Hurricane Rita & The Lessons Of Katrina

On September 22, 2005, with Hurricane Rita bearing down on the coasts of Texas and southwest Louisiana, President Bush addressed a gathering of journalists to defend the war in Iraq. What was disturbing was not only that the facts on the ground did not support his optimism but that the president considered it an appropriate time to lecture the media on foreign policy.

Late Friday night, September 23, Rita crashed into Lake Charles on the Louisiana side of the Texas border. The sheer size of the storm assures that damage will be widespread but it appears that Louisiana, already reeling from Hurricane Katrina and the drowning of New Orleans, will bear the brunt of the storm.

The president spoke rapidly, machine gun staccato, as if he could compensate for a dearth of compelling argument by compressing his thoughts into bursts of sound. He was impatient with his audience, regarding them as if they were elementary students incapable of appreciating the force of his reasoning. He was angry at the impertinence of reporters who dared to ask relevant and challenging questions.

Friday night, one of those impertinent reporters, as the president was preparing a visit to Texas, demanded to know if it was only a photo op. He demanded to know if the president would get in the way of emergency preparations. The president angrily assured the reporter he would not but later cancelled the visit until after the storm hit land.

Those same administrative underlings who briefed the president that FEMA administrator Michael Brown was doing a great job and everything was under control in Katrina’s wake are now briefing him on the progress in the war. Did they inform him that the insurgency continues to grow stronger, that they mounted the most deadly counter-attack since the war’s inception, and that civil unrest is spreading to all regions of Iraq?

The president, with Dick Cheney over his shoulder, expressed confidence that the insurgency is on the run and everything is under control. Meantime, traffic snarled in the greater Houston area and some wondered if they would be better off returning home and hunkering down. Gas stations were running dry, the airport was bottlenecked, patience was short, and no one from Corpus Christi to New Orleans cared about the president’s rosy assessment of the war on terror. Terror was waiting five hundred miles off the coast.

One wonders what lessons the president learned from the Katrina fiasco: that he needed to appear more engaged, more forceful or presidential? Once again, this president has demonstrated the critical flaw of believing that his catastrophic failures are problems of public relations.

It seemed clear that the first responders in local and state government have learned valuable lessons from the Katrina nightmare. Resources were mobilized to evacuate the most vulnerable – the elderly, infirm and the poor. It seemed equally clear that there were a great many more lessons to be learned. While mass evacuation was under way, we began to envision thousands of faithful evacuees stranded on Texas highways as the horrors of Hurricane Rita unfold.

Maybe the president should have skipped his morning briefing or his afternoon jog to spend a little time watching cable news.

As for the federal government, we assumed that it would be something less than four horrific days before a meaningful response. We assumed that the red tape, the administrative turf wars and outright belligerence of federal agents and private security forces that hindered rescue and relief efforts for Katrina would not be repeated.

One of the unfortunate lessons that state and local authorities learned during Katrina was that they could not rely on federal agencies. The Federal Emergency Management Agency may have a new administrator but it remains the same organization that blundered through Katrina. It is clearly undermanned, mismanaged and overwhelmed.

To those who laughingly suggest that emergency response should be privatized, the more we learn about the government’s deficiencies, the more we realize that it already has been.

The Army Corps of Engineers, once the pride of the nation and the envy of the world, is asleep at the wheel. In all fairness, it has a full palate with constructing military facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq but it has failed the people of this nation – particularly the poor in the low lying areas of New Orleans.

The Corps should be at the helm of the massive reconstruction that will follow these disasters but that assignment has already gone to Halliburton. As for FEMA, it is a ghost; it is a shadow of its former self and it is not an accident but a deliberate outcome of privatization. The neocons, who gave us Afghanistan and Iraq, have handed the responsibilities of emergency relief to charitable organizations, preferably faith based, and the results have unfolded before our outraged eyes over the last four weeks.

If Americans are not ashamed of our government yet, what will it take?

One by one, major oil refineries shut down and the price of gas rose faster than credit card interest rates on an overdue account.

With all respect due, Mr. President, this was not the time for an address on foreign policy.

Now that the hurricane has struck and the damage is being assessed, we will transition to the recovery phase. Recall that the president’s most decisive action in the Katrina recovery was first, the contracting of Halliburton and Bechtel (the nation’s leading war profiteers), followed by a suspension of prevailing wage standards and affirmative action for contracted workers.

Roughly translated, the president empowered Halliburton to hire anyone it desires (presumably including cheap migrant labor) at whatever wages it sees fit without regard for the outrageous profits the contracting giant stands to make. Profiteering on the backs of workers was legalized by executive decree.

What the president should do is issue an executive order that every local contractor, engineer, carpenter, electrician, plumber, brick layer and common laborer in the afflicted areas will be guaranteed a job at a decent wage for the length of the reconstruction.

How do we pay for it? We start by taking the money back from Halliburton and Bechtel and letting the Army Corps of Engineers do its job. We pay for it by ending the lame-brained foreign occupations in short order. We pay for it by halting construction on permanent military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan immediately. We pay for it by taking back the gift to the pharmaceutical industry in the name of Medicare reform, rescinding pork barrel projects and an energy bill written by and for the energy industry, and by repealing tax cuts on the elite ten percent of income recipients. We pay for it by electing leaders who represent the people, regardless of color, creed or economic status.

To the observation of rapper Kanye West, that so offended the president’s supporters, we can now add: George Bush does not care about the working people of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and, now, Texas.

Will the president press forward with the same compassionless disregard for the working people? Will he continue to pad the pockets of the rich at the expense of the poor in the wake of these catastrophes? Will he continue to add to an unfathomable national debt while our urban centers remain woefully unprepared for inevitable disasters?

Despite the brief impression of Franklin Delano Roosevelt at Jackson Square in New Orleans, an illuminated Saint Louie Cathedral in the background, the Bush New Deal for the victims of Katrina turned out to be a raw deal. Like so many other phony initiatives, George Bush the populist is all hat, no cattle.

The world is watching, Mr. President: While you may interpret these events as bad luck or the wrath of an ungrateful god, they provide you a golden opportunity. You can rescue what remains of your legacy by dismissing your brain trust and forging a new direction for this nation. You have it in your power to end the war, end the occupation, dismantle the military installations in Iraq, and redirect our resources toward rebuilding our nation and ending poverty with a civil defense and reconstruction project rivaled only by the New Deal and the Marshall Plan.

On Saturday, September 24, as the damage of Hurricane Rita was being surveyed, hundreds of thousands returned to the streets of protest in Washington and throughout the nation. One by one, the speakers demonstrated a clear understanding of the connection between the waste of an unnecessary and immoral foreign war and the inadequacy of our government at home.

Do you care about black people, Mr. President?

Do you care about the poor, the working class and the small business owner?

Then prove it.

It will take a great deal more than fancy words against an illuminated background.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON DISSIDENT VOICE, THE ALBION MONITOR & COUNTERPUNCH. SEE RANDOM JACK: http://www.jazzmanchronicles.blogspot.com.