From the A.P. today:

At the front of the line, heavily armed policemen and guardsmen stood watch and handed out water as tense and exhausted crowds struggled onto buses. At the back end of the line, people jammed against police barricades in the rain. Luggage, bags of clothes, pillows, blankets were strewn in the puddles.

Many people had dogs and they cannot take them on the bus. A police officer took one from a little boy, who cried until he vomited. “Snowball, snowball,” he cried. The policeman told a reporter he didn’t know what would happen to the dog.

… You find out you can always lose a little more.

Call me sentimental, but the above story made something snap deep within me. The victims of this disaster should be receiving hugs, food, fresh water, love, and anything else that might lift their spirits. This is America. Instead, a little boy who had survived unspeakable horror, yet somehow managed to hold onto his little dog through it all, had that one remaining thing taken away from him and thrown into the garbage. At a time of vast human need, a bureaucratic rule is allowed to squash basic human kindness and common-sense.

Like many, I have previously felt it way too early to start criticizing those elected officials charged with the responsibility of taking care of their constituents during this catastrophe. To hell with that. Make no mistake: what has happened in New Orleans this week constitutes the most egregious case of official neglect and dereliction of duty that has ever occurred in these United States. The blame lands squarely on one Mayor Ray Nagin, and by extension on every mayor of New Orleans - and all New Orleans’ elected city officials generally - for the last several decades. They have been sitting and waiting for the inevitable day when a major hurricane would hit their city - poised helplessly between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi - and this week we have witnessed the full extent of their action plan.

It consisted of this:

(a) Tell people to leave.
(b) Tell people who can’t leave to make it to the Superdome. Oh, and tell them to bring their own supply of food and water.
(c) Whine to the media about how unprepared you are.
(d) Watch as your city descends into hell on earth, and make demoralizing statements about “pushing dead bodies away with sticks” whenever you can.
(e) High-tail it to Baton Rouge, and shout “S.O.S.”

Does it need to be said again? They have been waiting for this to happen.

Others have brought up the contrasting example of Rudy Giuliani. Indeed, think about the contrast for a minute. What happened on September 11th, 2001, in New York City, was an utterly unprecedented event. New York City had not planned for two loaded jetliners hitting the Twin Towers in a deliberate attempt to kill tens of thousands of people. Yet, Rudy Giuliani - not to mention mayors previous to him, who also have credit due - had not neglected the primary responsibility of a mayor to his city: the protection of life and of law and order. Anticipating the possibility of a catastrophic event, whether natural or terroristic, city agencies drilled on a regular basis. Plans were made, covering multiple scenarios. People made fun of Giuliani for his focus on the possibility of cataclysm - in particular mocking him for his expensive “Emergency Management Center” - derided in the press as “the bunker.”

Guess what? On September 11th, Giuliani’s prized Emergency Management Center was destroyed, in a kind of attack that neither he nor anyone of influence had predicted. What did the mayor of New York City do? Did he put his head in his hands and cry, “We’re helpless! The Federal Government has to take over! We have nothing left!”

No. He literally pulled himself from the ashes, marched up Church St. , told New Yorkers where to go and what to do, jimmied the lock of a fire house on Houston St. and Sixth Avenue and took charge. In reality, he never stopped being in charge. (Who is in charge in New Orleans now? Does anyone know? Therein is the largest part of the problem.)

By his courage and steadiness, Giuliani inspired the entire population of the city, making everyone feel that they owed it to eachother to restrain their feelings of panic and disorder. This mirrored the way the calm efforts of fire fighters climbing stairways reassured those escaping the World Trade Center, and averted the far worse casualty toll that mass panic would have caused (see what happened in Baghdad a few days ago for a lesson in the price of panic).

For God’s sake: crime went down in New York City over the period of the September 11th atrocity. This was not an accident. This was the result of leadership.

New Orleans is without leadership. Mayor Ray Nagin is worse than no leader at all: he is a leader who is defeated before the battle even begins. He deserves no sympathy.

The politics of New Orleans is famous for its corruption, but the price, this week, has been way too high for anyone to bear.

Who would have thought that this is how we would witness the following song coming true, in America, in 2005?

I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’,
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’,
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Donate to the Red Cross here (high traffic may make it difficult to get to their site at times).

More organizations that you can contribute to are listed here at the FEMA website.

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