Misplaced priorities
Katrina has shown deadly domestic neglect is strongly linked to our aggressive foreign policy
By Hannah Naiditch 10/13/2005
Let us start from the beginning. We had just fought World War II, the “good war,” and we prevailed. The future looked great. There were hopes of a “peace dividend” and the promise of no more wars. We had left the Great Depression behind us, and there were going to be jobs for everybody. We were going to work shorter hours and enjoy more leisure. Life was going to be good!
Unfortunately our government had different plans. Containing communism and making the world safe for corporate interests became the new priority. We fought the Korean War and the war in Vietnam, and we intervened covertly and overtly in many other nations. We were consumed with global ambitions.
Domestic neglect was the unavoidable result. Not only were the levees in New Orleans totally inadequate, but our infrastructure nationwide — from roads to bridges to schools to city halls to public transportation to sewer and water systems — were ignored.
World domination became the new focus. Our military budget was draining the resources we needed to deal with our serious domestic needs. Our recent decision to fight two more wars, one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq, has aggravated the situation.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, as outraged as he was about state and federal government failures, was not without blame. He knew his city intimately. How could he order a mandated evacuation and forget 65 percent of his people, the poor and most vulnerable, who had no cars, no assets and nothing to fall back on?
New Orleans’ small enclave of the wealthy fared a lot better. Most of them left town. Nagin had buses at his disposal, but none were used. The poor were left to fend for themselves.
It is not clear how much Gov. Kathleen Blanco was to blame. There seems to be a dispute whether she asked for help with enough urgency and to the right authorities.
Major disasters require a federal response. Only the federal government has the means necessary such as the National Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA with their helicopters and high-water vehicles to help out in such a catastrophe.
Decades of domestic neglect finally had its deadly consequences. How could our government allow New Orleans, which is mostly below sea level, to only be protected from a Category 3 hurricane while hurricanes were growing in strength and frequency for years? It was only a matter of time before a Category 4 or 5 would head right for New Orleans.
The hurricane itself created a lot of damage, but it was the breaking of the levees that dealt New Orleans the fatal blow. It was not a natural disaster but a manmade disaster as desperate citizens sat on rooftops begging to be rescued.
In October 2001 an article in Scientific American warned that a major hurricane would drown New Orleans under as much as 20 feet of water. Extensive evacuation would be difficult because the surging water would cut off the few escape routes. New Orleans, they predicted, was a disaster waiting to happen. The scientific community has long resented President Bush’s habit of ignoring or distorting scientific reports to fit his agenda. Hurricane Katrina has shown that it is crucial to protect wetlands that absorb the effect of rising ocean tides. When New Orleans was built in the 1700s the city had about 150 miles of protective wetlands. Today there are less than 30 miles of wetlands left.
As the administration’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq depleted the federal treasury, Bush cut the money budgeted for levee repair and maintenance from $38 billion to $10 billion. In addition the two wars removed about one-third of the Louisiana National Guard whose prime mission has always been to be on stand-by when a sudden disaster strikes.
FEMA became part of Homeland Security whose main purpose was to deal with terrorist attacks. FEMA lost its cabinet-level status and its budget, which included all federal emergencies; it has been cut for the last three years while the war in Iraq swallowed up billions. It left FEMA dysfunctional.
Communication among emergency personnel broke down as soon as Katrina hit, making coordination of the rescue effort impossible. It revealed the federal government’s inability to deal with major emergencies.
The fact that hurricanes are becoming more frequent and more deadly has an increasing number of scientists wondering whether global warming is at least partly to blame. The surface temperature of the oceans has been rising worldwide and it is the warm water vapors that fuel tropical storms.
The Kyoto Treaty was an international agreement to decrease the emission of carbon dioxide and several other greenhouse gases; the treaty was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, and went into effect in February 2005. Member countries must reduce their collective emissions of greenhouse gases by 5 percent from the year 1990.
The United States makes up about 4 percent of the world’s population, but produces 22 percent of the greenhouse gases. President Bush questioned the scientific data and chose not to sign the treaty.
Cuba offered the help of 1,500 doctors to the US, but there was no response. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela offered cheap oil to areas where it is most needed, but he too got no response. If there ever was an example of false pride at the expense of others, this is it!
Our domestic neglect is strongly linked to our aggressive foreign policy. Hopefully the New Orleans tragedy will help us reorder our priorities. The American people and their needs must come first before America resembles more and more a Third World nation.
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