In times of crisis you get the measure of a person and perhaps, of a country. My overriding impression of the last great American disaster, 9-11, was how it showed up the innate goodness of so many Americans, from the fire fighters who put civic duty above their own survival to the passengers of flight 93 who sacrificed their own lives for the common good. Even the members of Congress, not a group I usually speak of fondly, rose to the occasion that day, with their singing of God Bless America. On any other day such a display would have had me reaching for the sick bag but, on 9-11, it struck just the right chord of defiance and unity.
In the face of human savagery, America emerged with great credit but, in the wake of nature’s wrath, we have witnessed all that is wrong with the States. From the ineptitude of the bureaucracy, to the cynicism of the profiteers, to the callous way that New Orleans poor were left to their fate, Hurricane Katrina has exposed the dark side of the American dream.
The week of anarchy in Louisiana has held up a mirror to America and the reflection is not a pretty sight. Why were the levees not properly reinforced? Why was the head of FEMA unaware that people were taking shelter in the Convention Center? Why were so many of the National Guard “defending” Americans in the Persian Gulf but not the Gulf of Mexico? Most of all why were so many of New Orleans’ poor simply left to rot for days?
Race, America’s great festering wound, was also held up to the light in New Orleans last week. The city’s poor, overwhelmingly black, were abandoned to nature’s tender mercies. No provision was made either to evacuate them or to provide for them within the city. By the time help did arrive, it was too late for some. All of us know, deep in our hearts, that this was racist, that had those in the Superdome been white rather than black, they would have been helped sooner.
While 9-11 and Katrina have shown diametrically opposed visions of America, one constant in both tragedies has been the appalling performance of the country’s “commander”-in-chief. There are no two ways about it, George W Bush does not do crisis well. He was far too slow to grasp the magnitude of last year’s tsunami. A crueller man than me would describe his performance on 9-11 as cowardly. Once again, when confronted by the unexpected last week, the US president has come up well short, failing to appreciate the depth of the crisis until it was too late.
Hurricane Katrina will provide plenty of talking points for the Bush is great/Bush is useless debate which runs constantly on Joeuser and elsewhere. Those who support Dubya will find a scapegoat for his failings as they always do. Those of us who detest the man will write nasty things about him, and rightly so, the man deserves it. But one should be careful to avoid the fate of the apocryphal Irish republican who, on feeling the first drops of rain upon his hair, resolves to blame this inconvenience on the English.
There are some things in this world which are not the fault of George W Bush. While it is very true that he must take his share of responsibility for the horrendous loss of life in the deep south, it is also true that the death toll from Hurricane Katrina was caused by deep underlying forces in American society which long pre-date the Bush administration. It is easy, too easy, to blame it all on Bush.
If 9-11 showed what was good about the US - the willingness to put the common good before the individual even to the point of death - then Katrina exposed the reverse, a long-held tendency to put one's own welfare above everything else.
On the most immediate level this includes those who took the opportunity presented by the storm to do a little shopping. But at a deeper level, Katrina showed up the "I'm alright, Jack" attitude of those in power who abandoned the poor and sick to their fate. What's more, the hurricane exposed the "private good, public bad" attitude, so prevalent in US politics, which left one of America's major cities without adequate flood protection.
For a few horrible days in New Orleans last week the demented slogan of the free-marketeers became policy. It was sink or swim.