Posted on 09/03/2005 6:54:45 AM PDT by RKV
The disaster of New Orleans, unspooling minute by minute on our TV screens, has been wrenching - in one particular way even more gut-twisting than Sept. 11.
You could watch the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and feel horrified at the sheer violence and destruction of it; angry at the murderous evil of Mohammed Atta and the other hijackers; heartbroken at the awful suffering and loss. But there wasn't any cause to feel embarrassed and ashamed.
Those are the emotions evoked by sights of the massive lawlessness in New Orleans in the days after the storm and the inability of anyone to stop it. Katrina unleashed a catastrophe of nearly unimaginable proportions, confronting government at all levels with enormous challenges. That the reaction to the hurricane initially seemed uneven and slow is understandable, but even allowing for the hellish circumstances, the breakdown in civil order has been stunning.
Without order, which government exists to protect, nothing else is possible. Not even rescue operations, as New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has learned. On Wednesday night, as the city descended into an urban dystopia straight out of the 1981 film ''Escape From New York,'' he had to command nearly all the city's 1,500 police officers to focus on re-establishing law and order instead of saving endangered people.
Everyone understands desperate people getting food or water by any means possible. Plundering tennis shoes and TVs, as a small thuggish minority has done, is another matter. And the problem is that there is no such thing as a little chaos. Once a climate of disorder is set, it has a logic of its own. First, it was stealing tennis shoes, then it was taking potshots at a helicopter arriving to evacuate people from the Superdome. Goons stole a bus from a nursing home and threatened its residents. Rescue workers report that rocks and bottles have been thrown at them and shots fired their way.
Unfortunately, the urban revival that had swept much of the country mostly left New Orleans behind. The atmosphere of lawfulness that stood New York City in good stead after 9/11 and during the 2003 blackout - although those were much less far-reaching disasters was never established. The city never had a Rudy Giuliani. Even as murder rates continued to decline in other cities in recent years, the murder rate in New Orleans crept up. The police were plagued by allegations of corruption and brutality, and, according to The Associated Press, only had ''3.14 officers per 1,000 residents - less than half the rate in Washington, D.C.''
Law enforcement, of course, is primarily a state and local responsibility, but in the age of the 24-hour news cycle, people look to the federal government and the president to solve any problem on their TV screens. Already the question is being asked if the feds could have jumped in sooner (the National Guard is now arriving in force). If President Bush pays a political price for the images of lawlessness that have played out in New Orleans, it will be the second time looting has hurt his cause.
The other, of course, was in Baghdad in 2003. It is a matter of consensus now that the rip-the-place-apart looting in the initial days after the fall of Saddam Hussein set the occupation off on the wrong foot. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explained the looting away at the time as the natural exuberance of a newly liberated people. One wonders: Has anyone in the administration read their Hobbes? Or does he not make the ''compassionate conservative'' reading list?
New Orleans has provided a corrosive lesson about government. At all levels, government is overbearing and nagging, paying for people's prescription drugs and telling us whether we can smoke in restaurants or not. But when it comes to its most elemental task of maintaining order and protecting property, it might not be up to the task when it is needed most.
Keep that in mind and buy a gun, just in case.
I believe it's also utterly false.
Makes all those apocalyptical (ahern johnstone) books I read in the 80's sound like the works of prophets.
Hey, I wasn't anywhere near NO so don't include me.
I expect the lawlessness will crank up the gun control crowd. It is imperative to get the message out loud and clear....the bad guys will get the guns anytime. In a situation such as this, if the good guys have no way to protect life & property, the good guys are doomed.
Maybe it's that I've had 65 years worth of diverse experiences -- vs. the 20 somethings who have never been in this situation -- but IF MY family's survival depended on my ability to get necessary water, food and other items during a period when basic supply infrastructure systems have totally collapsed, I'd be out there getting what I needed to keep them fed and well ANY way -- short of a capital crime (IF POSSIBLE!) -- I could.
And, despite all the testosterone induced BS being flung around by these 20 somethings with limited life experiences and no kids to care for, SO WOULD THEY!!
What I would do that most of the current looters are probably NOT doing is leave a trail and record so I could make recompense to the establishment from which I obtained those items.
Having said that, these criminals seen carting away NON-ESSENTIAL ITEMS need to be prosecuted if they can be identified once order is restored.
Katrina proves that we are ALL -- and I DO mean A L L -- one short step away from "Lord of The Flies."
Which explains why I have significant stocks of freeze-dried, nitrogen packed foodstuffs close at hand.
And the means -- and will -- to defend me and mine.
Actually in Fla. there were some problems in South Dade after Andrew. Many of the trouble makers seemingly "disappeared" after the storm, rumors as to what happened to them vary.
Or of providing safety for it's citizens both BEFORE and AFTER the storm. The citizens of New orleans should have been evcuated before the storm, forcibly if need be.
Yep, they are shipping them out by refrigerated truck to those of us who got our orders in early.
Neil Boortz had the best response I've read so far to Mr. Robinson:
Robinson is angry about the delayed response to the tragic situation in New Orleans. We all are, but Robinson goes too far. He calls America a "monstrous fraud." Even though I might be able to understand his anguish, his outrageous comments cannot go unanswered.
Robinson begins his screed with the totally unsupported charge that there are reports that black hurricane victims have turned to cannibalism to survive. I would like to take a moment to respond.
OK, Mr. Robinson, What's your source? Do you even have a credible source for your cannibalism charge? Maybe, Mr. Robinson, you begin your Huffington posting with that inflammatory line just to get attention. After all, if we were to challenge your assertion it would certainly expose us as racists, wouldn't it?
You say that you're angry at your country for doing nothing when it mattered. Nothing? Just what country, Mr. Robinson, were those helicopters and rescue swimmers from that I saw on Tuesday morning plucking victims – black victims – from rooftops? Did those helicopters make a supersonic flight across the Atlantic from the African continent to assist in the rescue effort?
For the past three nights my family, my wife and daughter, have been working Red Cross and Salvation Army telephone banks, Mr. Robinson. They were taking donations from Americans to help the victims of Katrina. My wife would have to beg volunteers to go home because there were only so many telephones, and there were more volunteers lined up outside that wanted to help. Did you see any of this, Mr. Robinson? I rather doubt it. You were too busy seething with hatred for America, Mr. Robinson, to have learned of this particular phone bank, and of the tens of thousands of like-minded Americans who were lining up across America looking for a way to help. Since you are so seething with race-based animosity, Mr. Robinson, let me share something else with you. Every single time I walked into that phone room; every single time I saw those volunteers on the phones on television; every single time, Mr. Robinson, the vast majority of those volunteers were white. This phone bank, Mr. Robinson, was deep in the heart of a majority-black city, and the bulk of the volunteers were white. These are the Americans who you said were "doing nothing when it mattered."
You wrote that thousands of blacks in New Orleans were dying like dogs, and that no one has come to help them. No one, Mr. Robinson? Nobody at all?
Pretty hideous country, isn't it Mr. Robinson. Millions of dollars collected in this one phone room in Atlanta in 60 hours ... and we're doing nothing at all. Now you have finally come to see America as a "monstrous fraud."
Let's talk a bit more about coming to help those in desperate straights, Mr. Robinson. Helicopters show up at New Orleans hospitals to evacuate patients, and they're fired on by black predators in the streets. People show up to help, and blacks try to murder them. They you have the outrageous audacity to claim that America is doing nothing, that nobody is coming to help.
Friday afternoon we heard that blacks showed up outside the BellSouth building in St. Bernard's Parish. Inside that building were BellSouth employees who had been trapped there by the water. Black employees, white employees, who wanted nothing more than to get out. Did the blacks you're so concerned about show up to help rescue the BellSouth workers? No .. they showed up to loot. They showed up to kill. They started firing on the BellSouth building, and on the law enforcement personnel who showed up to help. There is word that one police officer or national guardsman was killed, Mr. Robinson. Are you going to write that they were doing nothing when they met their death?
Would you care to address the rapes in the Super Dome and the New Orleans convention center, Mr. Robinson? Black predators roamed these places looking for rape victims. Petrified tourists were beaten
* Helicopters on rescue missions – fired on by blacks.
* Doctors and nurses in stranded hospitals moving patients to higher and higher floors, as black looters invade the floors below.
* A cry for help from a children's hospital on Tuesday night, as black looters try to break in from the streets.
* Police officers making rooftop rescue efforts, fired on by roving gangs of armed blacks.
Then along comes Randall Robinson to tell the world that blacks are having to eat corpses in New Orleans because no one has come to help them.
Tell you what, Mr. Robinson. I would like for you to give some heartfelt consideration to a request – a suggestion I would like to make. Ready? Please take this in the spirit in which it is offered. I, and I daresay many others, would like for you to sit down and shut the hell up. You're a fool, Mr. Robinson. A race pimp. A race warlord. Right not you are not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. You're words gave great comfort, I'm sure, to those who's response to this tragedy was to pillage and rape. After all, what more does a monstrous fraud deserve? Right, Mr. Robinson?
I think this whole situation is sad, because it washed away all the heroism that happenned after September 11th. While that situation was scary, I think that everyone looked on in pride at the way that people responded as heroes and how the nation rose up again. You cannot say that here. The incidents of heroism I've seen in this tragedy have been few and far between. And the rapes and shooting at planes has been disgraceful. It's always depressing (and scary) when you find out that certain segments of the population hate America so much that they're willing to do that.
I love the "Escape From New York" reference!
Don't believe everything you read, eh?
Excellent post!
As noted in other media, the cops are in on the looting. Sad.
I don't think government can maintain order absent collective decency among the population.
In the case of New Orleans, my guess is, there was a minority of people, even among the "poor" that created lawlessness and chaos. There was an absense of "collective" decency. Yet already I have heard too many spokespersons excusing it as natural under the circumstances.
Others have blamed Bush for it. I've searched high and low and haven't yet seen Bush carrying a stolen TV set or pair of tennis shoes.
This disaster has created opportunities at many levels.
and when calling a Spade a Spade ( telling the truth like it is ) you are somehow in their minds, a racist.
Disasters are not restricted to bad places, but the difference is how people react to them. Some pull together, some go for themselves.
A world where people only think of themselves is the one, that when hit with disaster, will have thugs looting, raping, and killing another for a bottle of water.
Get it?
I have to agree with you. What is happening in NO is NOT a national disgrace. The people of NO have disgraced themselves. Plenty of other cities have suffered in this hurricane - Biloxi to name one. You don't read reports of looting from there do you?
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