csua.org/u/d9k -> www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/05/AR2005090501035.html
It's Your Failure, Too, Mr Bush By Eugene Robinson Tuesday, September 6, 2005; Page A25 BATON ROUGE -- After a tragically incompetent beginning, the effort to gi ve urgent care to the multitudes from New Orleans whose homes and liveli hoods have been obliterated is finally in high gear. Federal, local and state officials who perform for the cameras here at the Louisiana State Police complex, headquarters for the relief effort, still spend an unconscionable amoun t of time debating who's in charge. Is the president the ultimate author ity, or is it Blanco, Nagin, Chertoff, Brown or the generals? The answer seems to vary from hour to hour, depending on who's holding court in th e hot, stuffy briefing room or outside on the portico, where visiting lu minaries get mobbed by microphones. Fortunately, the finger-pointing follies don't matter much on the ground and in the water. Military, police and civilian relief units did what ha d to be done and emptied the New Orleans basin of Hurricane Katrina's be reft survivors. They can't be described as alive and well, but they're alive. Hundreds of thousands of evacuees are scattered around Louisiana and neig hboring states in a sudden diaspora, and no one seems to have any idea w hat to do with them next. The evacuees bristle at the word "refugees," w hich makes them sound as if they don't belong in this country. But whate ver you call them, they won't be able to go back home -- and won't have a home to go back to -- for months or even years. Baton Rouge, perhaps the best example, has swollen like the Mississippi R iver in an epic flood. The people here have been generous and good-natur ed to a fault. Down by the river, at the convention center, the Red Cros s is housing about 5,000 evacuees; another big shelter is being opened a cross town, and smaller shelters are being organized every day, many by local churches. It's impossible to count the families who have opened th eir homes to relatives, friends or needy strangers. Every city and town in Louisiana that wasn't blasted by the hurricane is full of evacuees. Then there are the tens of thousands in Texas and the multitudes scattered across neighboring states. Their host communities h ave the best of intentions, but many won't be able to stand the added dr ain on resources indefinitely. That's when I start my finger-pointing, because a few days in and around this ground zero have convinced me that there are two things the federal government failed to do, and that for these failures there's ultimately no one to blame but the president. Even if there wasn't a speci fic plan for New Orleans -- although it was clear that a breach of the c ity's levees was one of the likeliest natural catastrophes -- there shou ld have been a generic plan. George W Bush told us time and again that our cities were threatened. Second, someone should have thought about what to do with hundreds of tho usands of evacuees, both in the days after a disaster and in the long te rm. As people flooded out of New Orleans, it was officials at the state and local level who rose to the challenge, making it up as they went alo ng. Send a hundred or so down to our church and we'll do the b est we can. Tent cities aren't a happy option, but neither is haphazard improvisation . Is the problem the Bush administration's ideological fervor for small government? Does the White House really believe that primary responsibil ity should fall on volunteers, church groups and individuals? Or is it j ust stunning incompetence and lack of foresight? At the big shelter here in Baton Rouge on Sunday, some student volunteers from Louisiana State University took a group of children outside to get some air. The kids were using sheets of cardboard as sleds and surfboar ds, zooming down the grassy levee next to the Mississippi River and then scampering back uphill for another ride. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the scene warmed your heart. But those college students are going t o have to go back to their classes, and then how will those kids from Ne w Orleans spend their days?
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