People Get Ready

If terrorists had flown airplanes into the levees ringing New Orleans, or had blown up the levees, or had engineered a hurricane to overwhelm the shoddily-constructed federal levees (“waters of mass destruction”), maybe then the loss of lives and land would have been seen as a political opportunity by the Bush administration, in the same way the cause of terrorism after 9/11 was exploited as an opportunity to stir the emotions of Americans into accepting an argument to invade Iraq to seize weapons of mass destruction the second largest oil deposits in the world.

Or if the red menace were tightening a red noose around the Mississippi delta, choking off supplies of refined petroleum products and overseas grain shipments, maybe then the Bush administration would understand that the loss of wetlands in coastal Louisiana in less than a hundred years is an issue which affects the well-being of the entire United States.

It may be unfortunate for New Orleans that we’re more inclined to join a second line parade than join a terrorist movement and strap a bomb to our chests, and more likely to fill up on a chewy french bread oyster po-boy than fill up on communist party manifestos.

Nevertheless, the crisis for our region, and the country, remains the same. An area of coastal Louisiana the size of Delaware has been lost in the last century, with the very real possibility that the next time another “global warming event” strikes Louisiana, oil pipelines could be severed, or the Mississippi River channel destroyed.

Last week, Councilwoman Shelley Midura provided what might be the first really strong rebuttal by a public official to the Bush administration’s common claim that it’s sent “a lot of money” down here, thus resisting the need for more, and better, assistance.

Meanwhile, ass monkey of the planet is about to ask Congress for an additional $200 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s time for the presidential candidates to start talking about how, exactly, future generations of Americans will pay for the Bush quagmire, and whether there aren’t better choices are for how tax dollars could be spent more productively.

Last week, Times-Picayune editor Jim Amoss called for a Gulf Coast Marshall Plan (welcome to the club, Jim). Many bloggers have similarly called for WPA-style projects to create opportunities for residents who (still) want to come back to rebuild their homes and neighborhoods. Even more ambitiously, how about a WPA coastal restoration effort, with a ribbon cutting on completion of a major portion of that effort in 2012 — the Louisiana bicentennial.

Here’s a powerful suggestion to bring attention to the need for a Marshall Plan:

In a curious evocation of Nero and Marie Antoinette, Bush twiddled rather than fiddled while New Orleans flooded rather than burned; meanwhile his mother made comments that were virtually to the effect of “Let them eat dirt.”

Perhaps we should be evacuating people to the mall in Washington, DC. I envision Bushvilles springing up as Hoovervilles did during the Great Depression when that President’s big business leanings led to insensitivity toward the suffering of millions of those just as friggin’ American as he was — sound familiar?

Cherty and Brownie and his oh-golly-gosh, “this is hard” incredulity.

Nothing the terrorists can do to us is worse than we can do to ourselves.

We are all from New Orleans.

This morning, NPR broadcasted Steve Inskeep’s interview with author Greg Behrman about his idea of a Marshall Plan for the Middle East.

Now for an interesting little game. I’m turning Behrman’s comments into an argument for a Gulf Coast Marshall Plan by replacing relevant portions of the excerpted interview with local equivalents.

SI: People have spoken in modern times about a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan New Orleans, and of course billions and billions of dollars have been spent in an effort to rebuild Iraq the Gulf Coast. Is it possible for the United States, really, to launch a Marshall Plan today?

GB: The Marshall Plan was unique to its time and place, and it responded to a certain set of very specific challenges, but I think it is absolutely possible to take some of the insights and principles that served us well in the Marshall Plan and apply them.

For example, in the Middle East Gulf Coast, I think that a similarly bold program to promote economic opportunity and partnership in the region would serve our interests very well. I think it would do several things. First, it would embolden moderates and put pressure on hardliners and radicals bloggers in the region.

SI: Although, wait a minute, wait a minute. When the United States tries to aid moderates in the Middle East Gulf Coast, they often get discredited. Don’t we have a much more poisonous, or complicated, situation in the Middle East Gulf Coast than there was in Europe, where some countries had been U.S. allies, and the one country, Germany, had been the enemy, but had been very thoroughly defeated, and knew it needed the help.

BG: Absolutely not, actually. Remember that, back then, communism was on the rise, and there was actually a great deal of opposition to the United States, and a good deal of skepticism about what America was trying to do with this offer of aid. But we stood with moderates, and we were very adroit in how we approached the program, by offering a hand in partnership, by looking to the Europeans to take the initiative. This was a grand enterprise. It was sufficiently large to really stir the European people. And when we got behind it, the Europeans really began to see that America wanted to stand with Europe. And while this sort of program would, no doubt, be greeted with a strong measure of skepticism by a lot of quarters neighborhoods from Middle East New Orleans, I think that if we approached it in the same way, over time, it could help recast how we’re perceived in the region.

Too bad we aren’t fighting communists or terrorists on the Gulf Coast.