I just want to make this clear.

[xiphias]

The blood of the people of New Orleans is on the hands of George W. Bush.

Let me start with my weakest argument. The magnitude of the hurricane was a result of global warning, and Bush's decision to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol.

Now, that IS a very weak argument. I mean, we can't know that there is a direct casual relationship, and, anyway, it's unlikely that the effects of living up to our agreements with regards to Kyoto would have been significant enough to make THAT much difference. Yet. Of course, the fact that hurricanes like this are going to become more and more common over the next few decades -- that's clearly Bush's fault, but it's harder to pin this one directly on him.

But there are other, stronger arguments.

Bush cut the funds to repair the crumbling levees that failed and flooded the city. Those funds weren't there because of the Republican tax cuts, and, even more significantly, the war in Iraq.

The Louisiana National Guard, who would have been on hand to repair dams, fill sandbags, and help keep order, is in Iraq. We're taking the war to the terrorists, which means that the National Guard is not available to do their job of, y'know, guarding the nation.

So: the extent of the damage in New Orleans -- a level of destruction not seen in the first world since 1945 or so, and not seen in the United States since the nineteenth century (I can't think of anything to compare to this since the Chicago fire and the burning of Atlanta) -- is a direct result of the policies and decision made by George W. Bush.

Let's not forget that.

Let's do what we can to help -- but let's not forget that the extent of the damage and devastation is a result of human incompetence, greed, and evil, and the human in question is President George W. Bush.

Comments

[gingicat]

Have you seen http://www.livejournal.com/users/wicked_wish/582898.html ?

[lietya.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

As ever, you put things beautifully. I want to see this information propagated; I want everyone to know just why this happened. (Sadly, I expect most people will be far more upset about spiking gas prices than about Bush's misappropriation of direly needed repair funds in NO.)

[theclamsman.livejournal.com]

John M. Barry, a part-time New Orleans resident and the author of "Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America," spent the day in his Washington office, fielding e-mails from neighbors who were watching the water rise near their French Quarter houses. "It's like watching not only your life, but the lives of everything you've ever been involved in, just floating away," he said.

Barry said that like the devastating 1927 flood, which killed more than 200, Katrina would be remembered as a natural disaster made worse by man. "The most obvious lesson," he said, "is that you've got to be alert to unintended consequences."

The refusal to build spillways and reservoirs exacerbated the effects of the 1927 flood just as coastal erosion and the blazing of shipping canals presumably contributed to Katrina's destruction, he said. "If a worse case develops, this will come as close to wiping out a major American city as has ever happened."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-water31aug31,1,6724039.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

But yeah, you're right, man. I kept telling everyone that a scenario like The Day After Tomorrow really is gonna happen and happen faster than they think, but they think I'm just spewing out of my ass. While I don't necessarily believe that New York will freeze instantaneously, I do think a lot of the odd weather changes are indicative of a more insidious problem highlighted in the movie between the scientist and the Dick Cheney Clone.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

I am no bigger a fan of George W. Bush than you are. But I think you've gone too far here.

To be perfectly fair, it's quite likely that, even had the funding not been cut, the improvements to the levees would not have been enough to stop Lake Pontchartrain from breaking through. So says much of the analysis I've seen, anyway. The damage would probably have been less, but it's important to realize that there's truly no way to know.

It's also important to realize that strong levees are not altogether a good thing. Right now, for instance, it's those strong levees that didn't break that are keeping the water in the city. The biggest factor in the disaster in New Orleans is simply that a city set an average of six feet below sea level that's surrounded by water on three sides is a sitting duck for a major hurricane. And that's not George W. Bush's fault.

You're wrong about the level of devastation not being seen in the U.S. since the nineteenth century. There was the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which destroyed 28,000 buildings and may have killed about 3,000 people. The Galveston hurricane of 1900 (no crap about 1900 being in the nineteenth century, please) may have killed 8,000 people. The Texas City explosion in 1947 destroyed most of the city and killed almost 600. In 1928, a hurricane hit the Lake Okeechobee area of Florida, killing nearly 2,000 people.

One must also keep in mind that, while Bush has certainly done things to make global warming worse, and done nothing to make it better, he is not responsible for it beginning in the first place.

[cheshyre]

BTW, I've been reading the commentary on the Nielsen Hayden's blog Making Light

In response to remarks about Bush finally cutting his vacation short (by two days) a commenter asked what Bush was expected to do; what he reasonably could do after the hurricane hit.

Graydon offers a best-case scenario which makes me long for a competent administration.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

To be very fair, I'm sure there are people in the government doing many of those things. The President isn't the only one making decisions. And I honestly don't care how much publicity they give those things, provided that they do them.

I was glad to see Bush cut his vacation short, but only because it looks horrible for the President to be out relaxing and having fun while many thousands of American citizens are in such dire straits not far away from him.

[zachkessin.livejournal.com]

It was in Canada, but the city of Halifax was leveled by an exploading ship in 1917. It was a ship full of explosives bound for WWI, it hit another ship and no more Halifax.

From what I understand also the levies have been neglected for a good long time. I really do think that blaiming this on W is a bit over the top.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

The biggest factor in the disaster in New Orleans is simply that a city set an average of six feet below sea level that's surrounded by water on three sides is a sitting duck for a major hurricane. And that's not George W. Bush's fault.

... there's no way I can parse that without seeing it as "blaming the victim." Which isn't to say I don't agree; a swamp is a damn stupid place to build a major city. But if you don't want the city to sink into the swamp, you either have to move the entire damn city out of the swamp, or go to some extraordinary lengths to preserve the city. The people who live(d) there... they were just doing the best they could with what they had, like the rest of us.

I dunno. I might have a point, or I might not. It's just... yargh.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

I'm not trying to blame anyone. That's the point, really. Nobody thought about what would happen if a humongous hurricane slammed into the city when they built it, and the people who decide to build the city there are all dead.

It was a disaster waiting to happen, and it finally happened. There are more like it in the country—for example, at some point in the future, there will be another major earthquake in the eastern U.S. (the largest earthquake ever in the U.S. hit Missouri in 1811). When (not if) that happens, most of Washington, D.C. will very probably collapse, because Washington was mostly built on swamp and landfill. There's really not much to be done about it but hope it takes a very long time to happen.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

And then there was Hurricane Carla in 1961. She wiped out 90% of at least one mid-sized city in Texas. She's on record as having max winds of 140, but I was there, and I know that several locations recorded sustained winds of 150 mph, with gusts to 175. And that wasn't even at the eye of the storm. We were "saved" by two things: the towns in that area are at or slightly above sea level, and my city, at least, was not on a river. As a result, not so many lives were lost due to flooding.
For the last 20 years or so we've been in a period of relative calm, as far as hurricanes go. Now we're returning to a more active cycle, but that's no more unusual than the period of calm was. The storms are stronger due in part to global warming, but global warming has been an issue since long before GW took office. As has lack of attention to bridges, dams, and levees. I dislike defending GW, but it's too easy to blame just one person for all the errors, oversights, and misjudgements that have made a bad situation worse. What about all the people who voted for him? And who advise him? What about the people who ignored their governor's pleas and orders to evacuate? Don't we bear any responsibility for our own poor choices? Not that foolishness is a crime punishable by death, but if it's forseeable that remaining in a particular place could result in your death, and you choose to remain, then it's a bit harsh to say that your blood is on the hands of the government, let alone a single leader of the government.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Most of the people who ignored the orders to evacuate had no means to do so. There were no busses nor trains. Everyone with a car, just about, got out. Everyone without one was screwed, since there was absolutely no provision made to help them.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I was also going to mention the 1900 Galveston hurricane -- I just finished reading Isaac's Storm. The fledgling National Weather Service was trying so hard to establish their own credibility that they ignored and suppressed the warnings of Cuban meteorologists. By the then-current theories of hurricanes, the storm had to veer out into the Atlantic, and could not have hit Galveston, so they kept tryiing to force what data they had into the model, and, thus, inadequate warnings were given, and much too late. Of course, it would have been bad regardless -- to some degree, the tools necessary to track the storm simply didn't exist. But some did, and were simply not utilized as well as they could have been.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

I forgot to mention the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which flooded about 27,000 square miles of land to a depth of about 30 feet, killing 246 people.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

What could the President do?

[cheshyre]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/3/115611/4051

NorthCom started planning before the storm even hit. We were ready for the storm when it hit Florida because, as you remember, it crossed the bottom part of Florida, and then we were plaining, you know, once it was pointed towards the Gulf Coast. So what we did was we activated what we call defense coordinating officers to work with the state to say okay, what do you think you'll need, and we set up staging bases that could be started. We had the USS Baton sailing almost behind the hurricane so that after the hurricane made landfall it's search and rescue helicopters would be available almost immediately. So we had things ready. The only caveat is, we have to wait until the President authorizes us to do so. The laws of the United States say that the military can't just act in this fashion, we have to wait for the President to give us permission.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

Oh, and, incidentally, Japan is in the "first world," and the 1995 earthquake in the Kobe area killed 5,200 people and caused about $100 billion of damage.

If you count India in the "first world," there was an earthquake there in 2001 that killed more than 20,000 people.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

Why stop there?

If you support the Iraqi invasion, or if you support Bush's budget cuts, it's on you're hands. (Generic "you" there, of course.)

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

One more comment (sorry) on your original post:

...is a result of human incompetence, greed, and evil, and the human in question is President George W. Bush.

"Evil" is a very powerful word, and, like anything powerful, should only be used with great care. Bush is not evil. He is incompetent and greedy, to be sure, but he does genuinely believe that what he is doing is best for the American people. That's misguided, but not malevolent.

[redbird]

He is incompetent, greedy, and a proven liar.

I see no reason to believe his claim that he wants what is best for the American people--all the American people, black and white, poor as well as his campaign contributors--when we know he lied repeatedly about Iraq.

He lied to get us into a war, and then stole the money that should have been shoring up levees to protect New Orleans in order to pay for that war.

[bimmer1200.livejournal.com]

*laugh*

Do you realize that you sound like one of the -bad- parodies on a 2nd rate conservative talk show?

I mean...for 70+ years the city of NO and the state of LA have known that those levies were not adequate for standing up to a hurricane of this magnitude. Long before Bush was ever born. The city and state have been spending money on things like luring the Hornets NBA team from Charlotte instead of on the levies. If there's any blame to go around it's squarely on the shoulders of the people in that city and town that did not hold their elected officials accountable for -decades-.

Second, the budget cuts you mentioned don't take effect til next fiscal year. Even if the budget for '06 had been ten times what is slated it wouldn't have made one whit of difference. They've had 300+ million to use for years, and they've done nothing with it to mitigate the circumstance.

For someone that supposedly values science, claiming that global warming is at the root of Katrina is...well, it's ignorant. According to the following: http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr.html it would take about 80 years to produce the potential for an increase of one half-category. So assuming that global warming has a negative impact, and Geogre Bush were somehow retroactively responsible for the global warming of the last 80 years (longer than he's been alive), at most he made this a category 5 instead of a 4.5. Maybe, possibly.

Further, there are scientists that dispute the idea that global warming would have an impact of this type of hurricanes. They argue that, if anything, global warming would decrease frequency and intensity. Global warming primarily effects the polar regions, raising their temperatures. Hurricanes formation is impacted by the temperature gradient between the tropical and polar regions. It stands to reason that if the polar regions are growing warmer, and the tropical regions are remaining about the same, that the gradient would decrease and therefore the number and intensity of tropical storms would decrease, not increase.

Further, the 1940s was the most active decade for hurricanes, and since then we've seen a decrease in the frequency. At least according to the National Hurricane Center. Further, there's a veritable truckload of data indicating that during warming periods in earth's past, storms have been lessened.

Before you go blaming a natural disaster on someone you ought to have your facts straight. What should Bush have done? Stood on the levies, shook his fist at Katrina and warned it not to mess with the US?

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

I'm not blaming the President for the storm. I *am* blaming him for the fact that he has slashed FEMA budgets every year since he took office. I *am* blaming him for the fact that there seems to be very little federal leadership here, as compared to the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew under GHWB.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

He could be been doing, you know, _president stuff_, rather than having birthday cake and accepting a fancy guitar from some half-assed country star.

Blame or no, he sure doesn't seem to be taking responsibility. Just like, you know, when he was told that the WTC was being attacked and he hung out for another 15 or 20 minutes before getting off his ass and doing, you know, _president stuff_. Or just like the vast numbers of vacations he's taken on his ranch in Texas while we're, you know, at war. Instead of doing _president stuff_.

I guess it's nice that he thinks he can trust his staff to take care of things. I suppose it lends credence to the argument that he's just a figurehead and that the country is really run by his staff, corporations, and/or some kind of shadow cabinet, but on the other hand, he could at least pretend and _try_ to keep up appearances and maybe just _attempt_ to look like he's doing more than taking vacations, avoiding press conferences, and sending Americans to their doom. And that staff he claims to trust appears to consist of a whole bunch of people with really blatantly conflicted interests and at least one arguable traitor, who gave away the identity of an intelligence agent during wartime and should, arguably, be shot.

I also noticed you didn't rebut the current stationing of the National Guard in Iraq, quite a long distance away from where they could be useful for doing, you know, _National Guard things_.

[redbird]

For starters, if not for the war in Iraq, the Louisiana National Guard would be there doing what the National Guard is supposed to do, including disaster prep and recovery work.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

But he got a nice guitar the other day...

Re: I just want to make this clear.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

you know what? having done a wee bit of disaster relief on a small scale, i'll buck the leftie trend, and call evacuating 80% of one's population in this short a time a pretty good job.

i don't disagree that the national guard should be there instead of in iraq. i don't disagree that there are problems if it's true that too many people who actually wanted to leave couldn't, because there was not enough transportation to local shelter such as the superdome.

still. i am impressed. to get this many people to safety in such a short time, that argues for decent planning. yup, it could surely be better. that doesn't mean it sucked. evacuating a major population centre is a logistical nightmare; people are much harder to move tha cattle IME, and especially so when not trained. and it's not as if people were willing to freely fund emergency measures when the raw need isn't actually staring them in the face. it usually takes a disaster like this before people wake up, and in 100 years they have long forgotten the last one. which might well be the most reasonable action, come to think of it. being 80% prepared is possibly as good as it gets; i don't know. how well prepared are you? as an individual, i mean? could you evacuate in an hour, with everything that really matters plus some basic survival gear? if not, you might want to do something about that, because that part is in your power.

what you have in NOLA now is what you get when you are human and build in places that are more convenient and historically significant than safe. shit happens, and once every hundred years you get really unlucky and a few thousand people die. there'll be much handwringing, but this is the price one pays. i live in a gorgeous place. it's also just 28m above sea level, in a major subduction zone along the pacific rim. if we get a tsunami in georgia strait, i'd be instant toast if i lived down by the harbour, and i might still be toast here. that's written on the price tag for living here. it doesn't mean i throw up my hands and leave it all to fate. but i definitely don't expect near-100% safety provided by my government at all times.