t r u t h o u t: Waiting for a Leader

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FOCUS | Bush " Casual to the Point of Carelessness " on Katrina

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 06:29:12 -0700

 

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090105Z.shtml

 

Waiting for a Leader

The New York Times

 

Thursday 01 September 2005

 

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life

yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the

need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual

in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was

needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an

Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice,

generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He

advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash,

grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.

 

We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come

back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place

abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to

wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds

of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care.

Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril.

Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout

southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline

will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a

moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and

spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.

 

Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things

happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never

been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president's

demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness

- suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.

 

While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate

needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so

inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National

Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in

this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers

permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held

back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off

to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the

gaping holes in the area's flood protection?

 

It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily

announced, America " will be a stronger place " for enduring this

crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are

right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of

future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge

that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.

 

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