What we could do

Mike Davis and Anthony Fontenat, writing for The Nation, offer a provocative list of "25 Questions About the Murder of New Orleans."

The title of this list might seem, to some, uncharitable and a violation of Hanlon's/Heinlein's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." But the cumulative effect of these 25 questions reinforces the conclusion that any disinterested observer reached while witnessing the weeks of government bungling in response to Hurricane Katrina: A nonresponse this consistently and lethally inept cannot be adequately explained by stupidity.

Chaotic bungling and ineptitude would have been forgivable had it occurred with a sense of urgency, but the utter lack of such urgency defies any charitable interpretation.

In terms of effect, of course, it doesn't really matter whether this bungling was the result of a colossal cockup or of a conspiracy. Many have already noted this, citing this variation on one of Arthur C. Clarke's laws: "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

Whatever the cause, the "Can't anybody here play this game?" clown show of a response to Katrina forces me to revisit one of my favorite Big Ideas. I wrote about this initially in two posts: "We Can Help. We Should Help" and "The Path Not Taken: How to make allies and influence international opinion." Both of those follow the "waking dream" outlined by Jack Hitt in a Mother Jones article, "A Bully's Pulpit."

Here, in Hitt's words, is the basic idea:

A few months back, a terrible earthquake rattled a portion of Iran. Entire villages were erased. The immediate death toll was 500. Thousands were injured. A radio account of people trapped and dying beneath a collapsed mosque had me riveted. …

When the news moved on to something else, I fell into a waking dream. … It begins with some other president, or at least another version of George Bush. This president reacted differently to 9/11. … This president realized right away that al-Qaida's attacks were conducted on two fronts. One was old-style terrorism, which kills civilians in unexpected ways. The other front is new — the medium formed by the global reach and speed of television and computer screens that now bind the world into a tight infosphere. On this second front, the actions of the first are amplified in such a way that every violent act by al-Qaida provokes global terror and every military maneuver by the United States is seen as imperialism. …

And so this doppelgänger Bush would have seen the advantage — oh, about a year ago, when half the world seemed to be wearing NYFD caps — in stationing a fleet of C-5 cargo planes at Kennedy Airport. When an Iranian earthquake or a Bali bomb blast occurred, 200 of New York's bravest and all that rescue paraphernalia for which we are famous — Jaws of Life cutters, search dogs, remote cameras — would immediately be dispatched. In my dream, I see NYFD pulling trapped Persian grandmothers out of that collapsed mosque. And the fantasy plays on out, with the president — Bush would be especially great at this part — taking to a podium and saying, "Al-Qaida blows up buildings and kills people. We dig through rubble and save human lives. This is what America does."

As Katrina struck and the levees broke, "all that rescue paraphernalia for which we are famous" sat idle. We can "dig through rubble and save human lives," but as we saw, this is not always what America does.

I still very much like the idea Hitt proposes. America can and should have a mechanism for sending rapid-response teams to assist in the event of disasters like the earthquake in Bam, Iran, or the Boxing Day Tsunami. This happens now, sometimes, in an ad hoc manner, but it could be more effectively coordinated and, to be blunt, more effectively publicized. These rescue teams should wear the American flag, but not the uniforms of the American military. They should be dispatched not only to aid our friends and allies, but also our enemies — especially our enemies.

The calamitous incompetence of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security in response to Hurricane Katrina raises some doubts about the feasibility of such a scheme. But this was not a failure of capability, it was a failure of intent — a failure of leadership and political will. With capable leadership, "all that rescue paraphernalia for which we are famous" could still be deployed effectively and efficiently both at home and abroad.