Winds of Shame. The Republican spin machine is in high gear, pouring out gas at wind speeds greater than Katrina ever achieved. It seems the Republican Right actually thinks it can spin its way out of being held to account for its insanely inadequate, incompetent, and uncaring response to the Katrina disaster. I sure hope they're wrong.
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The New York Post, daily champion of the most retrograde forces of the Republican Right, today published an op-ed piece by one James Jay Carafano, a Heritage Foundation scoundrel, that tries desperately — and fatuously — to remove blame from the poor, innocent Republicans and shift it 'where it belongs': to the American people. To bring this home, let me flip two paragraphs in his piece so they read in 'logical' order:

[Ninth paragraph] The notion that the dire needs of the city [of New Orleans] could be addressed quickly under impossible conditions is simply ludicrous. It would be irresponsible to gauge the national response solely by the speed with which resources are brought to bear in the first days. How soon assistance arrives is dictated by reality. [Mind you, today, two full weeks after Katrina struck, NBC's Today Show interviewed a black man in New Orleans whose very first knock at the door by rescuers occurred this morning!]

[Eighth paragraph] And every aircraft, vehicle, and team sent in requires support, just like the victims — no trivial challenge. In fact, one common problem is that there are good-natured efforts to send so much help, whether it is asked for or not, that it chokes the capacity of the emergency managers to coordinate or care for all the responders. Ironically, this puts more lives at risk and actually slows aid delivery.

See what you've done, you evil American do-gooders! You've clogged the system with your damned charity, and government can't do its work!
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But I thought the Republicans wanted us to take personal responsibility for social problems and solve them thru private effort, all that "thousand points of lite" stuff. Not when the Republicans are trying to push the blame off onto someone else — anyone else — they don't!
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Trying to excuse the failure to pre-position troops so they could rush aid in as soon as the hurricane passed, Carafano asks, disingenuously, "with scant time as hundreds-of-thousands are clogging the roads out [note, again, that it is private citizens doing the harm], how do you send masses of vehicles in with troops or supplies?" Hey, buddy, New Orleans has three approaches: land, sea, and air. We have all seen footage of D-Day, when a massive amphibious assault landed huge numbers of men and materiel on beaches thousands of miles from our shores. We've all seen film of thick clouds of parachutists and supplies being dropped by military airborne divisions. We've seen helicopter rescues galore, all over the country, and one of the enduring images from films like Apocalypse Now was of dozens of helicopters pouring over a hill. Today, we not only have amphibious boat-trucks but also great big hovercraft capable of carrying large loads of men and goods over water, over land, over marshes and sand with no problem. So don't try to give us that crap, that the military just couldn't get in fast. That's bull, and you know it.
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On one thing (only), Carafano admits the obvious:

This is the kind of crisis the nation must be prepared to tackle — a disaster that exceeds the means of state and local governments. [That didn't stop the Republicans from trying to blame the Democratic Mayor of New Orleans and Democratic Governor of Louisiana, did it?] It is a fair test for the new Department of Homeland Security and the military, and for our efforts since 9/11.

We should learn from this tragedy the quality of the leadership, resources and programs we need to meet catastrophic disasters — either natural or manmade. We should, however, temper expectations with realism.

And, realistically, we cannot expect Republicans to do anything right.
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Carafano joins the huge chorus of Republican spinmasters who have deluged the public with the phrase "blame game" as mercilessly as Katrina deluged the Gulf Coast with water:

Beyond playing the blame game, we need to rethink whether we're truly doing all the right things.

He goes on to damn Federal grants to localities:

Grants that dole out wads of money with scant regard to national priorities won't do. Today, all the fire stations in New Orleans lie under water, as does much of the equipment bought with federal dollars.

Giving tax money to local first-responders is bad! Money should remain in the private pockets of the rich! And, I assume, grants to repair and strengthen New Orleans' levees wouldn't have done a thing.
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The greatest tragedy of Katrina is that the wrong people died. The death toll so far is over 400, and still climbing. If only the Nation's 400 top Republican Rightwingers had been killed instead, and more were dying daily at the rate we're discovering bodies of their victims along the Gulf Coast, the Nation would benefit from being litened of a terrible burden: the burden of being controlled by monsters.
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(Responsive to "The Limits of Relief", op-ed column by James Jay Carafano in the New York Post, September 12, 2005)
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,896.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:47 AM