One of the icons of the catastrophe in New Orleans sadly became the looted television. In the days following the levee break, any expression of sympathy, any presumption of blame, was repeatedly coupled with the image of looted guns, rum, and TV's. (Editorial, September 1, 2005, Washington Post, "The Great Flood of '05.") Although we could have hoped that ample resources would have been put in place beforehand, they were not, and chaos inevitably followed. But who is the looter? The desperate, possibly deranged and traumatized miscreant who raided Wal-Mart, more likely for diapers and food than DVD s? Or the Congress and the Administration who knowingly turned a blind eye to what Homeland Security indicated to be one of the three great national security risks facing this country, the vulnerability of New Orleans to a Category 5 hurricane, (along with a terrorist attack, or an earthquake in San Francisco,); while blithely cutting funding to the Army Corps of Engineers for levee maintenance and wet land mitigation that had already been put in place?
But then, as Donald Rumsfeld said after the looting of Baghdad, "Bad things do happen in life, and people do loot." Is the tragedy of New Orleans yet another example of the price we have to pay for this Administration's idea of freedom? As with Baghdad one may well ask, who is the looter?
Red Captain
