Putting a man on the moon, or anywhere disaster strikesIn the future dystopian film "Children of Men," Britain soldiers on with a Ministry of Homeland Security whose forces scour the island for illegal immigrants. Evoking a siege mentality in a world suffering from an infertility crisis, security equates to sealed borders that hold a chaotic world at bay.
General David Petraeus, new commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, tells of encountering the man-on-the-moon syndrome among Iraqis following Saddam's fall: "If America can put a man on the moon," they surmised, "then surely it can rebuild Iraq quickly!" Following Hurricane Katrina, that naive assumption seemed wholly disproved back home. We couldn't manage New Orleans, so what made us think we'd fix Baghdad?
Read on at KnoxNews.
Read on at Scripps Howard.
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Comments (6)
There are times when the country needs someone at the top who is not the Chief Frenegi.
Profits are important but so are moral values like honor.
Waiting the wings might one man who can command and can lead and do so with honor.
The Long Grey Line has served the country well over the past two centuries. Its needed now, lest we elect another Frenegi who has the ability to raise much money but little command ability or little honor.
Maybe the next really qualifiied man at the top is Wesley Clark.
Posted by J Canepa | January 20, 2007 4:51 PM
Baghdad and New Orleand have a lot in common in this respect; neither has wished to be managed or reconstructed.
Don't believe me? How do you account for all the buildings in NOLA that STILL have tarps in the place of roofs?
Posted by RTO Trainer | January 20, 2007 9:50 PM
According to a recent story in the NY Times, New Orleans cannot go back to where it was pre-Katrina because the economy can only reasonably support about half the people who were living there before Katrina. Interestingly, that was true even before Katrina.
Having grown up in New Orleans, my response is wow! It's patently obvious, now, but we just couldn't see it, because we just couldn't put it into words and bring it into focus.
If true (and I think it is) New Orleans is managing pretty well, all things considered.
Can we extrapolate from New Orleans post-Katrina to Iraq post-Saddam?
Except that both of them are cluster-%@#%s, I think not.
Posted by ilaine.upton | January 20, 2007 10:22 PM
I think most of the world sees both Iraq and the Katrina response as massive leaderdhip failures. I see both as primarily profit oriented activies.
I have studied the Katerina response and came up wiht some verse:
The Second Savings of New Orleans
In Twenty Seven in the heavens fell in the Midwest
The mighty Mississippi grew to flood stage
The vast flow of water overtopped levees north of New Orleans
Serious sub rosa citizens met
If New Orleans were to be saved
The laws of physics must be observed
An outlet must be found
It was, 30 miles downstream in a parish called Plaquemine.
In Oh Five the Louisiana Gator Boys and Blues Brother’s Band
Jammed a on NetFlix DVD
“Hey, Hey, Hey, Yeah
Come on everybody take a trip with me
Down the Mississippi Down to New Orleans
If you ain’t been to heaven, you ain’t been there
Every Southern Belle is a Mississippi Queen
Down the Mississippi Down to New Orleans”
On the 28th the music stopped
The President watched Katrina menace the Gulf coast
Mayfield told CNN’s Aaron Brown
That New Orleans had a 50/50 chance of survival
.
The President went to LA to raise campaign funds.
The VP was fly-fishing at night in the dark
The head of the DHS went to Atlanta to discuss bird flu.
Serious sub rosa citizens were silent
Ordinary citizens heard the explosions
The levees failed
Reports were they were overtopped
But a bathtub ring marked the high water mark.
Other spin said
Loose barges crashed into two different levees simultaneously,
Creating two breaches and another credibility gap.
Subverted then by unstable soil far below
Hadn’t happened before or since
But the U of Cal and the ASCE concurred
Ignoring any mention of explosions reported
or any rigorous examination of debris
The French Quarter, Downtown and the Garden District
Survived again.
References
John Barry’s book Rising Tide, the film, Blue Brothers 2000, Elizabeth Kolbert’s articles in the New Yorker, and my recollection of CNN news broadcasts.
Posted by J Canepa | January 21, 2007 7:35 AM
Think about the reality that the Aints could have possibly played a home-game Super Bowl this year if all the stars had been aligned. Really amazing, when you think about it.
Posted by Tom Barnett | January 21, 2007 1:27 PM
Game not over yet
Saints ain’t faint
Might be headline tonight
BREES BUSH BEAT BEARS?
Posted by J Canepa | January 21, 2007 4:08 PM