Post Scripts: We have a confidence crisis

Senator William Cohen, a former Secretary of Defense, is credited with the statement: "Government is the enemy until you need a friend." In the aftermath of the hurricane disaster in the Gulf region, we may have to rephrase that statement to: "And then your friend may turn out to be dysfunctional."

All of us have just had a lesson about the cost of stinting on infrastructure to pay for tax cuts and the war in Iraq. Most important have been the lessons learned from trusting emergency response to political cronies and contributors who fill quite a few important jobs in this administration.

Three years ago the New Orleans daily newspaper warned that the levees and flood walls were fragile. It was a ho-hum story to those responsible for the safety of citizens there. Michael Brown, former director of Federal Emergency Management Agency, has been on television a lot lately, trying to explain how come he was the last to know why so many citizens wound up in a convention center. In a job that ought to require high professionalism, his prior experience was in promoting horse shows.

So we see what happens when decision-making in a dire emergency is left to political amateurs. What happens is political hacks argue about division of authority while people are dying. While this was going on, the USS Bataan, a well–equipped support ship with water, medicine and operating rooms, lay anchored several days in the gulf awaiting orders.

What happens is that when Wal-Mart tried to deliver three truckloads of water to those in need, they were turned away by FEMA. On television, Aaron Broussard, president of the parish nearby, cried as he accused the government of the worst kind of abandonment of American citizens. Newsweek described the situation in New Orleans as "the worst abandonment of Americans."

The real disaster of Katrina is that society broke down. An entire community could not, or would not, cope. When the police vanish in New Orleans the community disappears and men take to the streets to prey on women and steal from the weak. Stranded for days in filth and fetid water, far too many simply waited in vain for the government to come help them. They screamed into the cameras for help, the tv reporters screamed for help, and the "civil rights" leaders screamed for help.

Stranded for days in pools of fetid water, everyone simply waited for Uncle Sam to save them. Americans were once famous for taking the initiative for rising up to take charge in an emergency. See any of that in this emergency? Sri Lankans and Indonesians, far poorer than we are, did not behave like this in their recent Tsunami that took 400 times as many lives than Katrina has thus far.

It makes one wonder if America has lost its heritage, given us by our forefathers who knew what freedom was worth. Even though the White House performed miserably in this tragedy, which ought not be a surprise, far too many are crying for more of the same and that’s the real tragedy.