I do not disagree but I wonder what the answer is? A first step, as in most things, is to see it like it is and tell it like it is. You have done that but I wonder what is next?
I lived through the '50s and early '60s in my formative years under the shadow of worldwide nuclear war, and things like civil defense and fallout shelters were the things talked about then. But then the naysayers came along with the (politically motivated) mantra that "you can't survive, much less win, a nuclear war, and if you try all you are is a warmonger who makes such a disaster more likely". IOW, sit back and be held hostage, and if the worst happens, take it like a man. So CD, as a realistic buffer against nuclear catastrophe, became non-functional.
With natural disasters, it also seems like the current system makes it a non-win situation, ripe for second-guessing and demagoguery by opportunistic pols. There's nothing new or surprising in that, but in real terms, where can we go from here?
I don't know. A sane policy needs a sane citizenry. We don't see that in NO. While I can understand looting for food and water (and that's perfectly sane in this context), what I can't understand is the roving gangs of pirates raping, mugging, shooting at rescue helicopters & cops, etc.
It makes no sense. Truthfully, stealing a plasma tv and taking it back to your shack (which is either going to be destroyed by flooding or condemned) doesn't make any sense in any case.
Seems that our plans have to take this into account more than I would have anticipated.
This isn't a blame game. It's a performance game. The city, state, and Feds didn't perform. Too many Freepers seem unwilling to cope with that.
Every bad thing that happened to me in my life had a blessing in it, even though the blessing was seldom clear when the bad stuff was going down. The blessing in Katrina is that we now know we aren't ready. We need to change things.
Like I said, a multi-city 911 type strike looks like a much better bet for the bad guys than it did two weeks ago. A bodyblow of that magnitude clearly would kick our arse and lay us out (not permanently, but for a short spell).
Not good. Not good at all. And let me amend my original statement: this situation reflects a cascading failure on the local, state, and federal government, AND the citizenry.