An open letter to President Jimmy Carter
As the news trickles in the urgency of the situation on the Gulf coast and especially in New Orleans grows greater. The few police and national guard in the area are overwhelmed, with significant reinforcements still days away. The evacuation efforts are sorely inadequate, and the preparations for the refugees are almost nil. The media is focusing on trivial matters and ignores the true seriousness of the situation. Desperation and lawlessness are reaching critical heights. Nobody seems to have taken charge of the situation. The system has failed, and the situation is getting worse.
Please use your clout to press the issue.
I am no fan of George Bush, but never in my wildest dreams could I have expected a president to not only stay on vacation and do nothing as such a dangerous storm bore down on such a populated and economically important area, but to also do so little in the aftermath. Even sincere compassion is lacking in his speeches. His near abdication of responsibility and the confusion within the emergency response screams for someone take control over this crisis.
Somebody needs to call urgently and publicly on the military to go en masse to restore order and bring food and water to those trapped in the ravaged areas, by truck, boat. At this point airdrops of food and water are entirely justified. A medical disaster may already be inevitable. Desperation, hunger, and thirst have already begun tearing the city apart.
Somebody needs to call urgently and publicly for massively expanded transportation and refugee centers across the region. The bus convoy is far too slow and the Astrodome is inadequate for the tak. In particular, there is a dire need of a faster way to get people from the Superdome to the roads, and thousands of buses are urgently needed to transport people out of the region. A call to postpone the beginning of school across the region so that schools and their busses may be used for the evacuation is overdue. Again, more tall trucks are desperately needed to move people through the floodwaters to outbound routes.
Somebody needs to call urgently for permanent jobs and housing to be found or made immediately for the hundreds of thousands of people who evacuated by car before hand and now have nowhere to return to. As their money starts to run out they will no longer be able to afford hotels and will swell the ranks of refugees seeking shelter to levels that make the current Superdome evacuees look puny. You are better positioned to address this situation than anyone, thanks to your extensive experience with Habitat for Humanity (which I have volunteered with) and the Carter Center.
Somebody needs to state the hard facts about the delicacy of our infrastructure and the erosion of our emergency preparedness, and spearhead an initiative to make sure something like this never happens again. When the Big One hits California, it may make Katrina look trivial. You took US foreign oil dependance seriously and began work on energy programs to make the US self-sufficient, although your successors gutted the programs. I think history has proved you right.
I realize it is untoward for a former president to upstage or publicly criticize a sitting one. But this situation has grown too dire to sit by and watch.
You have a well-deserved reputation as one of the most compassionate and thoughtful people to work out of the Oval Office. We need someone like you now.