Not to blame, but.....

I have resisted the overwhelming temptation to immediately react to the unimaginable catastrophe resulting from Hurricane Katrina. It would be easy, too easy in fact, to simply hide behind the thinly veiled disguise of searching for the truth, in order to find someone to blame.

But in this case, President Bush is the overwhelming favorite. He is the rightful recipient of the lion’s share of blame. As President of the United States he is emblematic of government; and the government failed the people.

No American, regardless of political point of view, can watch bodies floating in the water, individuals helplessly crying out for help and not be ashamed. The tragic photos from Mississippi and Louisiana, New Orleans in particular, is reminiscent of what we have come to expect from the lawlessness of Haiti.

I have received countless email blast of the AP photos describing the actions of the African American as “looting” and those of a white couple as “finding food.”

The journalistic double standard is so obvious it does not warrant comment, but there is something more important than the apparent racism.

While there have been those who decided that the current upheaval made it an ideal time to take plasma televisions at a reduced rate, they are in the minority. Whether the adjective used was “finding” or “looting” the collective behavior is desperation.

It is the desperation fueled by a social meltdown, the residue of government’s collective failures.

Respect for law and order work only when there are limited numbers of individuals living without hope. But the number of hopeless individuals that exist as the result of Katrina leaves martial law as the only alternative, a hard truth for any democratic society to digest.

As the world watches American anarchy unfold, Katrina becomes the final chapter that has us living simultaneously the worst moments of 1960’s and 70’s.

The social mirror of self-reflection reveals that we have much in common with the urban unrest of the mid 1960’s, the division created by the war in Vietnam, along with high fuel prices and the long gas lines of the 1970’s.

Even the president participated in this reality retro moment, by sounding very “Carteresque” in his initial response to human suffering. Unlike 9/11, the president cannot stand on a pontoon declaring that he will bring Katrina justice.

Out of the tradition of Nero and Marie Antoinette, it appeared rather nonsensical to tell people, who were already living on society’s margins that are starving, dying, and desperate to be patient.

This administration may be the one studied by subsequent occupants of the White House as what one should not do.

Has there been an administration that has been wrong about more?

They were wrong about weapons of mass destruction, wrong about links to between Saddam and Al Qaeda, wrong about being liberators, wrong about the post war effort, wrong about the number of troops required, wrong about the abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanmo Bay, wrong about “Mission Accomplished,” and they were wrong about the excessive tax cuts.

We can now add to this dubious list that they were wrong about the cuts to FEMA or the need to invest in fortifying the levies that the bipartisan Louisiana delegation unsuccessfully lobbied.

This tragedy was not due as much to the natural forces of Katrina as it was the human failure to invest in the New Orleans infrastructure.

I am not suggesting that improving the levies alone could have kept New Orleans safe from harm’s way but there would not have been the nearly damage, especially to the social fabric of the society.

The failure to act preemptively has made us privy to senseless death and displacement, ignorantly referring to Americans befallen by this tragedy as “refugees.”

We are now left with the seemingly insurmountable task to reclaim the words of Franklin Roosevelt: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”