsible and/or stupid, democracy sucks worse than some other systems of government. In the case of Louisiana, voters happen to suffer from both faults. Democracy on the state and local level in Louisiana will fail the people more than half the time.
With the third-worldification of North America, from lax immigration and misguided welfare policies, democracy begins to fail more and more often, particularly in southern California and other border regions. This is something that needs a sober looking at.
Actually, JJ, I’d argue that Mayor Nagin was perfectly suited to “run” New Orleans. From what I’ve read of the guy, he really did have some hope to cut out some of the corruption. But in the grand tradition of New Orleans, he was kinda getting around to it, whenever.
Contrast it with Bill White’s mayoral response to the disaster here in Houston. Obviously, Houston didn’t face the catastrophe NO did, but I am nonetheless comforted by White’s approach – take care of things first, ask the gummint for help later.
Which, by the way, appears to be trying to stiff Houston and Texas. No good deed and all that…
I’d actually have to say that yes, this does give a big clue to our enemies. Go for the cities that have a historically corrupt government, inside a state that has a historically corrupt government. Go for a city where the majority of the citizens have rarely had to tie their own shoelaces without government assistance. Go for a city that, as recently as last year, failed miserably in practicing its emergency management plan.
Good thing New Orleans is gone, else, if I was a terrorist, I’d pick it as my first, easiest target.
Oh, yeah—Andrew has butt cooties.
Interesting piece here:
http://www.northsidejournal.com/special2.htm
It seems to be a Shreveport newspaper.
Th money quote: “On Thursday, September 1, amid a growing clamor of questions about the lack of action being taken in New Orleans, Blanco finally signed Executive Order KBB-2005-23, giving permission for the federal government to enter Louisiana with military assistance.”
It always astonishes me that anyone who has ever had to renew a driver’s license in person could ever propose a super-DMV to run things.
Regards,
Ric
tw: “stand”. How long did you stand in line to get your Federal assistance?
Whoever wrote your Turing-word chooser needs to be tracked down and sent to a lab. He or she has written a telepathic computer program.
I like this one:
So to avoid the appearance of not being able to handle the emergency, she avoided handling the emergency.
Azael is back, only he’s posting his old “trump” crap on dead threads.
Let me preface this by noting that it is late, I am tired, and it was a long day at work.
So perhaps my brain is just fuzzy right now. I grant that possibility.
I do not grant the possibility, however, that I am merely “insensitive” as I ask, What, exactly, was so bad about Hurricane Katrina?
Yeah, that’s hyperbole, but I’m not referring to the obvious stuff—that high winds caused damage across a large area in the southern United States; that high water got through a levee and flooded a major U.S. city; that these high winds and high waters left many people dead.
I’m aware of all those things, and understand that they are bad.
So my question is more like: Beyond those things—beyond the obvious bad stuff intrinsic to a big hurricane—what was so bad about Katrina? Everyone now seems to unquestioningly accept that something was “wrong,” something “horrible” happened, something was “flawed.” It seems to be taken as a given that fingers are to be pointed and blame assigned, and that now it’s just an argument about who gets that blame.
I’m not sure I understand anymore what we’re arguing about. What was the “something” that was so bad, and so poorly responded to, that we’re even haggling over “blame” to begin with? Is it about some people being uncomfortable in the Superdome? Is it about some people being stuck in their flooded houses for a few days? Is it about some people looting?
I’m not being facetious here. I’m honestly asking. This thing is turning into a rhetorical civil war, but I’m starting to wonder what we’re battling about in the first place. It’s like, OK, I get it—Nagin did or didn’t do this, Blanco did or didn’t do that, Bush did or didn’t do this. But why, in this case, are their did-or-didn’t-do’s so crucial anyway?
You see what he is talking about here.
Iran, with 40% of its population living below poverty level, isn’t concerned about whether Americans got all the food and water they needed in 4 days. And OBL, living in a cave, is certainly not concerned about whether Americans were able to stay in AirConditioned shelters.
The living conditions brought on by Katrina are, sadly, the every day living conditions of millions of people in this world. People that don’t have any chance that in a few days a helicopter or bus will bring them to shelter and food and a shower.
Our ‘enemies’ are not emboldened by the idea of our government being unable to keep us from physical suffering or temporary discomfort. They don’t care, they live with much of it themselves.
It is our reaction to it that is the money response for them. The psychological response, as the IRGC spokesman said. As Jeff said, the bickering, the panic, finger-pointing.
Nothing like the circle jerk of AS, the media, and our enemy parroting each other for the purpose of fomenting emo – and then they blame the Administration and wingers we for the result of their own masturbation.
I’m becoming more and more concerned about the necessity of defending our country from enemies domestic.
One other thing I note that Andrew Sullican will never understand is that if the Iran Idiotry gets their news from our MSM, they still have no idea how we would respond to an attack from them.
AS jumped the shark years ago. I wonder if he has AIDS dementia or something.
If your looking for even more information on PC security then I would head over here as they have plenty of stuff on identity theft, antivirus software etc.
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