How New Orleans
was Lost
By Paul Craig
Roberts
02 September, 2005
Counterpunch
Chalk up the city of New Orleans as a
cost of Bush's Iraq war.
There were not enough
helicopters to repair the breeched levees and rescue people trapped
by rising water. Nor are there enough Louisiana National Guards available
to help with rescue efforts and to patrol against looting.
The situation is
the same in Mississippi.
The National Guard
and helicopters are off on a fools mission in Iraq.
The National Guard
is in Iraq because fanatical neoconsevatives in the Bush administration
were determined to invade the Middle East and because the incompetent
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld refused to listen to the generals, who
told him there were not enough regular troops available to do the job.
After the invasion,
the arrogant Rumsfeld found out that the generals were right. The National
Guard was called up to fill in the gaping gaps.
Now the Guardsmen,
trapped in the Iraqi quagmire, are watching on TV the families they
left behind trapped by rising waters and wondering if the floating bodies
are family members. None know where their dislocated families are, but,
shades of Fallujah, they do see their destroyed homes.
The mayor of New
Orleans was counting on helicopters to put in place massive sandbags
to repair the levee. However, someone called the few helicopters away
to rescue people from rooftops. The rising water overwhelmed the massive
pumping stations, and New Orleans disappeared under deep water.
What a terrible
casualty of the Iraqi war--one of our oldest and most beautiful cities,
a famous city, a historic city.
Distracted by its
phony war on terrorism, the US government had made no preparations in
the event Hurricane Katarina brought catastrophe to New Orleans. No
contingency plan existed. Only now after the disaster are FEMA and the
Corp of Engineers trying to assemble the material and equipment to save
New Orleans from the fate of Atlantis.
Even worse, articles
in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and public statements by emergency
management chiefs in New Orleans make it clear that the Bush administration
slashed the funding for the Corp of Engineers' projects to strengthen
and raise the New Orleans levees and diverted the money to the Iraq
war.
Walter Maestri,
emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, told the New Orleans
Times-Picayune (June 8, 2004): "It appears that the money has been
moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the
war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is
happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything
we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
Why can't the US
government focus on America's needs and leave other countries alone?
Why are American troops in Iraq instead of protecting our own borders
from a mass invasion by illegal immigrants? Why are American helicopters
blowing up Iraqi homes instead of saving American homes in New Orleans?
How can the Bush
administration be so incompetent as to expose Americans at home to dire
risks by exhausting American resources in foolish foreign adventures?
What kind of "homeland security" is this?
All Bush has achieved
by invading Iraq is to kill and wound thousands of people while destroying
America's reputation. The only beneficiaries are oil companies capitalizing
on a good excuse to jack up the price of gasoline and Osama bin Laden's
recruitment.
What we have is
a Republican war for oil company profits while New Orleans sinks beneath
the waters.
* * *
On the day Katrina
devastated New Orleans, America lost its most optimistic pundit, Jude
Wanniski, who died of a heart attack at age 69. Jude often misplaced
his optimism, but he was never without it. Jude never gave up on anyone
and would invest his persuasive talents on everyone who would listen
and even on those who wouldn't. Jude was not an economist, but he understood
long before most economists that fiscal policy changed incentives and
affected aggregate supply in contrast to the Keynesian emphasis on aggregate
demand. Jude rose to fame as the publicist for supply-side economics.
As a journalist, he was a natural. Robert Bartley, the Wall St. Journal
editorial page editor, once told me that Jude had the best nose for
news of any journalist he had ever known. Those he favored with his
missives will miss his insights.
Paul Craig Roberts
has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous
scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at
the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley,
and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
He can be reached at: [email protected]