Krugman: Taking his pot-shots early
Posted by: McQ
The QandO Blog
Friday, September 02, 2005
Let's deal with a little factual reality first. Hurricane Katrina has left us with a 90,000 square mile disaster area.
According to estimates, 50% of New Orleans is underwater. This is a unique disaster effort.
Evacuation plans and enforcement are first the responsibility of the city, then the state, then the Fed.
Local law enforcement is the key to maintaining initial order, and should be supplemented as quickly as possible with state assets, and then if necessary, federal assets.
Flooding of the magnatude of that in New Orleans presents special problems. It limits the ability of rescue and relief organizations to respond to the tragedy. Trucks and busses don't float. What that means is limited air assets have to be committed to either SAR (Search and Rescue) or moving supplies to those stranded but safe, but not both. That obviously means that the limited air assets must be prioritized according to the criticality of the mission. Those in charge chose rescue first. Heard of any more people waving signs from rooftops? Now, having done the more critical mission, their new priority is providing food and water to those not in danger of drowning or being lost in the flood. And as the flooding receeds, land based relief can begin to help the process.
First let's dispense with one pernicious rumor/claim. That being that the National Guard strength in the effected states wasn't sufficient to respond to the disaster. States are mandated to have 50% of their Guard units available at all times for homeland missions such as disaster relief:
As Hurricane Katrina surged past New Orleans, Louisiana
mobilized its soldiers to help, as did Mississippi,
Alabama and other southern states. Despite prominent
roles in the War on Terror, the states report more than
the 50 percent strength mandated for homeland missions.
Louisiana has 65 percent of its troops available for
state missions; Mississippi, 60 percent; Alabama, 77
percent; and Florida, 74 percent, Guard officials said.
That being said, let's deal with the second guessers such as Paul Krugman:
<<<
First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any help at all.
>>>
Ask the Mayor of NO and the Governor of LA, Paul. It appears, by most reports, that the police department of NO simply disintegrated in the face of the catastrophe. We have video of police looting. We have reports from one on-site blogger of a policeman reporting that 30 in his area just quit. As for the delayed presense of the National Guard? That's the governor's force. Ask the governor. Why indeed has it taken so long for security to arrive?
And the failure to evacuate the sick and poor is indeed a failure. What were the plans of the city of New Orleans, supplemented by state assets, to help in such an evacuation? From what I've read, there were none. Hospitals were left full. Those who had no way our were abandoned.
Krugman waves off the state and local responsiblities with a mention, though and goes for what everyone who read the column knew he intended to do before they read it: blame the federal government and thus tar George Bush.
<<<
There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the poor and sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the federal government's response.
>>>
Of course my question to Krugman is "how do you prepare for 90,000 square miles of devastation, especially when it becomes painfully clear that the states and localities didn't do their job very well?" And my second question to him would be, "how would you have planned all this?"
But of course, he never has to answer such questions.
<<<
Maybe administration officials believed that the local National Guard could keep order and deliver relief. But many members of the National Guard and much of its equipment - including high-water vehicles - are in Iraq. "The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," a Louisiana Guard officer told reporters several weeks ago.
>>>
Really? Who was that, Paul? Because another Louisiana Guard officer said this:
"We have enough troops remaining here in the state,"
Downer said. "We've always done that. And as in all
cases, we move troops around to meet where the need's
going to be. Not many really appreciate and understand
the uniqueness of the National Guard, (that) we have a
dual mission."
So who do you believe? The second in command of the LA Guard who knows the mission and knows how many assets he has to commit, or Paul Krugman?
But on to his second question:
<<<
Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain."
In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget, including flood-control spending.
>>>
Of course unreported is the fact that this project was initially sunk in 1977 by environmentalist lawsuits. And that nothing has been seriously done since then by any administration. That the project is a 25 year project, and had the work begun in the presidency of Jimmy Carter, its possible it wouldn't have been completed in time for Katrina. But no: it's Bush's fault.
<<<
Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness? The administration has, by all accounts, treated the emergency management agency like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced professionals.
Last year James Lee Witt, who won bipartisan praise for his leadership of the agency during the Clinton years, said at a Congressional hearing: "I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded. I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared."
I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor.
>>>
Now we're into conjecture presented as fact, based in straw man arguments. There is a hierarchy in this sort of an operation. If the mayor can't handle the security and rescue, he or she goes to the state, who then goes to the fed. Is FEMA ineffective? I don't know. But to claim it based on what Krugman claims to "hear" from others seems a little less than convincing. And, of course, if you read the cite I've included above about the 'flood contol' which was 'neglected', you'll find that
A) that's not FEMA's job and
B) it was just as neglected by every other administration from Jimmy Carter on.
Which brings Krugman to this:
<<<
At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.
>>>
This is just agenda driven divel. And its not warranted or needed at a time like this. But Krugman, like Sid Blumenthal, won't ever pass up a chance to demonize his favorite president, even when it's apparent he has no idea how what he criticizes works. Why let facts stand in the way of a good rant, huh Paul?
The administration and FEMA may indeed come in for a lot of criticism when this is over, but now is not the time. And, based on what Krugman has cranked out here, it would be nice if such future criticism was based in fact when all the facts are available instead of based on assumptions easily disproven or refuted and driven by an obvious political agenda.
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