The War Against Katrina
Sparxafire!
I cannot yet unclench my teeth about Katrina. We are bearing down on the two-year mark, and the insurance companies are still knotted up in court as thousands upon thousands of claims remain unpaid.
How many things about Katrina do I not yet understand?
1. Accountability. For the shoddy levys that crumpled in the first place.
2. Accountability. For the travesty of the initial response. Somehow, Brownie sneaking out the back door doesn’t add up to accountability to me.
3. Accountability. For grotesque mishandling of initial aid money abuses that did not make it into the victim’s hands.
4. Accountability. For shameful lawsuits against doctors trapped for days in hospitals with no water or lights to treat terminally ill patients — who died. Excuse me? Sue the DOCTORS??? Shame on everybody.
5. Accountability. For those who admitted/permitted fly-by-night, con artist-contractor-types who swooped in, took the down payments and ran.
6. Accountability. For dangerously polluted FEMA trailers.
7. Accountability. For half the city gone so long.
I just guess I am looking for action more than I’m looking for retribution. So far, all I see are the actions of a third-world country…. except the part where we initially turned down offers of aid from other countries in the early weeks after the tragedy. A true third-world country would, I suppose, be accustomed to accepting such aid, where we declined — being the U.S. of A. and all. (I’ll bet the folks still sitting in FEMA trailers would have like to have had a say in that decision. Especially knowing that 20 months later, they would still be homeless.)
I’m sorry, but Katrina is a flat crime-against-humanity disgrace. And of all the things the Bush administration has and has not done, as far as I’m concerned this bungle stands shoulder to shoulder with the war in Iraq.
Please, don’t make me post my list about Iraq right now. Sparxafire, indeed.
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