New Orleans
Becomes A War Zone
By Bill Van Auken
08 September 2005
World
Socialist Web
The
disaster that struck New Orleans and the southern Gulf Coast has given
rise to the largest military mobilization in modern history on US soil.
Nearly 65,000 US military personnel are now deployed in disaster area,
transforming the devastated port city into a war zone.
Squads of combat-equipped
troops toting assault rifles and columns of humvees with gunners at
the ready crisscross its flooded streets. Soldiers with bayonets mounted
have begun house-to-house canvassing of the city to enforce the complete
removal of its civilian population.
It is becoming increasingly
apparent that the disastrous delay in providing aid to the citys
beleaguered citizens was in large part a matter of waiting until this
massive military force was ready to deploy.
With New Orleans
under de facto martial law, its Mayor Ray Nagin issued an order Tuesday
for the forced evacuation of its remaining residents, estimated at anywhere
between a few thousand and tens of thousands. New Orleans police officials
indicated that they were prepared to forcibly drag people from their
homes.
US military spokesmen
initially said that they would support the operation, but claimed that
uniformed soldiers would not participate directly in these evictions.
But Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Inge, deputy commander of US Northern Command,
told Pentagon reporters Wednesday that national guard units, which are
formally under state control, could be used to compel people to leave.
Nagins proclamation
asserted that the presence of civilians in the city would impede
and distract from the recovery operation. Some officials
have cited a potential public health disaster resulting from the citys
inundation by waters polluted by toxic chemicals and decaying corpses.
Whatever the validity
of these motives, the proposed forced evacuation will constitute the
most massive military operation mounted against the people of an American
city since the Civil War.
While the US military
deployment includes medical teams, search-and-rescue helicopters and
other forms of relief, the largest troop contingents have been deployed
as a military occupation force, to protect private property and suppress
civil disturbances.
The Pentagon has
issued continuous press releases touting how many millions of meals,
gallons of water and pounds of ice it has delivered to the city in the
last few days. These reports, however, beg the question of why such
supplies were not made available during the first four days after the
hurricane hit, when impoverished residents of the city were literally
dying in the streets.
With the bulk of
the population having left the city, the greatest supply operations
now will involve not the relief of hurricane victims but logistical
support for the tens of thousands of troops themselves.
The Bush administrations
defenders have made demonstrably false claims that no one could have
expected a disaster on this scale, while attempting to shift blame onto
state and local officials. The deadly delay in the relief effort has
been attributed by the administrations opponents to the governments
criminal incompetence and seeming indifference to the plight of New
Orleans largely poor and black population.
While no doubt incompetence
and indifference played a major role, there is also strong evidence
that aid was deliberately withheld by the White House and the Pentagon
as part of a strategy for asserting unfettered military control over
the city.
Both hurricane victims
and public officials have given multiple accounts of US authorities
actively turning back aid and blocking rescue attempts in the days that
followed the breaching of the citys levees.
Aaron Broussard,
president of Jefferson Parish, for example, broke down in tears Sunday
during an appearance on the NBC television program Meet the Press,
declaring, Its not just Katrina that caused all these deaths
in New Orleans here. Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater
New Orleans area.
He cited repeated
actions by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Administration) that involved
the deliberate sabotage of relief efforts. He reported that FEMA turned
back trailer truckloads of water sent by Wal-Mart, claiming the city
didnt need them. He also said that the Coast Guards offer
of fuel urgently needed to power generators was countermanded by FEMA.
Finally, he said
that just a day earlier FEMA agents had come in and cut all of
our emergency communication lines without any warning. The local
sheriff, he added, had the lines reconnected and then posted armed guards
to see that they were not cut again.
This last, and most
sinister, example is in keeping with the Pentagons information
war doctrine, which demands the complete control of communications
in an area targeted for invasion and occupation.
Denise Bottcher,
press secretary for Governor Blanco, also charged that FEMA deliberately
blocked offers of aid from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, New Mexico Gov.
Bill Richardson and others.
And a spokesman
for Sen. Mary Landrieu (Democrat, Louisiana), told the media that FEMA
held up aid from both public and private agencies, withholding approval
for the US Forest Service to use water tanker aircraft to put out fires
and delaying the arrival of Amtrak trains to evacuate people from the
city. Offers by private companies to provide communications equipment
were also held up by the agency. There were also reports that the Red
Cross was prevented from going into the city and that FEMA refused to
allow the unloading of food, water and medical supplies brought by ships
into New Orleans harbor.
The apparent aim
of this organized obstructionist behavior by the agency that is supposedly
charged with coordinating relief was to block any significant aid until
the military could intervene in the city with overwhelming force.
This came on Friday,
with military commanders treating New Orleans as a combat operation.
This was the term used by Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana
National Guards Joint Task Force, in an interview with the Army
Times.
This place
is going to look like Little Somalia, said General Jones. Were
going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation
to get this city under control. The newspaper clearly got the
message, referring in its report to troops coming in to fight
the insurgency in the city.
There were numerous
reports from New Orleans residents of being treated as if they were
indeed insurgents, with police and troops sealing off the
city to prevent attempts to leave.
Over 1,000 National
Guard troops and police were sent in Friday to seize control of the
New Orleans Convention Center, one of the areas where evacuees had been
left to die. Military officials referred to the operation as a clear
and hold mission, using the phraseology employed by the Pentagon
to describe its attacks on towns in Iraq where there is substantial
resistance to the US occupation.
Lt. Gen. H. Steven
Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, bragged of having stormed
the convention center, while acknowledging to Pentagon reporters,
We waited until we had enough force in place to do an overwhelming
force.
Asked specifically
by a reporter if the buildup of this force was reason why it took until
Friday before the National Guard came in with any significant aid, Blum
responded, That is not only fair, it is accurate. Youve
concisely stated exactly what was needed, and I told you why. We took
the time to build the right force.
Also on Friday,
Bush administration officials sent Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco
a legal document demanding that she sign over control of the states
National Guard as well as state and local police units. The memo sought
their federalization under the Insurrection Act, a statute that allows
the president to take control of state militias under conditions in
which state governments themselves are unable to suppress rebellion.
Blanco rejected
this demand, no doubt seeing it as an admission of failure by her own
administration.
For Bush, the assumption
of full military control was a matter of political importance. Under
the Insurrection Act, the US president is required to issue a public
order for those in rebellion to cease and disperse. There
is little doubt that had he gained the acquiescence of the Louisiana
governor, he would have taken to the airwaves as the commander-in-chief,
in an attempt to dispel the wave of outrage sweeping the country over
the governments response to the disaster.
As early as Wednesday,
White House spokesman Scott McClellan was telling the press that martial
law has now been declared in Mississippi and Louisiana, an indication
of the administrations intentions but not the legal reality in
either state.
Blocked from achieving
total military control, Bush dispatched Lt. Gen. Russell Honore from
the US Northern Command to develop a parallel command structure overseeing
active duty troops.
The media has lionized
Honore, portraying him as the John Wayne of New Orleanswith
the citys residents presumably assuming the role of Indians. The
general thrust of such commentary is that the military is the only institution
that can get the job done.
That the civilian
agency which was created to deal with such disastersFEMAhas
been gutted, with an unemployed former horse show organizer, Michael
Brown, placed at its head, has everything to do with such perceptions.
The most adamant
proponent of the thesis that the military must take charge is the Wall
Street Journal, whose editorial board enjoys the closest political relations
with the Bush White House. In a Tuesday editorial titled Bush
and Katrina, the Journal commented: The New Orleans mess
improved only after the Pentagon got involved. Though the military is
normally barred from domestic law enforcement by the Posse Comitatus
Act of 1878, Defense officials have been doing a lot of creative thinking
about what they can do and what the public now expects post-September
11.
Washingtons
response to the disaster in New Orleans is hardly a manifestation of
creative thinking, much less what the public now expects.
In reality the US
ruling elite and both major parties have used September 11 as the pretext
for implementing far-reaching attacks on democratic rights and breaching
legal barrierssuch as Posse Comitatusagainst the use of
military force against the American people.
Just last month,
the Washington Post published an article revealing that US militarys
Northern Command had developed a series of war plans for
the military to take charge in domestic crises.
While apparently
these plans involved a response to supposed terrorist attacks, including
the detonation of a nuclear device in a major American city, the catastrophe
that struck New Orleans provided ideal conditions for testing the plans
out.
The growing reliance
on the military, however, is a response neither to terrorist threats
or natural catastrophes. On the international arena, the US ruling elite
has turned toward the use of military aggression and the seizure of
strategic assets and territories as a means of offsetting the relative
decline of American capitalisms position in the world economy.
At home, the turn
toward martial law is a manifestation of growing fears within Americas
fabulously wealthy financial oligarchy that conditions of social polarization
and steady decline in the living standards of the vast majority of working
people have created a social powder keg.
The deliberate denial
of food, water and means of escape to tens of thousands of suffering
New Orleanians in order to prepare a massive military exercise is a
crime. It is moreover a warning that the deepening of the social crisis
in America raises the threat of military repression and dictatorship.