ken

If by “around” you mean from Gretna all the way to Baton Rouge.

We were told that this disaster shows the utter folly of small government philosophy; analogies between Grover Norquist’s “bathtub” and the city of New Orleans are everywhere. All this from a delay in delivering supplies that came about when a private organization (the Red Cross) ready to deliver those supplies early on was prevented from doing so by the State of Louisiana. And evacuation on foot was blocked by the Gretna police (although it seems that Airline Highway to the west was open to foot traffic all the way to Baton Rouge; too bad no one on the scene seems to have pointed this out to many desperate would-be evacuees.). This isn’t quite the slam-dunk refutation of libertarianism that we were promised ever since the levees broke.

We are told that the resulting suffering is somehow the fault of the Bush Administration. While it would make sense to fault the Administration for delays caused by failure to anticipate some aspect of the disaster or the aftermath, I find it difficult to blame the Administration for failing to anticipate that the State of Louisiana would cut off the victims’ supply lines. Perhaps the Admininstration should have assumed that the State Government of Louisiana is a potentially hostile power that may blockade an American city, but no one in any party at any level of government or anywhere else came close to predicting that beforehand.

But the Administration obviously doesn’t take its disaster relief responsibilities seriously; the head of FEMA during the disaster was a political hack with no relevant experience (well, except for being head of FEMA during four hurricanes in Florida – when the response went so well that the Administration stands accused of currying favor with Florida voters through its extra-well-done response).

And Administration officials showed their complete ineptitude by saying that the breach of the levees wasn’t anticipated (except that it wasn’t – what was anticipated was the storm surge going over the levees during the storm and leaving a much smaller number of people needing relief and evacuation, not a breach of the levee leading to gradual flooding and lots of stranded survivors). The idiots at FEMA didn’t even know that there were thousands of people at the Convention Center (of course, according to the plan, there weren’t supposed to be thousands of people at the Convention Center, and the rest of the country didn’t know it either until a few hours earlier, not a whole day. What idiots those FEMA guys are for not spending their whole day watching TV!)

Well, now the Administration is set to show its real ineptitude – its problems with public relations. The President seems to be planning to “take responsibility” for the problems that came about in the aftermath – problems caused at the state and local level. Problems that only went away when the Feds showed up in force on the scale and timeline promised. Some will say that it’s only right, that the buck should stop with him. This would even make sense – if he were Blanco’s boss. He isn’t. All he’s going to do is leave people with the impression that the Feds are supposed to be responsible for anything and everything that happens the first few days, and that they failed in this responsibility.

So what can we take away from this? First, the withdrawl of occupation forces from Louisiana in 1877 seems to have been a bit hasty. Second, always keep 3-4 days worth of food and water and other supplies on hand. And third, when our friends on the left and in the media assert (as they do every time anything of significance happens) that the incompetence of the Administration is on display before any real information comes to light, it’s best to ignore them (a lesson that yours truly will take to heart).

Update: Bush noted that the overall response was unacceptable (without any detail on who was responding when), and promised a comprehensive review of emergency procedures along with a greater Federal role in future. Of course since the next disaster will probably happen in some state other than Louisiana, where competent officials exist, this will most likely do more harm than good overall. He’s also promised to shower lots of money on the evacuees and on Louisiana state and local governments to help rebuild the city and the levees (has he learned nothing from dealing with those people? Any Federal money put in the hands of Louisiana officials would do slightly more good if it were set on fire instead. And working with Louisiana officials is not a good way to get a stronger levee!), to build the city bigger and better and stronger, to encourage evacuees to rebuild their lives better than ever back in New Orleans (he apparently hasn’t learned anything from dealing with those people. The best way for most of the evacuees to build better and more prosperous lives is for them to stay the hell away from Louisiana), and of course to conduct those reviews and gear up for a quicker and more massive Federal response to disasters. Not too surprising overall, sad to say.

Is the Homeland Security Administration up to dealing with terrorism? Does the Katrina response shed any light on that question?

First, let us see if a natural disaster is really related to terrorism. There are similarities – demolished buildings, casualties, ruined property. But there are important differences.

A terrorist is intelligent. He picks targets according to a goal. He learns from his mistakes and builds on his successes.

A terrorist has morale, which improves when his target rolls over and takes it, and improves greatly when his target offers concessions in hopes of making the terrorist stop, and goes right in the toilet when his target forces him to flee for his life, hide in caves, and keep moving.

A terrorist can be killed. Some potential terrorists can even be deterred. A terrorist who is not killed can strike again if he is left unmolested.

A hurricane, on the other hand, is a big, dumb, mass of rotating air that goes where the wind pushes it. It doesn’t target anything. It can’t be diverted, deterred, or destroyed. It does its damage and eventually dissipates, never to be seen again. Other hurricanes form according to the blind laws of nature, completely outside of our control, and follow their unalterable course to a random spot of our coastline.

Let us suppose for a minute that the damage done by Katrina was instead the work of a terrorist group. This terrorist group would have to somehow not only breach the levees, but flatten structures and close bridges in surrounding parishes and down the coastline all the way to Mobile, demolish everything within a few miles of the Mississippi coastline, cut off power to 90% of Mississippi, and leave tens of thousands of survivors in New Orleans cut off from their supply lines.

In that case, rescue and recovery would still be of secondary importance. Secondary to the task of preventing the terrorists from doing it again. Which they will do, purposely targeting population centers or vital infrastructure and improving upon their methods, if we don’t act, and which we are capable of preventing them from doing. Such prevention involves the sort of activity that the Feds have been up to for four years now – killing terrorists where they live, and keeping surviving terrorists as busy as possible reacting to us rather than plotting attacks against us. But none of that is of much use in a natural disaster response.

The next hurricane will follow the path that the forces of nature ordain for it regardless of what we do or don’t do. We can’t diminsh its power by attacking it or encourage it by misguided attempts at appeasement, and it can’t learn from experience or target anything. Since our activities have no impact on future storms, the sole remaining priority is rescue and recovery. Which was supplied by the Feds with the speed and effectiveness promised.

So while there’s undoubtedly lessons to learn in the Katrina response, it does not tend to indicate that our counterterrorism activity or preparation is failing in any way. The fact that all the world’s terrorists missed four years of opportunity to breach those levees, which were not exactly a state secret, tends to indicate that our counterterrorism activity is working.

What’s criticism for?

One of two things. Either it points out bits of empirical reality that was not taken into account before the present situation that will be useful the next time around, or it builds a case that someone or some organization is unfit for the job and needs to have it taken away. (What entity gets that job, and whether or not that job should even continue to exist, are of course other useful questions to be addressed…)

No matter what you think of Bush, he’s not going away. Neither is Blanco. (I don’t know about Nagin – what happens to a mayor when his city is deserted?) So most of the really useful criticism is that aimed at the first goal.

To that end, here’s a few questions:

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What on Earth went wrong with the Federal response to this disaster?

I don’t know. But it looks to me like the planners made the mistake of planning for the worst-case scenario.

The worst case, of course, was that the hurricane didn’t deviate from its expected path or intensity, that it sent Lake Ponchatrain over the levees and destroyed the levees themselves, that it sent a rushing wall of water throughout the city destroying everything in its path, and that it left very few survivors outside the Superdome and a few high-rises built to stand up to it.

Level of immediate Federal response, particularly supplies and military police, that would have done any good whatsoever: a small fraction of what’s actually needed now.

The other expected possible case would be that the levees held and the area would be slowly rebuilt. No one seems to have anticipated the possibility that a hurricane would hit with just enough force to cause the levees to break a full day later and leave hundreds of thousands of survivors trapped by water that has nowhere to go.

No one at any level of government, in the media, or anywhere else showed any sign after the storm passed of expecting anything to happen other than ordinary disaster relief. No one that I’ve seen, for instance, suggested that evacuation should resume immediately after the storm passed.

Does this fully excuse the Administration? Not really. It is well-known that there are a lot of people around the world that would love nothing better than to set off a nuclear weapon on US soil. The military has done an admirable job of preventing that thus far, but there’s still a non-zero chance at any given time that someone, somewhere could pull it off.

When that happens, the aftermath will involve hundreds of thousands (at least) of survivors cut off, in dangerous conditions, running out of food and water and needing immediate help. It’ll be worse than New Orleans because (a) there will be no warning and no evacuation beforehand, (b) a lot more of the survivors will need immediate, specialized medical care, and (c) the terrorists will almost certainly pick a more heavily populated place than New Orleans. And the response by the Homeland Security Administration and FEMA, if no changes are made, will be disastrously slow.

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.