When the Saints Went Marching Out
O. Max Gardner III

The chilling lack of empathy from the federal Government for the disaster in New Orleans combined with the stunning lack of efficiency is beyond the comprehension of most Americans. We learned a lot about our country this week. We learned some good things and a lot of not-so-good things. We learned about chaos and breaking points. We are learning things about class, race and poverty that may never have been brought into the public eye if it weren’t for this disaster.

Hurricane Katrina of course did more than devastate the heart of the South—she destroyed the image that the United States had been working so hard to create and cultivate over the past 50 years. It took a storm like Katrina to show the world that the United States of America is not unshakable. The War on Iraq has certainly made it clear that America is no longer the know all, and see all honest broker of truth and justice in an otherwise unjust world. But, notwithstanding the current state of affairs in Iraq, most people viewed America as the “can do country.” This is no longer the case.

It is truly and honestly hard to believe that the snake pit of anarchy, death and suffering that the world has witnessed on CNN is actually happening in our America. The number of people in desperate need of water, food and medical attention simply defies belief. And, despite four years and tens of billions of dollars spent for preparing for the worst—it is now clear to the world that we are still completely unprepared for a massive hurricane that federal officials knew about for days and planned for ahead of time for years. And, if we were not prepared for this, then we are surely not prepared for another massive nuclear or biological attack from Osama or his followers. As Clark Evrin, the former Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security said: “This was what [homeland security] was supposed to be all about. Instead, [Katrina] obviously raises very serious, troubling questions about whether the Government would be prepared if this were a terrorist attack. It is a devastating indictment [of our] performance four years after 9/11.”

Indeed, the truly troubling aspect of this entire incident is that the warnings about New Orleans’s vulnerability to post-hurricane flooding repeatedly circulated at the upper levels of FEMA for years. They even conducted a catastrophic training for just such a tragedy about a year ago. This so-called practice-run operation case called “Hurricane Pam.” The former FEMA director recently said that “beyond terrorism, this was the one event I was most concerned with always.”

Hurricane Katrina has clearly exposed the political boondoggle and cesspool of inefficiency that we call the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA. As former representative Tim Roemer of Indiana said, “We have had our first test, and we’ve failed miserably.” This colossal ineptitude can be explained by the fact that the Director of FEMA is former GOP activist Mike Brown of Okalahoma, or “Brownie” as he is affectionately called by the President. Before joining FEMA in late 2001, Brown had absolutely no significant experience that would have qualified him for any position with this Agency. He allegedly secured the job from an old GOP friend (Joseph Allbaugh) from his college days, who at the time was heading FEMA. Allbaugh left FEMA in 2003 to work for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

Before joining FEMA and the Bush Administration, Brown spent 11 years as the commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association, a breeders’ and horse-show organization based in Colorado.

The International Arabian Horse Association “certifies show trial judges” for these very expensive horses owned by a very few wealthy Americans. Accordingly to a spokesperson for the Group, they “hold classes to train people to become judges and stewards and we keep records.” Maybe I was just born yesterday but how to properly award ribbons to $500,000.00 Arabian horse owners seems to have little or nothing to do with Homeland Security. But, to make matters worse, Mr. Brown was forced out of his “horse showing position” after a spate of lawsuits over his alleged supervision failures. “He was asked to resign,” confirmed Bill Pennington, the former President of the organization. Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, summed it up when he said: “I look at FEMA and I shake my head. The response is an embarrassment.”

If we can’t respond to this event that we saw coming across the Gulf of Mexico for days, then the question is what are we in fact prepared to respond to? Our obvious lack of preparedness, coupled with the power of fear and crowd mentality, turned the people of New Orleans out on their own for almost a week to face an unbearable sea of sadness and despair. “I don’t treat my dog like this,” said 47 year-old Daniel Edwards as he pointed to an elderly woman dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, with another body lying beside her wrapped in a sheet. And Dan is right and Dan is wrong. The fact of the matter is that notwithstanding the unparalleled human misery in New Orleans the plight of the animals and pets of that region is yet another massive tragedy on another scale.

And, how did the President respond to this unparalleled crisis of misery and suffering during his initial trip to the non-New Orleans part of the disaster area? He first chuckled about his wild drinking days in the great city of New Orleans! Incredible. And where was Condi Rice? She was shopping for very expensive shoes at Ferragamo’s on Fifth Avenue and attending a production of something called “Spamalot.” And, Dick Cheney, he was vacationing at his massive ranch in Wyoming. And, Andy Card, off somewhere in Maine for a wedding or something. And during this time people, American people were dying at the Superdome, living and eating with the dead, being raped, begging for help, drowning in flood waters, pleading for mercy, and scavenging for food and water.

Last Thursday Ray Nagin, the beleaguered Mayor of New Orleans, sent out a “desperate SOS” to the federal government. Maybe Washington did not answer in a timely fashion but if we want to save our country it is past time for the rest of us to answer the call for help now. We don’t have long. Time is short. The situation is critical. The soul of America is on life support and we are about to “flat line.”