Stupidity: Part 2

Rubble in the streets, corpses casually strewn about, armed looters taking whatever they need or want. That was Baghdad in 2003. Just add water, and you have New Orleans today.\nThe devastation in New Orleans following the breaking of the levees had a horrible human cost. The death toll has not been tallied, but it is certainly in the thousands. Hundreds of thousands more are marked by injury, mental anguish, fear and loss. They are American refugees, fleeing an American disaster and now living in American refugee camps.\nBack in 2003, when Baghdad was being looted, the soldiers looked the other way, but they protected the oil ministry and oil drilling equipment. They did not lift a finger to prevent the stealing of cultural artifacts, radios, grenades or assault weapons. When asked about their lack of preparation in the face of looting, the Bush administration responded with a lackadaisical, "Stuff happens." \nThe Bush administration's response to looting in New Orleans, though painfully sluggish, is not as understanding this time around. Its utter lack of preparation for what happened is very similar to Iraq. Before the Iraq war, many experts publicly predicted the looting; Bush said afterwards that nobody could have predicted it. Last year, the Army Corps of Engineers ran a drill where it predicted exactly what happened in New Orleans last week would happen if the levees were not shored up; Bush said after Katrina, nobody could have predicted the situation. \nIn Baghdad, war planners assumed that we would be greeted with flowers and that the invasion would pay for itself. They did not think -- and were indeed insulted -- by the suggestion that the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq would cost the American people more than pocket change. When they were wrong, they tapped any source of revenue they could, save wealthy Americans who had just received tax cuts. One of those sources was money that had previously been earmarked for shoring up the levees in New Orleans.\nIn Baghdad, it was poor Arabs who paid the price for Bush's lack of planning. They were abandoned in a ruined city, without power or much water, and surrounded by armed thieves. In New Orleans, it was primarily poor blacks who paid the price. They were abandoned in a drowning city, surrounded by armed thieves (some of whom were allegedly cops), and left without food, water and electricity.\nDavid Brooks has called the New Orleans flood our "anti-9/11." By that, he means that this catastrophe and our government's incompetent response will destroy public confidence in the exact opposite way that Sept. 11 built it up. During Katrina, the government has seemed indifferent. The government seemed indifferent to the suffering of fellow Americans. \nThe flood has nakedly exposed huge fault lines in American society. Money meant to help the poor and, yes, mostly blacks, went instead to the rich and mostly whites, or to a war that had nothing to do with either of them. This is a national shame. I cannot think of it without growing angry. I'm sure I'm not the only one.