I know a lot about NO. I had my first good wine at Broussards, my first oyster po' boy down the street. My uncle lived just across the river, my Mother was from there.
The point about Berlin and Dresden is that they are not now the same cities that they were, nor will they ever be. Those cities are gone and yes they have been rebuilt, but they are inland, NO is not. Surely you can see the problems that lead to this Charlie Foxtrot in the first place? What would for God's sake be the point in rebuilding what should have remained swamp and wetlands? Water will seek it's own level, and nothing you can build can ever defeat the power of nature unleashed. Common sense needs to trump the emotional response here, and quick.
The point being is this. NO one is saying rebuild NOLA like it was. We realize tough calls have to be made. But the situation is not as dire as people think. Again there are solutions
You're right about alot of things. And I'm not going to assume the position of defending everything New Orleans ever was and is.
But it's still there. Alot of neighborhoods aren't. Maybe some of them shouldn't get rebuilt. But you're not going to tear down the office buildings in the CBD, or the uptown mansions, or Tulane University, and you need a port somewhere and you need to service the gulf oil and fishing industries and that's always gonna be right up close to the water and it's in a hurricane zone and you can't change that.
So I'm finding a real shortage of good ideas about fixing and helping and I'm fresh out myself, but I know that letting New Orleans go back to the swamp is not a viable one.
So we're really talking, whether we know it or not, about how much money and where does it come from.