Death of an American City - Bush's legacy?
Posted by R. Neal
Read this NYT editorial:
Bush is said to believe that he was chosen by God to lead us through perilous times. With the vindication of reelection, he now seeks to establish his legacy. Up until now, though, he's acted mostly as a cheerleader for a neoconservative movement run by doddering, recycled relics from the Cold War whose only interest is establishing dominion over the Middle East and its oil supplies.
Faced with taking the heat for all their schemes and lies, the string of failed foreign and domestic policies, his growing political impotence, his declining polls, and rampant scandals within his party and his own administration, he now seems to be distancing himself from all that. Maybe he's decided that now would be a good time for him to assert his own ideas and leadership, but, no longer able to trust his inner circle, he's not sure where or how.
Perhaps Bush will come to realize the enormity of the challenge facing America right here at home, and what a tremendous legacy saving New Orleans and rebuilding the Gulf Coast would be for his presidency. Politically, it would be a simple matter of declaring victory in Iraq and redeploying all the manpower and resources to our own Gulf region. With the threat of WMDs contained, Saddam's brutal regime toppled, and democracy and free elections flourishing, it seems our mission there is accomplished and another awaits us.
If God is talking to Bush about his destiny, hopefully this is the message he is receiving.
OK, then.
Read this NYT editorial:
We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.The Mrs. and I were just talking about Bush's Jackson Square speech the other day and wondering whatever happened to all those promises. The speech was reminiscent of his "Mission Accomplished" speech. Both had inspirational settings with carefully crafted backdrops and costumes appropriate for the occasion. But just as the violence and killing resumed and continue long after declaring victory in Iraq, New Orleans was left holding a bag of empty promises in the dark, long after the lights in Jackson Square went off as Bush departed.
We said this wouldn't happen. President Bush said it wouldn't happen. He stood in Jackson Square and said, "There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans." But it has been over three months since Hurricane Katrina struck and the city is in complete shambles.
There are many unanswered questions that will take years to work out, but one is make-or-break and needs to be dealt with immediately. It all boils down to the levee system. People will clear garbage, live in tents, work their fingers to the bone to reclaim homes and lives, but not if they don't believe they will be protected by more than patches to the same old system that failed during the deadly storm. Homeowners, businesses and insurance companies all need a commitment before they will stake their futures on the city.
At this moment the reconstruction is a rudderless ship. There is no effective leadership that we can identify. How many people could even name the president's liaison for the reconstruction effort, Donald Powell? Lawmakers need to understand that for New Orleans the words "pending in Congress" are a death warrant requiring no signature...
Bush is said to believe that he was chosen by God to lead us through perilous times. With the vindication of reelection, he now seeks to establish his legacy. Up until now, though, he's acted mostly as a cheerleader for a neoconservative movement run by doddering, recycled relics from the Cold War whose only interest is establishing dominion over the Middle East and its oil supplies.
Faced with taking the heat for all their schemes and lies, the string of failed foreign and domestic policies, his growing political impotence, his declining polls, and rampant scandals within his party and his own administration, he now seems to be distancing himself from all that. Maybe he's decided that now would be a good time for him to assert his own ideas and leadership, but, no longer able to trust his inner circle, he's not sure where or how.
Perhaps Bush will come to realize the enormity of the challenge facing America right here at home, and what a tremendous legacy saving New Orleans and rebuilding the Gulf Coast would be for his presidency. Politically, it would be a simple matter of declaring victory in Iraq and redeploying all the manpower and resources to our own Gulf region. With the threat of WMDs contained, Saddam's brutal regime toppled, and democracy and free elections flourishing, it seems our mission there is accomplished and another awaits us.
If God is talking to Bush about his destiny, hopefully this is the message he is receiving.
OK, then.
1 Comments:
This is the legacy of "reconstruction"--hard to believe that it's taken over 130 years for it to become catastrophically apparent, but as we Louisianans have known most of our lives, we're a colonial possession of a grossly exploitative, ruthless, yet hapless and ignorant imperial american government. Bush is an insignificant player. When the occupation government installed an uneducated black legislature in Baton Rouge and disenfranchised most white citizens, it set the stage for the race politics and economic collapse that left New Orleans and Louisiana as a whole crippled, ignorant, poor, and dysfunctional. This is democracy's worst nightmare, a majority of irresponsible, ignorant, manipulatable citizens. Yet we endure because we at least maintain our private property rights and the individual's right to keep and bear arms--those elements of fundamental individual liberty and responsibility that the federal government, followed by many state and local governments, most fear in their citizenry. We will rebuild New Orleans on our own and in spite of government at all levels. Because of federal colonialism and its misguided social experimentation, we will probably continue to carry far more than our fair share of the load of poverty and pollution and will continue to provide most of America with gasoline, gas, and oil, along with lots of seafood and great music while getting nothing but disrespect in return. While every Alaskan gets thousands of dollars for the oil that flows from and through their state, Louisianans get squat--not because of local politicians, but because we are not a prodigal child of the Union, but a conquered and exploitable colonial territory. Bottom line, if we shut off the oil and gas valves at the state line and eat all our own shrimp, crabs, and oysters, I'll bet the rest of the U.S. wouldn't long scoff at investing in rebuilding our state. Either that or they'd send in the troops and conquer us again--maybe this time we could get conquered like Irag and get $200 billion dollars of aid and reconstruction instead of having to beg for less than a tenth of that just to do what the Corps of Engineers have been recommending for over 30 years.
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