To: ~digs who wrote (391 ) 9/6/2005 10:37:45 AM From: paret Read Replies (1) | Respond to But the breakdown of civil society didn't stop with attacks on property. Soon the predators were attacking people. the savagery inside the convention center, where 15,000 people had taken shelter: 'We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten." He sent 88 police officers to restore order; they were beaten back by a mob. Police snipers took up positions on precinct roofs, on guard against the armed gangs who were roaming the city. Not all the corpses turning up in New Orleans were of drowning victims. Some had been shot to death. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was trying to operate, director Michael Brown said, 'under conditions of urban warfare." As always, there were those whose first instinct was to make excuses for the inexcusable. People were trying to protect their children." The Washington Post reminded its readers to steer clear of moral judgments. 'What we think of as looting," Linton Weeks wrote on the front page of the Post's Style section, 'may be more complicated than it seems." the nuances of looting." Professor Benigno Aguirre of the University of Delaware: 'It may look from the outside as if they are stealing or breaking the law, when in fact some of them are trying to survive." most of us have no trouble distinguishing between desperate people in need of food and water and brazen criminals descending to the level of primitives. Just as most of us understand that morality and virtue are never more essential than when disaster strikes. jewishworldreview.com
