Libercontrarian

Crushed between the wheels of capitalism and big government.

Eric's Interesting Questions About Hurricane Katrina's Aftermath

Eric asked, in his blog:

1. "Do you think Posse Comitatus, which prevents the President and Federal government from executing/enforcing the law using the military, should have just been suspended? If so, why?

My response:  I had no idea that the military could be utilized for aid w/o violating PC. If I had, I would have been inclined to place them at the disposal of FEMA - I know that you are suspicious of said empowerment, but it can clearly be a time-limited deal.

2. Do you think that the complete disintegration of the New Orleans PD had anything to do with the outcome in NO?

My response:  While none of the other commenters agreed with you about the disinitgration of the NOPD, I would heartily agree - this failure to keep order definitely manifested itself in violence and chaos. Police simply aren't prepared for long-term engagement wherein they don't come at violent offenders with overwhelming force. Their doctrine always calls for "backup," where none would arrive in this case. This would reduce their ability to react to the fluid type of street combat that typifies urban warfare, and would be a huge contributing factor to the failure of that organization under such pressures.

3. What should the governor and mayor done differently? How well does Blanco and Nagin's actions compare with the state and local actions and response in Mississippi and Alabama, where entire towns were leveled completely, not just flooded?

My response:  The Mayor and The Governor of NO and Louisiana are almost wholly to blame for their complete and utter unpreparedness for this event, from public education/polling of opinions about evacuation to failures to improve flood control. They should be run out of office on a rail. President Bush should not be the recipient of much attention, except that his overwatch of DHS/FEMA shows it to be a desperately underprepared and poorly organized farce.

4. Why do you think that race is a factor? How is this different from the responses to Ivan, Andrew or last year's hurricanes, all of which impacted far more ethnic minorities than whites? You do realize that all of those disasters occurred under a Bush Presidency as well? So why the different reaction to this one? If he, and other white politicians, just doesn't care because these people are black, why didn't they do the same thing last year? Or in 1992? Or 1989?"

My response:  Much like "Rhymes With Right" (an earlier commenter) says, the reason why the media outlets seem to only show black victims is because the NO neighborhoods struck are comprised primarily of African-Americans. Many are impovrished - they are people who are on public assistance and didn't posses or felt compelled to create the means to escape the city under threat.

I put forward, under the obvious threat of being called "racist," that the fact that these folks elected to stay in the face of the worst storm likely to hit the city in recorded history, reflects a fatalism in that community that oddly did not affect other African-American communities struck by hurricanes in recent history. I suspect that this is more of a discriptor of a mindset unique to ALL people who live in this city - NO is unlike any place in the world, and having visited there, I can understand why people would have this attitude who live there, although it is no small comfort to them in the aftermath of such a storm.

It should be noted that it's not a position I support, but I do understand it. I can also understand why people suffering like this in the aftermath are once again looking to government to pull them out of the breach, although I can't rationalize how one can continually submit himself to depridations from both Nature and Big Government without looking for escape.

posted by: underwhelmed at September 05, 2005 14:02 | link | comments (2) |

Comments:

#1  05 September 2005 - 19:09

 

The role of the federal government, according to Hamilton and Madison, is to take charge when the state and local governments are unprepared to handle such a situation. Therefore, the federal government should have realized much sooner that federal aid was necessary.

krazykounselor

#2  06 September 2005 - 08:05

 

Nick,

1. I'm not suspicious of using federal troops for time limited disaster relief at all. Handing out food and water, evacuating the sick and injured, clearings paths for trucks and buses, doing emergency engineering work? Absolutely. However, the law enforcement issues, which clearly had to be dealt with first, need to be the state national guard, unless you are willing to declare martial law. Honestly, I would not have had a problem with martial law, for a very limited duration and applied only to areas where the local law enforcement clearly was unable to function. I told my wife on day two that Congress was going to have to declare martial law and suspend habeas corpus.

2. Although a city PD is not set up for long term urban fighting, they allowed the situation to deteriorate before the real chaos began. I believe that if the NOPD had not melted away on day one and two, that the disaster would have been much smaller in scope. I hold Nagin and the chief of the police wholly responsible for that.

3. Absolutley agreed. They had nearly 500 buses of different types in the city. They could have evacuated the folks without vehicles on Saturday and Sunday. This, by itself, is clearly the fault of local authorities. Yes, DHS is a total farce, and a super-bureaucracy that cannot accomplish anything. But they aren't able to effectively do anything until after the disaster.

4. I will never understand being willing to depend on the government for my life and my family's life.

Krazy Kounselor, your logic is flawed. Even if the feds realized earlier, they couldn't get troops, supplies, etc. to the city any faster than they did. To do so would have required being able to foresee the future. If you're a psychic, maybe you should go work for FEMA and help them out with that.

Eric

Anonymous

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