What started as a motley collection of geniuses stealing televisions and other utterly unusable electronics has turned into something unbelievably nasty.
Shooting at rescue workers, hospitals, helicopters, and anything else that enables those left in the area to survive and evacuate.
So much for the grey area. This isn’t people putting their own survival ahead of abstract property rights, or even putting their own survival ahead of the survival of others. This is people dooming others to a nasty, lingering death as their apparent main purpose; their own survival is often irrelevant.
This is very much like the “insurgency” that has plagued Iraq for the last couple of years, although radical Islam or misguided nationalism probably doesn’t have much to do with it in this case. So what does?
Perhaps these are the same predators that spent decades degrading the city to the state it was in before the hurricane.
Whatever their motivation, the authorities now face two additional challenges. Getting their victims out of the area under fire, and making sure that the predators are not rescued and released. Freeing the predators from the city would allow them to infest and terrorize other communities, and even frighten away those in other states who might otherwise take in honest refugees.
It’s looking like a flat-out military operation is called for, and on a much shorter timescale than the one underway in Iraq.
Apparently one of the big problems is addicts who are going cold turkey. Like as not those were the ones who started plundering drug stores and making armed assaults on hospitals.
Yep, the alphabet agencies are stuck in reverse. The military needs to be put in charge, and yesterday. They need a flood czar, too – who the hell is in charge? Bush will eventually take a hit for this if it keeps spiraling out of control and rightly so.
One thing that’s not helping is the extensive National Guard use in Iraq. There’s 8,000 of them from Louisiana and Mississippi who aren’t home to rush to aid, or so MSNBC reported.
I’m not implying anything else, honestly. Just saying.
JDASilva, you’re totally wrong. There’s no shortage of NG troops to use for disaster relief; they’re being brought in from as far away as Michigan. There’s nothing in the rules that says that only NG troops from a particular state can be used for disaster relief in that state. They’re Americans first, citizens of their state second.
jdasilva and Steven: According to this post at redstate the Louisiana National Guard totals about 11,500 guardsmen, of which only 3500 are currently in Iraq. Of the remaining 8000, about half are in the 225th Engineering Group, as far as I can tell.
(Of course, I don’t know the figures for Mississippi, but according to news reports Mississippi is only having regular disaster and end of the world problems, and not New Orleans’ special addition of zombies to the mix.)
Even Bush has today stated that initial attempts had helping in this crisis had failed. Under Bush budeget, FEMA funds cut nearly 44 percent. Budget cuts for Army Corps of Engineering also cut.
Buildings now ablaze and no water pressure? In the West they use planes to drop water on fires. Why were not thousands upon thousands of troops (reservists, regular army, guard units) mobilized immediately and sent as needed ? IOraq: deep water bvehicles not need for desert-like iraq were sent from Lousiana Guard units and not available for use.
We must ask now: what is the role of govt? Do we let the invisible hand take care of economic things? Use martial law? shoot looters on the spot? Send in police from elsewhere to replace those many who are quitting the New Orleans police force? Draft medical people and assign immediately as though in wartime?
This was all seen in models: http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/o/nov04/nov04c.html
–. Why were not thousands upon thousands of troops (reservists, regular army, guard units) mobilized immediately and sent as needed ?–
Because the governor is an incompetent boob and didn’t ask?
The feds just can’t go in.
Sandy,
Details are starting to filter out.