Pink or Grey?

I will focus my comments on Katrina – the war in Iraq is just too large a subject for me to dissect and opine in the context of the “Tribes” article. (Read the article first or my comments will be empty....err...more empty).

For the most part, I agree with Whittle (and Grossman’s as well) comments. I find myself, almost consistently, falling into the Grey part of the argument when it comes to Katrina. Whittle’s historical examples from our country are dead on and Grossman’s sheep/wolf/sheep dog metaphor is also right on.

We should have armed police in schools. We should have more capital punishment and follow Turkey in its “eye-for-an-eye” punishment system. We’re too soft on crime. We’re too soft with illegal aliens and our boarders. We’re too soft on terrorism.

I will even go further when it comes to the “victims” of Katrina. How dumb do you have to be to live under a dyke and not know how to swim? How dumb do you have to be to go into your attic during a flood with no way of getting out when the water rises? How hard is it to have a $10 raft from K-mart stored in an emergency kit (when you’re living under a dyke!)? Darwin in action.

It isn’t the govts job to save dumb people. It’s the govts job to help people who want to be helped, have done everything they can to help themselves, but can’t seem to get out of the crisis. (Yes, this is also my view on social services.)

Whose fault was it for not evacuating the elderly people in the homes? The owners of the homes, not the governments. They should be tried for murder and executed.

Whose fault was it for not releasing the buses to evacuate literally hundreds of people? Negin.

Blanco is a wimp for crying on TV and it shows her weakness as a leader.

But, at the end of the day the federal gov’t must be held responsible for its lack of responsiveness to the hurricane. Claiming that the chain of command goes from local to state to federal is only to hide behind bureaucratic BS. The entire country knew Katrina was going to be BIG. Anyone with a high school education and/or anyone who has even driven through New Orleans/Louisiana knew that the City/State were completely incapable of dealing with the magnitude of the devastation to come. New York City (as seen by its reaction to 9/11) and LA are perhaps the only US cities with resources available to deal with such large scale catastrophes.

One (Whittle) can’t claim that Blanco and Negin are weak and incompetent (rightly so!) to then say that the federal govt’s hands were tied bc of the chain of authority when it comes to aid and the National Guard. You just can’t have it both ways. I think this is where Whittle’s argument is very thin and his “colors” are a bit too transparent and politically/conservatively biased.

His writings, the writings of many conservatives, claim that the Feds (and Bush) were irreproachable in reference to the Katrina mess. It’s just not true.

The truth, as usual, lies somewhere slightly to the right of the middle.