September 02, 2005
Katrina and Terrorism
Here's what worries me about the terrible job our government is doing in responding to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Imagine you are a terrorist lying in wait to attack the United States, or perhaps you are one of the Al Qaeda masterminds organizing future attacks. Wouldn't you be encouranged by the U.S. government's failures to properly manage such a disaster? Wouldn't it give you pleasure to realize that your upcoming terrorism attacks might have the potential for being on par with Katrina? With everyone distracted by Katrina, wouldn't you think about moving your plans up and issuing the orders sooner?
Despite Bush's tough-guy act, our country is no more secure from terrorism than it was five years ago. Our ports of call still lack strong security. Our mass transit systems in New York, Los Angeles and other cities are still vulnerable despite the recent show of force and random bag checks. Watching Bush respond to Katrina, I get the impression that he not a guy who is in charge. It's more like he's the puppet whose pupper-masters have been on the shitter while Katrina wreaked havoc, only to get caught with their pants down.
What I fear is that our country will suffer another catastrophic event sooner rather than later, which will only escalate our decline as a civilization. I'm afraid it wouldn't take much to send this country into a backwards spin that would ultimately lead to almost complete suspension of civil liberties and widespread martial law. People in some states are already panicking about higher gas prices. Imagine what will happen when they realize another catastrophic event like Katrina could disrupt our fragile supply-chain of food, clean water and energy. At some point civility is lost and we devolve into anarchy, desperation and the chaos of survival. Watching how our government is responding to Katrina leaves me with little faith they can appropriately manage another such event. It almost makes me want to go buy a gun, because then at least I can protect myself and my loved ones since our government may not be able to.
Bingo, Cam. This is indistinguishable from (for instance) one of the so-called "dirty bomb" threats that everyone's been working so hard to scare us about in the last few years. In what way would that scenario, whether we had advance notice or not, be different from this one?
A whole city would be asked to evacuate, something devastating would happen, and then a massive effort would have to occur to both rescue people and get things to a reasonable point that stabilizing or whatever could occur.
Add to it that there's a Department of Homeland Security that has spent billions whose main job is presumably JUST to make contingency plans for this sort of thing. And to make those plans operational when needed. They've had about 4 years to do their job... and this is the result.
No planning, no clear or effective communications either inside or outside the organizations involved in the work, let alone with the public. No supplies ready to go, the major private sector partners apparently have never been informed of their role, let along trained. A relief effort that's clearly a case of too little too late, and offensive public remarks from the most senior leadership in the US.
Damn, that's scary.
Posted by: Michael at September 2, 2005 05:19 PM
