Scattered among the wrecked homes and lives in Hurricane Katrina’s wake is an additional casualty: Faith in the administration of the federal government. We are only one among many voices from both political parties to recognize the incompetence and coldness in the Bush Administration’s response to the greatest disaster of the last 50 years.
Simply put, this administration has been appallingly lax in their ignorance of the victims of this hurricane, many of them poor and black. With the President and his senior staff on vacation, it took far too long to stir the powers of the executive branch to action on New Orleans-and those powers were the only way for the country to help save that city.
One doesn’t need to be a politician to realize Bush should have immediately cancelled his vacation and returned to Washington-or, God forbid, actually visited the states, instead of doing a cursory flyover.
Much has been made of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s failure to efficiently coordinate the disaster response. FEMA’s refusal to accept even a minimum of help offered by cities, states, churches and private citizens showcased the organization’s failure to react properly to Katrina.
While it is often necessary in disaster management scenarios to restrict access for safety and security reasons, the plain fact is that FEMA failed to execute the proper response in a timely manner, and lives were lost as a direct result of their incompetence.
The coordination was so poor that the Mayor of New Orleans used armed guards to protect crucial infrastructure from FEMA, which led to the organization being lambasted by elected officials of every stripe.
The legacy of Hurricane Katrina reaches far beyond the loss of thousands of lives and a great American city. Consider the fact that the administration’s first priority seems to have been a massive media pushback of President Bush’s tactless remarks during his visit to hurricane-stricken areas. He even said that no one could have forseen that the levees would break when the Army Corps of Engineering had already predicted it.
The hurricane shows that we have learned nothing about preparedness since 9/11 and that we remain incredibly vulnerable to terrorist attack or future natural disasters. The legacy of Katrina should be utter disgust with a government that refuses to fulfill its most basic duty: Protecting the common welfare of its threatened citizens when they cannot protect themselves. We should remember these lessons when we judge this administration and its friends in the future.
