New Orleans, Part Deux

As Hurricane Gustav draws closer to the coastline....and just days before the Republican National Convention begins, I'm getting angry all over again when I think about the government response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005.

Never before has this country allowed an entire city to be destroyed: this government turned away planes bearing foreign aid of food and supplies, and banned the Red Cross from entering New Orleans. They left the people sitting in crowded stadiums for days without food and water. They left the dead lying on the streets. When Bush finally took an interest to what was happening in New Orleans, he told his FEMA director "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" (he wasn't), and talked about how sorry he was that Trent Lott's vacation home was damaged in Mississippi.

Instead of helping the people in New Orleans who were under water or swimming for their lives -- they shot some of them. On TV, we watched Louisiana state troopers turning people away from a bridge....their only escape out of town. Even today, we don't know how many people died there. We never had a memorial or a public commemoration. By some accounts, 1,600 people died. Others estimate the death toll as much higher.

Now, in an election year, with another hurricane barreling in, we can't forget what happened -- we shouldn't dismiss the images we watched in horror on TV just three years ago. Barack Obama nailed it in his speech the other night when he asked if we wanted a US government that "sat on its hands while a city drowned."

We can't control natural disasters. But we *can* control how we respond to them. To the evacuees from New Orleans in 2008: my thoughts are with you. And I hope you're not abandoned by the government this time.