Stan Goff
I haven't been sure how to respond to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, or its coincidence with the almost 1000 Iraqis who were killed during a panic stampede when a bridge suffered a structural failure. I go back and forth, between abject killing rage and nearly despondent sadness.
Too obvious to me is that the same people running the war in Iraq are running this show. For good or evil, they don't give a shit, and they are nearly perfect in their incompetence.
Empathy can't be given too free a reign or we would be paralysed all the time. But when I see people doubled over in grief on top of the bodies of loved ones, and when I see the lassitude starting to take hold of small children who are beginning to suffer from life-threatening dehydration, I can't screen that out. It gets in my head. It makes me obsess about everyone I love, and wonder — if I don't know where they are — are they are okay?
I know that grief and death are parts of life, but goddamn it, if someone has the wherewithal to put reporters and camera equipment there, surely they could expend the same effort getting people some bandages or potable water!
And nothing about this is natural. War isn't natural; and neither is poverty. That's what people are dying of, not a hurricane. They are dying of war and poverty. They are consumed with rage because of war and poverty. They are paralysed with helplessness because of war and poverty. They are twisted and driven crazy by war and poverty.
I can't help but ponder not just the obvious about the Gulf Coast's National Guards that are currently off in Iraq, whose members have to sit by helplessly wondering about their own families, neighbours and friends, but about how much relief could be provided, and how effective an evacuation might have been mounted if the total assets of the US military had been available and put to use.
Cuba evacuated 660,000 people in advance of Hurricane Dennis, a category 4 that hit them in July, and suffered some 10 fatalities. That's because Cuba not only invests in disaster preparation and strong civil defence, but because there is a social commitment to medical infrastructure, high literacy levels and government support of community organisers, to mention a few of the reasons.
We did the free-market evacuation, an unenforceable order for people to leave under their own power after it was too late. Cuba is resource poor. The United States is resource rich. Figure it out.
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From Green Left Weekly, September 14, 2005.
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