Geoff Metcalf
Monday, Sept. 5, 2005

The tragedies of Hurricane Katrina continue, and help, aid and assistance are belatedly trickling into the devastated area.

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  In addition to the ubiquitous visual images of flood-ravaged victims, two equally disturbing images supplement the graphic catastrophic images:

1. We hear local authorities spin their complicity in problems with blame casting.

2. We see assorted special-interest elements exploiting the natural disaster to further personal, professional and political agendas.

Former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating recently uttered a very significant and largely overlooked empirical axiom: "Leadership at the local level is EVERYthing." HOOAH!

While filling in for Chris Core on WMAL Friday night and discussing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, one caller said, "It's all Bush's fault!" HUH?!

This brand of brain flatulence myopia falls under category No. 2 above as one of those exploiting the natural disaster to further an agenda, regardless of facts and evidence that contradict the preconceived opinion or prejudice.

• Was the president responsible for the weather?

• Was he responsible for local officials ignoring his pleas to evacuate?

  • Prior to the storm's landfall, Bush said he "cannot stress enough the dangers this hurricane poses to Gulf Coast communities."

  • "I urge all citizens to put their own safety and the safety of their families first by moving to safe ground," he said.

• Was he responsible for the incompetence of the New Orleans mayor?

• Did he order school and municipal buses not be used in the evacuation?

  • "Scores of New Orleans school buses are sitting in flood waters after Hurricane Katrina instead of being used to evacuate thousands of poor people before Katrina hit."

  • "Almost 400 New Orleans Regional Transportation Authority buses are also now under water, never used for the evacuation of the neediest of the City's citizens."

• Did he fail to protect the local infrastructure … and was that even his job?

The answer to all the above (and more) is "No."

This is a complex and devastating situation that could have been mitigated and wasn't.

Mother Nature had already plotted New Orleans for a fire mission … it wasn't a question of IF but WHEN a major Category 3 or larger hurricane would hammer the artificial bowl of the Big Easy.

An old Army buddy wrote: "This wasn't a sneak hurricane attack. They have been tracking this Lady for weeks and knew she was a Class 5 storm. They knew exactly her landfall and surely New Orleans was a bucket ready to be filled." This former Special Forces/retired DEA agent said, "If this country can't handle a natural disaster, with an abundance of warning, I shudder to think what would transpire if a major terrorist attack occurred."

He isn't the Lone Ranger. What IF we had been (or ARE) hit with a biological or nuclear terrorist attack? If Katrina is any indication of how we will respond, we are S.O.L.

As with 9/11 and previous natural disasters, from hurricanes to earthquakes … from blizzards to tornados, it is (and will always be) the LOCAL first responders who do the heavy lifting.

At best, the feds are a bridging mechanism and supplemental resource provider.

Beyond the miserable, incompetent job performance of local authorities, there was/is another contributing factor to the chaos, and it was manufactured by the government.

Several observers have commented on the disproportionate number of black faces in the growing file footage of post-Katrina New Orleans.

That is largely a function of demographics and the fact that the media have focused on New Orleans and not ventured into the surrounding devastation. Orleans county is 67.3 percent black. Were a camera crew to venture into Hancock, Mississippi, with only 6.8 percent black population, the file footage would look different.

The Orleans county black population is largely poor. Presumably, many have been ‘conditioned' to expect government to ‘help.'

The focus has been on the victims stuck in New Orleans. But how many packed up and left (as the president urged the mayor to order)? How many who couldn't get transportation just walked out?

When did individual self-reliance morph into waiting for the government to solve your problem?

The story of the Wild and Free Pigs of the Okefenokee Swamp is illustrative of a for-real problem. http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/790.html

The allegory of the pigs includes a serious moral lesson. It is a story about federal money being used to bait, trap and enslave a once free and independent people.

Federal welfare, in its myriad forms, has reduced not only individuals but also state and local governments to a state of dependency.

Geoff is an author and talk show host. He is a ninth-generation commissioned officer in the U.S. armed services, a former Green Beret, and retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel. Geoff hunts down the stories the rest of the media ignore and exposes them for public scrutiny. He is also Editor of CalNews.com.

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