New Orleans
And Baghdad
By Bill Van Auken
04 September 2005
World
Socialist Web
As
US National Guard troopsjust returned from Iraqmoved into
New Orleans Friday with shoot-to-kill orders, and Blackhawk
helicopters flew over the city, the essential unity between the policies
pursued by Washington at home and abroad found stark expression.
Lt. Gen. Steven
Blum of the National Guard said half of the 7,000 National Guardsmen
arriving in Louisiana had shortly before been serving overseas and were
highly proficient in the use of lethal force.
Louisiana Governor
Kathleen Blanco declared, They have M-16s and they are locked
and loaded. These troops know how to shoot to kill... and I expect they
will.
The reaction of
the Bush administration to the catastrophe of its own making in the
invasion of Iraq and its response to the disaster unleashed by Hurricane
Katrina on the US Gulf Coast have both revealed gross incompetence and
a criminal contempt for human life. Both have led to soaring death tolls
and immense suffering.
There are direct
connections between the humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq and the one
that is unfolding in New Orleans. Barely a month ago, Lt. Colonel Pete
Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard complained to the media that
essential equipment the force had taken to Iraq last Octoberhumvees,
high-water vehicles, generators and refuelershad been left in
the country. He stressed that in the event of a serious natural disaster,
the lack of the equipment could pose problems in mounting a speedy rescue
and relief response.
The failure of the
levee and the flooding of 80 percent of New Orleans are linked to repeated
budget cuts carried out by the Bush administration since the war in
Iraq began.
In the 2004 budget,
the Army Corps of Engineers requested $11 million for a hurricane protection
project in the New Orleans area. It was allotted just half that amount,
$5.5 million. In the 2005 budget, the Corps requested $22.5 million,
and received one quarter of its request, $5.7 million. In the 2006 budget,
the Bush administration proposed an appropriation of just $2.9 million.
Where the money
meant to reinforce the levees and protect New Orleans went was no mystery
to local officials. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson
Parish, Louisiana, told the Times-Picayune in June 2004: It appears
that the money has been moved in the presidents budget to handle
homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose thats the
price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees cant be
finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this
is a security issue for us.
Meanwhile, FEMAthe
Federal Emergency Management Agencythe principal agency for dealing
with such disasters, has been systematically downgraded and all
but dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security, as Eric
Holdeman, the director of the Office of Emergency Management in King
County, Washington, wrote in the Washington Post this week. Instead,
disaster relief resources have been shifted to the so-called global
war on terrorism, the all-purpose pretext for US military aggression
abroad.
Vast funds expended
on the Iraq war and other acts of US militarism have been drained away
from social spending at home. With the upcoming approval of yet another
emergency spending bill for Iraq, Congress will have appropriated $250
billion for the war. Washington is spending on average $5.4 billion
a month on the war. Thus, the Pentagon will expend in less than two
months the equivalent of the entire relief package that the Bush administration
has requested for New Orleans and the devastated Gulf Coast.
The outrage of New
Orleans abandoned citizens, who shout we want help
and ask angrily why Washington has proven incapable of supplying the
most basic forms of organization or relief, strangely echoes protests
by the people of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.
With the US occupation
now halfway into its third year, three out of four Iraqi families report
irregular electricity. Cuts in water supply are frequent, and fully
40 percent of urban households report sewage in the streets. A nationwide
health crisis is growing worse, child malnutrition is widespread, and
the carnage against civilians continues every day.
This chaos and gross
negligence have characterized the US occupation since day one. After
US troops rolled into Baghdad, mobs were allowedif not actively
encouragedto systematically loot Iraqi government facilities,
schools and hospitals, deepening the immense destruction already wrought
by American bombs, shells and missiles.
As a pre-invasion
memo leaked from the Blair government in Britain earlier this year warned,
Washington had decided upon war but had given little thought
to the invasions aftermath. That is, as it prepared to militarily
occupy a war-ravaged country of 27 million people, the Bush administration
had no concern or even plans for what would happen to them.
It is a tragic irony
that thousands of young men and women in the Louisiana and Mississippi
National Guard are deployed in Iraq, sent to kill and be killed for
a lie. Not a few of them are drawn from poor and working class families
that have suffered the worst from Hurricane Katrina. The Bush administration
and its Democratic allieshaving abandoned their fabricated claims
about weapons of mass destructionnow insist that these troops
are fighting a war to bring democracy to Iraq.
But the national
disgrace in New Orleans poses an obvious question: what can a government
that abandons its own people to die in the streets and presides over
levels of social inequality that shock the conscience of the world teach
anyone about democracy?
Iraq was from its
origins a predatory waran exercise in international plunder. It
was aimed at employing overwhelming military force to seize control
of vital energy resources and thereby assert the geopolitical hegemony
of American capitalism against its economic rivals.
The plundering of
Iraq has gone hand-in-hand with the looting of the American treasury
at home by means of unending cuts in social spending together with massive
tax cuts for the top income brackets. These policies are carried out
by a government and a two-party political system that is dedicated to
serving interests of a financial oligarchy and is as indifferent to
the lives of the poor and working class in New Orleans as it is to the
people of Iraq.