Posted on 09/11/2005 4:53:58 AM PDT by billorites
FOUR YEARS after terrorists took down the Twin Towers, smashed a hole in the Pentagon and met their match in an airliner over the fields of Pennsylvania, our government has failed to protect us from another disaster that was forseen by the experts. What can be done to break this pattern?
The Bush administration’s domestic response to 9/11 — to consolidate federal emergency avoidance and preparedness services into a giant bureaucracy staffed with politically loyal but not necessarily expert hands — has proven a dismal failure. The administration that had preached smaller, more efficient government did not take its own rhetoric seriously. And now we have an even larger and less nimble bureaucracy to fix.
Though the Bush administration shares some blame for the terrible response to Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans still would have flooded under the administration of a President Gore or Kerry, and residents still would have died waiting for the state’s flawed rescue plan to be implemented. The failure goes much deeper than the patronage jobs at FEMA and the refusal to give the Army Corps of Engineers every dime requested.
The root of the problem is that the political game in America remains geared toward bread and circuses. Politicians get elected and re-elected by handing out favors, frills and government entitlements, not by building flood walls and capturing terrorists few Americans have ever heard of. (See James Pinkerton’s column on the opposite page for more on this.)
Despite constant warning signs, federal officials in several administrations ignored the growing threat from militant Islam in general and al-Qaida in particular. Similarly, neither the state of Louisiana nor the Army Corps of Engineers had any real plan to shield New Orleans from a Category 5 Hurricane until the late 1990s, even though experts knew of the city’s vulnerability since at least the 1960s.
Even if the Bush administration had fully funded the Army’s flood protection plan for New Orleans, which it should have, the work would not have been completed for decades. Furthermore, the administration and Congress easily could have funded both the War on Terror and the levee project. They just had to cut the pork. But the pork was their real priority, as it has been for political leaders of both parties for decades.
As Congress and multiple administrations showered federal funds on agribusinesses, midnight basketball, local arts centers, bridges to nowhere and suburban bike paths, Louisiana politicians built sports stadiums, convention centers and unnecessary canals. All the while, radical Islam spread and the flood walls and levees of New Orleans remained insufficiently protective.
What most politicians in Washington and throughout the country still have not perceived is that government cannot function as needed while the bulk of its resources and attention are devoted to the next election.
Until it is in politicians’ best interests to see that the people are well protected, they won’t. Americans can change this only if they stop demanding handouts from their government and start demanding core services. Until the voters insist that politicians fulfill their essential duty to provide for public safety and national security, we will never have government that focuses more on its primary responsibilities than on frills designed to win votes.
Great editorial!
A lot of things are just business as usual no matter who is in charge. The highway bill could be better described as highway robbery.
Many conservatives just don't understand that the Union Leader...a once great conservative (read honest) newspaper...has degenerated and now is not much better than the NYT.
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