Katrina Retrospective

Hurricane Ophelia, after meandering around for a while, seems inclined to make landfall in the Carolinas. An evacuation has been ordered. Curiously, the local officials seem to be up to the job. CNN reports that "highway patrol officers" – note: NOT FEMA or other federal officers – were working on the evacutation.

Meanwhile, in Florida, governmental officials said that they offered aid to Mississippi and Louisiana officials BEFORE Katrinia hit, but were rebuffed.

One of the things which struck me, when I watched television feed of the evacuation from New Orleans before Katrinia was four lanes of stopped traffic on the northbound side, and an empty highway on the other. Didn’t it ever occur to these folks – the local and state officials – that perhaps, just maybe, the evacuation would go just a tad quicker if they opened the normally southbound lanes to northbound traffic?

Yesterday, in a story on the military’s response to the disaster, one senior officer reported that the federal officials were caught somewhat flatfooted. NOT by the storm, mind you, but by how quickly the New Orleans police force simply melted away.

Heretofore, I’ve felt that the federal response to Katrina was just about exactly what one would expect from a team doing its job, but media reports today changed that opinion substantially. It seems that FEMA delayed sending in aid to the victims while it insisted that first responders from other states take classes in sexual harassment and gender sensitivity. Food, supplies, and personnel sat in Atlanta, being lectured on political correctness. If true, clearly, the purge of people who think like that from government is one area which requires IMMEDIATE attention.

What Katrina demonstrates, over all, is the importance of local elections. John Farmer, writing in the Ledger a few days back, asserted that the feds might have been lulled into a false sense of security by watching Rudy Guiliani and George Pataki – COMPETENT local officials – respond to 9/11. Of course, Farmer blames Bush for failing to appreciate just how corrupt and incompetent Louisiana and New Orleans officials were.

But that’s baloney. If we elect clowns to office, the fault lies with us. Had New Jersey, for instance, been struck by disaster while Jim McGreevey’s lover served as our director of homeland security, would George Bush somehow have been to blame because we elected an incompetent?

Or, looking forward, if Ophelia wanders up the coast and Atlantic City or LBI needs to be evacuated, do we look to Washington, or to our own local and state officials? I sincerely HOPE a plan exists to get the poor and the feeble out of affected areas, but, if none does, it’s OUR fault, not Washington’s.

"Government" certainly failed the residents of New Orleans, but the "government" which failed was the local and state government that they, themselves, foolishly elected. Perhaps, during the next campaign, they will consider how their candidates for Mayor and Council compare to Rudy, and act accordingly.

Hercules

Remarks at the dedication of the momument to Hercules employees killed on the job:

Most Americans know the story of Paul Revere’s ride, and of the battles which followed. On April 19, 1775, the King’s troops marched from Boston toward Lexington and Concord. There, the American militia gave them battle and began the American Revolution.

But fewer people know the motivation behind that British march: they wanted to seize the colonists’ supply of gunpowder. King George, like all tyrants, understood that a disarmed population can be easily subdued, and that a gun without the powder to fire it might as well be a club. Without powder, the shot heard round the world could not have been fired.

We depend upon our soldiers to defend our freedom, and that of our friends and allies, but without the war materials to support those troops, neither they, nor our freedoms, could long endure. We depend upon the men and women in uniform to preserve our liberty, and upon the willingness of others to put their lives on the line to provide our soldiers with the tools they need to fight.

While many jobs benefit our military, and many entail some element of risk, few, if any, are as directly necessary, and involve the kind of risk, as those done by the workers at Hercules. We stand here today to honor the ultimate sacrifice made by so many of them in defense of our freedom.

This was not just another job, and every man there knew it. They knew the risk. But they also knew what was at stake. And they willingly took those risks.

In September, 1940, America stood poised on the brink of war. The Nazis and the Soviets, then allies, lorded over Europe. In the Far East, Japanese armies moved against China, their naval forces threatening their neighbors. America belatedly began to awaken from its foolish isolationism. We adopted our first ever peacetime draft and increased defense production. The men who worked at Hercules knew that we would almost certainly be at war shortly, and that their product was crucial to our defense.

The cause of the explosion here has never been formally determined. Some suspected sabotage; if accurate, that demonstrates that our enemies appreciated just how crucial Hercules was to our war effort. And it would make these men among the earliest American casualties in World War Two. They are no less heros than are those men who gave their lives for their country and now rest entombed in the hulk of the Arizona.

We honor these men for sacrificing their lives for our freedom. They risked their lives for us just as certainly as did the soldiers they supported. Their efforts provided our modern patriots with the material they needed to stand against tyranny at the twentieth century’s Lexingtons and Concords. They paid with their lives for our freedom; there can be no greater gift to one’s country.

I thank you all for permitting me this opportunity to speak, and for your kind attention.