9-13-2005

Lee P. Butler

In a recent editorial, liberal essayist for the Miami Herald Leonard Pitts Jr. asked three questions concerning his 'worries' about the Katrina disaster as it related to New Orleans. Among his misdirected castigation of the President he completely ignored the immense devastation of Alabama and Mississippi and the successful coordination of the local, state, and federal relief efforts in those states.

He wondered; (1) What, if any, was the role of the local, state, and federal intransigence, incompetence, or inertia in the failure to strengthen the levees on which the city counted for protection against disaster? (2) Where was FEMA? (3) Why were the indigent, the infirm and the old left in the path of the storm?

He also attacked the President, claiming he, 'failed to react to the storm until two days after it hit'. This is one of the most often repeated fallacies of the liberal establishment that dominates the media. Two days after the storm hit would be Wednesday, it wasn't until that day that the Democrat Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco officially asked for specific assistance from the federal government when she requested 40,000 troops, which were immediately sent to the region.

The New York Times produced a story showing the maladroit breakdown in command by the governor, 'Aides to Ms. Blanco said she was prepared to accept the deployment of active-duty military officials in her state. But she and other state officials balked at giving up control of the Guard as Justice Department officials said would have been required by the Insurrection Act if those combat troops were to be sent in before order was restored.'

What's worse is she also turned down a separate offer from the federal level as they tried to get an effective plan in place that would consist of a 'hybrid command structure in which both the Guard and active-duty troops would be under the command of an active-duty, three-star general' to deal with the crisis.

Again, the governors of Alabama and Mississippi had no problem relinquishing control of their recovery efforts to the federal government and they seem to be working well together.

But liberals don't want to hear that, so they just stick their fingers in their ears and yell, 'its Bush's fault, where's Dan Rather when you need him'!

Another little factoid that would cause bed-wetting liberals to kick and scream as they produce more innocuous diatribes throughout the mainstream media if they didn't have their fingers in their ears, is the man they love to hate... no, not Karl Rove, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used an executive order to put Adm. Timothy J. Keating in charge of operations concerning Katrina, before she ever became a hurricane.

Keating then went on to approve the use of the bases in Meridien, Miss., and Barksdale, La., to position emergency meals and medical equipment a week before Katrina ever hit the Gulf coast. They also placed ships in the Gulf. It was that action that allowed the military personnel to eventually heroically rescue so many people on national television.

Assistant Secretary McHale said, "The U.S. military has never deployed a larger, better-resourced civil support capability so rapidly in the history of our country." But the liberal mainstream media surely hasn't reported that juicy tidbit of information, has it?

So why didn't that massive military presence move in the minute Katrina had wrecked havoc on the 'Big Easy'? Look, the focus here isn't on Alabama and Mississippi because the media doesn't seem to think they count, because you see, Bush did a good job there and they don't have the under-funded levee problem, okay?

As brain-dead liberals who march to the beat of Michael Moore have charged, the Department of Homeland Security says in their own rules of organization that they are to take the lead in disasters that befall the United States.

This is so ponderous it's ridiculous. The DHS is in charge and takes the lead over all FEDERAL agencies in cases of national emergencies. It would be nice for once if these liberals would stop their exhaustive research projects on Moveon.org and read the CONSTITUTION!

If they did, they'd find a wonderful idea from our Forefathers called states rights. You see, they wanted to limit the powers of the federal government, so they gave the states more individual power. This prevented the federal government from dictating to the populace, like, well communism. In fact, there are several laws that protect state sovereignty.

In only a few instances can the federal government enter a state against the wishes of the governor. Two of those are the Insurrection Act and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. Are liberals really that desirous to see the federal government invoke those laws to handle 'looters' in lieu of the local authorities in the wake of a disaster?

It has appeared that the governor of Louisiana wanted the President to do just that. If he makes the decision to go in without local acceptance, he's guilty of violating states rights. If he decides to not to go in... which, he did... he is guilty of hating blacks. In either case, the governor gets a pass by the media, but the President gets slammed.

As one 'unnamed' official asked, "Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had preemptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?"

That completely sums up why the President didn't go in any faster than he did. He was 'damned if he did' and 'damned if he didn't'.

Besides, according to an article in a paper in Pitts’ own state of Florida, the Gulf states were as unprepared for the catastrophe in Katrina’s wake as Florida was in 1992 when Andrew hit them. So not only didn’t New Orleans follow the evacuation plan they had, but the paper points out that the plan Louisiana had was inadequate and in Mississippi they, ‘were in the process of rewriting their state emergency plan when Katrina hit’.

"If we weren't prepared, and we didn't do our part, no amount of work by FEMA could overcome the lack of preparation," Florida Governor Jeb Bush said in defense of FEMA.

Senator Mary Landrieu from Louisiana said, "Mayor Nagin and most mayors in this country have a hard time getting their people to work on a sunny day, let alone getting them out of the city in front of a hurricane."

Yet Bush is the racist?

Liberals can keep their fingers in their ears so they don't have to hear the facts while they get passes from media elitists, but it’s not even close to being Bush’s fault.