HURRICANE KATRINA: Troubled waters
President George W. Bush thinks he's found just the right person to run the investigation into what went wrong with the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina - himself.
With all due respect, that's like appointing Donald Rumsfeld to investigate what went wrong with the Iraq War or Bill Clinton to investigate the Whitewater scandal. There's a certain degree of independence that could be lacking.
It's a fine enough read, though maybe not worth a whole diary page - it is, after all, just another editorial from a generally leftist paper from a basically Democratic city. But having grown up in St. Louis, I took away certian impressions of the city that the Post-Dispatch has been reliable about reaffirming ... until I read that editorial.
I'll explain with a little anecdote after the bump ...
So I did my fair share of public demonstrations while a teenager in St. Louis. For whatever reason, a lot of Nigerians landed in the city after fleeing the Shell-dominated Ogoni region. It's oil rich and heavily exploited, but that's besides the point. The result was a boycott campaign against Shell Oil that took us to their doorsteps all around town. We hit gas stations in downtown St. Louis, the hoity-toity sububurbs, and the "middle-class" expanses of urban sprawl that seem to be steadily eating up the state.
The reactions we got from the people were consistent to the very person (if they reacted at all, that is).
From downtown (mostly African-American, by the way), we'd get a whole lot of "right on, right on," "fight the power," and "we're with you!" From the hoity-toities (do I need to say it, European-American), we suffered an ear-full of "get a job," "liberal hippies," and (the old standard) "communists!"
Now, what about the vast expanses? The great unwashed masses? The shopping mall walkin', lawn mowin', TV watchin' suburbanites? The dense population centers of the State?
...
Nothing.
And I mean that, not a thing. They'd ask us who we were, they'd take a flyer, they'd read it, they might give out a "huh," and then they'd be on their merry way.
I decided after soaking all that in that we're called the "Show Me State" not because we're skeptical or cynical (or whatever earned us that motto in the first place) but because most of us are far too disinterested on a very basic level to investigate anything ourselves.
We don't make trouble. We don't turn over stones. We don't ask questions. Maybe that's how we got through the Civil War with an asterix next to our State when they sized up North versus South. We weren't quite either. (Yeah, I know there's more substantive reasons for our sort of half-status, but I'm going on a meta level here, cool?)
So when the Post-Dispatch finds the cajones to say:
This, after all, is a president whose advisers need a map when it comes to disasters. On Sept. 11, 2001, when disaster hit New York and Washington, they first sent the president to Louisiana. When a disaster hit Louisiana last week, they sent him to California. This, after all, is the same Congress that just passed a $286 billion transportation bill larded with pork barrel public works projects like bridges to Nowhere, Alaska, but wouldn't upgrade the New Orleans levee system.
This is the same administration, backed by the same Congress, that has poured $200 billion into Iraq in the last 30 months, but couldn't get troops, helicopters and equipment to New Orleans. A brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, which boasts that it can deploy anywhere in the world in 18 hours, took five days to get to New Orleans. The 256th Brigade Combat Team of the Louisiana National Guard would have been closer, but it's in Iraq.
This is the same administration, and the same Congress, that created the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Some 54,000 people in 22 agencies and bureaus were rolled into one disjointed new department with a $5.6 billion annual budget and leadership that thought that taking off our shoes at airports and color-coding threat levels would make America feel safer.
... well, something's happened. At least, I hope something's happened ... maybe I'm being too optimistic.
For all that can tell, the Post-Dispatch has never been a big cheerleader for the Administration - at least no more than the status quo, whatever that tells you. However, I have seldom seem it this uppity.
My wife witnessed St. Louis for the first time when she moved out to be with me a few years back. Within a few weeks, it dawned on her that people aren't REALLY interested in how you're doing when they ask you, "How do you do?" And they maybe don't REALLY appreciate it when they say, ad nauseum, "I'd appreciate it." And, most importantly, when your boss asks if you'd "like" to do something, he REALLY doesn't care if you'd like to do it or not. It's a city with a lot of niceties and a pension for not stirring up trouble.
When the Post-Dispatch picks a fight ... well, it makes me think that something's happened.
