| Oops. Did I say retribution?
I must have confused this August’s natural disaster
with the man-made one that occurred four Septembers
ago, when the President first emerged from reticence.
This past Thursdays’ speech was not, however,
a mere reaching out to the thousands of New Orleansians
displaced by the storm. It was inherently political.
Don’t get me wrong. I applaud Mr. Bush for
making the speech. I applaud the fact that he has
finally taken some responsibility for something. If
he passed the buck on the Osama Bin Laden memo and
Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Mission Accomplished
debacle and Social Security and the Kyoto Convention
and Tom DeLay and every other inane event that has
happened under his watch, at least he had the temerity
to acknowledge that the response to Katrina had been
botched.
That said, listening to empty promises of rebuilding
New Orleans does not provide practical relief. The
White House’s generators that were flown in
to Jackson Square to provide light for the President’s
speech would have been better served in the lower
(and poorer) districts of New Orleans. The television
time devoted to Mr. Bush’s New Deal-esque pontification
would have been better served highlighting the vast
economic discrepancies of a city that thousands of
people can no longer call home. What’s worse,
the harkening of terrorist acts like September 11
only serves to discredit the President further. We
were there to hear about the flood, about FEMA, about
government negligence, about what will be different
next time. Instead, we were treated to the apocalyptic
vision of a world of “terror threats and weapons
of mass destruction” where “the danger
to our citizens reaches much wider than a fault line
or a flood plain.”
Hurricane Katrina and September 11 are not, it should
be remembered, interchangeable events. In a time when
the President’s approval ratings have dropped
dramatically, perhaps it is he who should recognize
that. Because four years ago, Mr. Bush surfed the
waves of tragedy. He would make us safer, he assured
us. And many of us believed him. But in the wake of
Katrina, it is now clear that our President cannot
protect us from everything. Worse, his own personal
reaction to the hurricane that essentially wiped out
one of the nation’s largest cities was appalling.
He was on vacation and when he finally made it to
the Pelican State, the city had already suffered its
greatest losses. While it would be unfair to blame
the President for the hurricane, or even to assume
that he would have been capable of being in the eye
of the storm and available to deal with tragedy as
it was unfolding, it is not such a leap of logic to
say that he does bear some responsibility here. Two
of the poorest states in the country were hit. Environmental
trends indicate that storms like Katrina will only
become more prevalent over time. And poverty and the
environment are two issues that Mr. Bush has abjectly
ignored.
The President wants us to trust him and his promises,
wants us to believe that his incomparable leadership
in 2001 can be matched in 2005. But in 2001, we were
dealing with a city entirely capable of recovery.
New York is a wealthy place, and New Yorkers had the
resources to start over. Did security change? Sure.
Did our view of the world? Unquestionably. But on
the morning of September 12, New Yorkers went to work
and school and the gym and the grocery store and continued
to live as they had before, because living as they
had before was an option. In New Orleans, there is
no such possibility.
Thankfully, the President sounded more like a Democrat
than a Republican on Thursday, promising virtually
unlimited funds to the people of New Orleans, pledging
revival. But what he has not addressed—and what
one suspects he never will address—are the ways
we can make our country better, so that the disparity
we see in New Orleans does not continue to exist.
Katrina was a bad storm, made worse by bad economics.
In the future, we can expect more storms of this velocity
and, if we continue to ignore the divide between rich
and poor, we can also expect more tragic results.
If Mr. Bush believes that it is possible to “come
through the dirge,” it is his responsibility—yes,
responsibility—to deal with the uncomfortable
issues of class and race. Hurricane Katrina does not
require, as September 11 did, a patriot. It requires
a responsible President, which, for some time now,
the country has been notably without.
Read Hannah Selinger each week on Raw Story.
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