Hurricane Katrina has brutally exposed the fissures forming beneath this Administration. As the Bush team races to spin the outcome, the American public has been presented with a striking set of themes.
Main article below the jump...
Homeland (In)Security: A Report Card
"If Hurricane Katrina represented a real-life rehearsal of sorts, the response suggested to many that the nation is not ready to handle a terrorist attack of similar dimensions... 'it obviously raises very serious, troubling
questions about whether the government would be prepared if this were a terrorist attack. It's a devastating indictment of this department's performance four years after 9/11...' [The Deparment of Homeland Security] emphasized terrorism at the expense of other threats, said several current and former senior department officials and experts who have closely monitored its creation, cutting funding for natural disaster programs and downgrading the responsibilities and capabilities of the previously well-regarded FEMA."
Two Americas: Glaring Race and Class Divides
"People around the world cannot believe what they're seeing... From Argentina to Zimbabwe, front-page photos of the dead and desperate in New Orleans, almost all of them poor and black, have sickened them and shaken assumptions about American might. How can this be happening, they ask, in a nation whose wealth and power seem almost supernatural in so many struggling corners of the world? ... 'Rarely has such lurid evidence of the darker side of the American dream been so brutally exposed.'"
A Fragile Oil-Hungry Economy
"'There isn't the global spare capacity out there to replace this loss if it continues for a prolonged period,' says Bart Melek, a senior economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns in Toronto. `Already the market is tight as a drum, and if anything else happens, say instability in the Middle East, I wouldn't preclude $100 oil at all.'"
Priorities: Where does Iraq fit in?
"The Iraq war has cost the federal government more than $200 billion thus far, resulting in cutbacks in a number of emergency preparedness projects which appear to have lessened the ability of Louisiana authorities to cope with the hurricane... at least 35% of the Louisiana National Guard, long serving as the front line in hurricane relief efforts, have been unable to respond to the crisis because they are far away in Iraq. Perhaps even more significant has been the absence of equipment critical for emergency responses..."
Spin Machine: Please Ignore the Man Behind the Curtain
Americans watched for days as a naked Administration openly contradicted the facts being reported from the ground: "Diverging views of a crumbling New Orleans emerged Thursday, with statements by some federal officials in contradiction with grittier, more desperate views from the streets". Senator Landrieu and others observed what appeared to be staged photo-ops: "Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment."
A Bursting Point?
Even conservatives sense an impending political storm: "Last week's national humiliation comes at the end of a string of confidence-shaking institutional failures that have cumulatively changed the nation's psyche... In case after case there has been a failure of administration, of sheer [in]competence... Katrina means that the political culture, already sour and bloody-minded in many quarters, will shift. There will be a reaction. There will be more impatience for something new... We're not really at a tipping point as much as a bursting point. People are mad as hell, unwilling to take it anymore."