Hurricane Katrina one year later

Today is exactly one year after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. Last year, a couple of days before this, we had weird wind blowing through Austin in circular gusts. People downtown were even more boistrous than usual, screaming and jumping up and down. A tourist asked me if it was always like that. I told her it wasn't, everyone was just excited about the hurricane because they could feel it coming. Little did I know at the time.

I got home around 2:30 am and turned on CNN to see what was happening, where the landfall would take place and it was still on track for a direct hit in New Orleans. I got on-line and looked at the web-cam in the French Quarter just as the rain was starting. People were still driving around and walking in the street.

I've been through a lot of hurricanes when I lived in Houston, but something about this one mesmerized me. I kept refreshing the French Quarter cam even though the transmission was getting pretty bad. I was glued to CNN, even more than usual if that's possible. Everything looked like it was just another hurricane if there is such a thing. Then the levees breached and all hell broke loose.

As I watched the desperate pleas of the people of New Orleans for help, food, water, security, I cried along with everyone else around the United States because I could not believe what I was seeing. I knew at that moment whatever else Bush was guilty of and whatever his spin doctor Karl Rove put out to try to make him look good, he has put this country in a much greater danger than I had even imagined. There is so much bureaucracy between the problem and the solution, it will take a complete government restructuring to untangle the stranglehold that exists since he created this debacle of an agency and called it Homeland Security.

I realized then that no matter what I do, if a similar disaster were to happen in Austin, I would be in the same hungry, thirsty, tired, dirty, helpless, and desparate situation as those who stayed in New Orleans during Katrina. What little confidence I had in the ability of the government - federal, local, and state - was gone. When I think of Homeland Security I don't feel secure. When I think of the people who still support this guy, I wonder why they are so easily influenced and I realize it's because if they thought about it they way I do, they may very well take their own life.

On the NBC Nightly News Brian Williams asked George Bush while he was touring New Orleans what he thought his legacy would be. He answered that he believes in 30 or 40 years when people can look at it historically, only then will they be able to decide if his decisions made America and the world safer. He said short term history is not important to his legacy. Really? I beg to differ.

The reality is George Bush has not made us safer and has, in fact, made us more vulnerable. By creating a larger bureaucracy, FEMA, the one government department that was created specifically to help the American people in times of disaster, has been marginalized to the point of uselessness. If there were another disaster tomorrow, natural or man-made, the very same problems and inability to respond effectively still exist. As more money is borrowed to pay for the war in Iraq, essentially mortgaging the country, less resources are available for the people of the United States. In 30 or 40 years those debts will still not be paid off, so the legacy he leaves can be objectively evaluated today.

I am also offended by his comment that short term history is not important. His favorite "strong black woman" Condi Rice seems to believe otherwise. Condi thinks if you archive a memo, it is historical, even if she archived it yesterday. When she was in charge of advising the President on national security, she received a memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack inside the U.S." and presented it in a PDB (presidential daily breifing) on August 6, 2001. Yet when she testified before the 911 Commission, she claimed it was historic and not important. I'd say in that instance, short term history was all that mattered.

I only bring Condi into the posting because I'm flabergasted that a growing number of the Bush faithful are trying to convince her to make a run at the Presidency. If her judgement is as bad as Bush's, and it very well could be worse, I am very afraid for the future of this country. How can we feel safe when we've got incompetent leaders making poor decisions? We only need to remember how we each felt watching fellow Americans begging for help while Condi was trying on $1500 Ferragamos, Cheney was fly fishing, and Bush was playing a guitar.

I saw Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke" last week and it's on again tonight. It's really different from what I expected, and I must say much better. All I had heard about it was that some people were claiming the government had breached the levees deliberately to save the white neighborhoods. Although there were a few scenes with that claim, it was incredibly well done, objective, and should be required viewing for everyone in the Bush administration.

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