The Predictability of Katrina

Some of my conspecifics wonder aloud how the government screwed up the mitigation of the Gulf Coast catastrophe so badly? Didn't they know that the failure of the levees and the flooding of the city was a fairly well known scenario? Didn't they know that tens of thousands of poor folks would be unable to evacuate without significant help? Of course, they did.

George "Not as Bad as Hitler" Bush was originally opposed to the idea of a Homeland Security Department. He, or whoever does his thinking for him, realized that the risk of a further terrorist attack was minute and that the new Homeland Security bureaucracy would not be able to prevent a terrorist attack in any event. The bloated national security bureaucracy already in place had not prevented the World Trade Center disaster. Homeland Security was nothing more than the politicians' way of making it look as if they were doing something and increasing their power in one stroke. The Bushians set about managing Homeland Security to their political advantage without regard to whether their activities enhanced or reduced national security. They set up highly visible, albeit useless, airport screening systems and funnelled Homeland Security dollars to districts in accordance with political calculation. They publicized prosecutions of supposed terrorists, none of whom turned out to be actual terrorists, but we were all assured that the Ministry of Justice was on the job. Oh, and I almost forgot the color code thing. That was huge.

FEMA is, if I understand it correctly, actually more involved in governmental continuity than in relief and mitigation. Much of the budget of FEMA is devoted to keeping government in business in case of disaster, and this has apparently been the focus of the current regime. FEMA is more about control than assistance, and I am pretty sure that when this is all over we will find that FEMA will have obstructed relief much more than it helped anyone. In general, FEMA relies on other agencies and private charities to provide actual assistance. The National Guard, FEMA's mainstay, is short on manpower and bereft of equipment and supplies thanks to the adventure in Iraq. And, in keeping with Bushian practice, FEMA is headed by incompetent political hacks. FEMA is incapable of helping the victims of Katrina, and all it can do is assume "control" of the relief efforts.

The Bushians probably didn't plan on having so many assets tied up in Iraq, what with expecting flags and flowers and all. They have been playing the odds with national priorities and have chosen to pursue their foreign adventures while hoping that hurricanes and earthquakes and such would be manageable while they were tied up overseas. Being a War President has political benefits that you just can't get from being the boring old Emergency Preparedness President. Besides, nobody is likely to blame the Bushians for natural disasters (all the religious wingnuts are on their side), and any shortcomings in mitigation will probably be soon forgotten.

And in the case of New Orleans in particular, most of the Bushian supporters will have evacuated and few, if any, Bush voters will have perished. George "Than Whom Stalin was far Worse" Bush gambled that his popularity as War President and our irrational fear of terrorism would trump his shortcomings in the competence department and that he could ride the Iraq adventure into history and Republican hegemony. This plan hit a snag with the Iraqi resistance, and folks had already lost faith in the "Commander in Chief" by the time Katrina hit. Time will tell, but the Bushians may yet be able to spin this disaster to their advantage or at least to cast blame elsewhere.