Titanic On The Bayou
Brilliant Frank Rich column in today's New York Times. Here's an excerpt:
New Orleans's first-class passengers made it safely into lifeboats; for those in steerage, it was a horrifying spectacle of every man, woman and child for himself.THE captain in this case, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, was so oblivious to those on the lower decks that on Thursday he applauded the federal response to the still rampaging nightmare as "really exceptional." He told NPR that he had "not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water" - even though every television viewer in the country had been hearing of those 25,000 stranded refugees for at least a day. This Titanic syndrome, too, precisely echoes the post-9/11 wartime history of an administration that has rewarded the haves at home with economic goodies while leaving the have-nots to fight in Iraq without proper support in manpower or armor. Surely it's only a matter of time before Mr. Chertoff and the equally at sea FEMA director, Michael Brown (who also was among the last to hear about the convention center), are each awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in line with past architects of lethal administration calamity like George Tenet and Paul Bremer.
On Thursday morning, the president told Diane Sawyer that he hoped "people don't play politics during this period of time." Presumably that means that the photos of him wistfully surveying the Katrina damage from Air Force One won't be sold to campaign donors as the equivalent 9/11 photos were. Maybe he'll even call off the right-wing attack machine so it won't Swift-boat the Katrina survivors who emerge to ask tough questions as it has Cindy Sheehan and those New Jersey widows who had the gall to demand a formal 9/11 inquiry.
But a president who flew from Crawford to Washington in a heartbeat to intervene in the medical case of a single patient, Terri Schiavo, has no business lecturing anyone about playing politics with tragedy. Eventually we're going to have to examine the administration's behavior before, during and after this storm as closely as its history before, during and after 9/11. We're going to have to ask if troops and matériel of all kinds could have arrived faster without the drain of national resources into a quagmire. We're going to have to ask why it took almost two days of people being without food, shelter and water for Mr. Bush to get back to Washington.
Most of all, we're going to have to face the reality that with this disaster, the administration has again increased our vulnerability to the terrorists we were supposed to be fighting after 9/11. As Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, pointed out to The Washington Post last week in talking about the fallout from the war in Iraq, there have been twice as many terrorist attacks outside Iraq in the three years after 9/11 than in the three years before. Now, thanks to Mr. Bush's variously incompetent, diffident and hubristic mismanagement of the attack by Katrina, he has sent the entire world a simple and unambiguous message: whatever the explanation, the United States is unable to fight its current war and protect homeland security at the same time.
The answers to what went wrong in Washington and on the Gulf Coast will come later, and, if the history of 9/11 is any guide, all too slowly, after the administration and its apologists erect every possible barrier to keep us from learning the truth. But as Americans dig out from Katrina and slouch toward another anniversary of Al Qaeda's strike, we have to acknowledge the full extent and urgency of our crisis. The world is more perilous than ever, and for now, to paraphrase Mr. Rumsfeld, we have no choice but to fight the war with the president we have.
As a political writer, Rich is a brilliant theatre critic.
Dmac at September 4, 2005 9:47 AM
What, substantively, do you take issue with in this piece? Easy to make cracks. Harder to say something smart opposed to what he wrote.
Amy Alkon at September 4, 2005 9:51 AM
Rich is famous for linking two, three or sometimes even more wildly disparate points into one grand, overarching theme - and thus he does so again in this piece.
It's fine to focus on the tragedy at hand (and the failures of the Feds and this administration in dealing with it effectively), but he overplays his point entirely by throwing everything else that might stick to the wall here: Cindy Sheehan, 9/11, Swift Boats, Terry Schiavo - hey, what about global warming, why not throw that one onto the pile?
Rich's former editor (Daniel Okrent) has severely chastised his laziness and lack of coherent thought processes during his current tenure at the NYT. That pretty much amounts to a formal censure over there, considering the lifetime tenures that most of their opinion columnists currently enjoy.
Dmac at September 4, 2005 10:22 AM
If depraved indifference can be legislated, it should also be prosecuted. Where are the damn Democrats right now?
eric at September 4, 2005 10:39 AM
BTW, private donations from US citizens and companies just topped over $201 Million as of yesterday. We were asked for donations during the City of Chicago's Jazz Festival last evening, and everyone in our vicinity was reaching deep - fairly gratifying to see.
Dmac at September 4, 2005 10:57 AM
As for "linking two, three or sometimes even more wildly disparate points into one grand, overarching theme", Dmac, I would say that Rich has learned, ironically enough, from the current league-leader in that category -- the Bush Administration. GWB's linking of 9/11 - Al Quaida and Iraq has to be the current champion; Rich's attempt doesn't come close. I think Rich's rhetoric is smoother, but then he's supposed to be a professional writer, whereas GWB is a party apparatchik. I do agree that Rich would do better to confine his focus to the disaster at hand, but as for laziness and lack of coherent thought.....well, if industry and coherent thought are not required of the Administration, why should they be required of its critics? That's a double-standard.....
mbm at September 4, 2005 12:56 PM
When people like Bill Clinton and James Carville (!) have come to this administration's defense when reporters and anchors have openly speculated on farfetched conspiracy theories (on CNN), then perhaps it's time to wait a few weeks until full accountability can be accurately accessed.
If only our esteemed political elite on the salons of the Upper West Side could show the same restraint here.
Dmac at September 4, 2005 2:20 PM
Actually, Dmac, Rich could legitimately have thrown global warming into the mix, because it may have contributed to the severity of the storm.
Linking one massive Bush failure with others, or contrasting his willingness to intercede in Schiavo's personal situation (which was not even remotely in the realm of what the federal government is supposed to do) while ignoring hundreds of thousands of citizens (whose plight is quite rightly the feds' responsibility, at least in part) - this is all totally fair and appropriate commentary.
Ad hominum generalized attacks, otoh, show your own "laziness" and "lack of coherent thought process," imo.
Melissa at September 6, 2005 6:33 PM
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