THE DISASTROUS PRESIDENT

As George Bush might say, being president is hard work. During his watch America has seen three major disasters: the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York; the ongoing war in Iraq; and the destruction of New Orleans and much of the Gulf States by hurricane Katrina. I don’t mean to minimize the plight of those who survived landslides and fires in California or the string of hurricanes that hit Florida last year. Those survivors would surely have a legitimate argument about being included on this list. But, for the sake of argument, let’s agree that those three catastrophes listed have drained the resources of the U.S. like nothing the country has seen in a century.

Of the three, only one has been a disaster of choice, namely, the war in Iraq. Most now agree that the reasons given to fight there were lies put forward by the current administration in Washington D.C. who wanted to remove Saddam Hussein and begin a process of — depending who you ask — either claiming rights to the largest, known oil reserves on the globe, or spreading democracy in the Middle East. Either way, the results of the lies that began this conflict with no end, have been costly — not just in terms of the billions spent on this war of choice, but the cost in lives and the impact on survivors.

It would be difficult to make the argument that George Bush is to blame for the attacks that befell New York in 2001. However, the two subsequent disasters can be pinned on him either in full or in part. Certainly the Gulf War is entirely his doing. His administration cooked the books, so to speak, to create the need for a war that didn’t need to happen. Without prevarication, it is fair to say that the responsibility for the war rests entirely on his shoulders.

The chaos and loss of life that have come in the wake of Hurricane Katrina can also be blamed on Mr. Bush. There are myriad reasons why this is true. First, the war he created has robbed the country, and the South, in this instance, of much needed emergency workers and National Guardsmen who have been deployed to Iraq, rather than left where they are needed, in the homeland, to protect the security of U.S. citizens.

As an editorial in the September 2, 2005 New York Times, “The Man-Made Disaster,” puts it:

“Watching helplessly from afar, many citizens wondered whether rescue operations were hampered because almost one-third of the men and women of the Louisiana National Guard, and an even higher percentage of the Mississippi National Guard, were 7,000 miles away, fighting in Iraq. That's an even bigger loss than the raw numbers suggest because many of these part-time soldiers had to leave behind their full-time jobs in police and fire departments or their jobs as paramedics. Regardless of whether they wear public safety uniforms in civilian life, the guardsmen in Iraq are a crucial resource sorely missed during these early days, when hours have literally meant the difference between evacuation and inundation, between civic order and chaos, between life and death.”

The war has not only robbed the country of necessary human resources, it has robbed every last person of the federal resources — namely, the money — needed to pay for these kinds of tragedies. Between the costs of rebuilding New York, the cost of the unnecessary war in Iraq and the numerous tax cuts enacted by George Bush’s administration, the U. S. is already a debtor nation to the tune of trillions of dollars — and it is still unclear how much money rebuilding Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana will cost.

The second part of this equation that is George Bush’s fault is that his administration cut the money earmarked to go to the Army Corps of Engineers to modernize and shore up the sinking levees surrounding New Orleans. Before 9/11, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has already listed a hurricane hitting that venerable city as one of the most likely catastrophic disasters the nation could face. Uncannily, they described how the city would be left under 20-feet of water. Yet, despite this warning, Mr. Bush saw fit to cut 80 percent from the Army Corps budget, money needed to pay for the work to prevent this type of disaster. In 2002 the head of the Corps, under threat of being fired for criticizing these cuts, resigned.

In addition, the effectiveness of FEMA itself, now part of Homeland Security, has been undermined by Bush’s administration. As James Lee Witt, head of the agency during the Clinton years said during a Congressional hearing last year:

"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."

President Bush remarked this week, about the flooding in New Orleans, that no one had expected a levy breach. This is as credible as the claim that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his nuclear arms program. In other words, it is an utter lie.

The current crisis has taken the spotlight off of the Cindy Sheehan vigil. Sheehan is the mother of an American solider in Iraq who wanted to ask the President one, simple question: why her son had to die. Yet, despite camping out in Crawford, Texas, while the hard-working Bush was taking a five-week vacation — a vacation that was part of cumulative break time longer other president in history — Mr. Bush would not answer her question.

What will he do when the relatives of the many who have died and are dying today in the Gulf States want to know why their loved ones have perished? Will the President deny them an answer as well? If his track record is any indication, they will be fed more of the never-ending falsehoods that emerge from the White House on a daily basis.

Yes, being president is hard work. Harder still when, as president, you cut funding for every program in America that people count upon — like emergency management — in favor of fighting wars which seem only to enrich a few wealthy corporations and their cronies.

America has experienced three major disasters since George Bush has become president. That’s not counting the fourth, his presidency itself. It will be years before New Orleans, Biloxi, Gulf Port and other cities recover from this hurricane. But, it will take the country decades to recover from George Bush.