The Thought of George W. Bush Is a Spiritual Atom Bomb of Infinite Power!

Amity Shlaes writes about how the fact that George W. Bush was personally mobilized and prepared to deal with Hurrican Katrina has saved lives: "The level of preparedness for a giant storm may not have been obvious outside the country. But the US was prepared for Katrina. All the old and new federal offices worked together and confronted the storm early."

I guess she didn't get the memo:

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Columnists - Amity Shlaes: Bush has learnt to ride the storm: Published: September 1 2005 20:24 | Last updated: September 1 2005 20:24: It is early to be getting partisan about New Orleans. We are still too close to the awfulness of the hurricane: as I write the death toll from the waters is approaching 200. The US is absorbing the news of the annihilation of an entire American city. Still, the big political question about Hurricane Katrina is already being posed by the bloggers: is President George W. Bush's foreign policy affecting the federal government's response to New Orleans? Did America react differently to Katrina because it was thinking about Iraq?

The answer of course is yes. In some ways, foreign commitments are limiting the US's ability to respond. Instead of buttressing the levees or arresting looters today, the 5,000 troops from the Louisiana national guard are parked at Camp Liberty outside Baghdad, watching the video clips of the crowds at the Superdome just like the rest of us. Mississippi guardsmen are also in Iraq, attached to the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force. In the national mind, Katrina, Iraq, and the potential for a terror strike are all competing for attention.

Still, Iraq has not caused the US to botch Katrina -- either the preparation or response. On the contrary, the fact that the country and President Bush personally were already mobilised for disaster has saved lives.

Go back, for just a moment, to the 2000 elections. A debate moderator asked Mr Bush, the presidential candidate, what he would do when confronted with an emergency. Mr Bush -- then Texas governor -- gave a reply about a flood in Del Rio, Texas, that now seems touching both for its emotion and the small scale on which he was thinking: "A fellow and his family got completely uprooted. The only thing I knew was to get aid as quickly as possible with state and federal help, and to put my arms around the man and his family and cry with them. That's what governors do." And that was just about as far as Mr Bush%u2019s thoughts went. After all, among Mr Bus's advisers were federalists who deplored the concept of expanding Washington's power. They recognised that weather emergencies, like wars, often provide the excuse for just such expansion. Faced with a Katrina in the summer of 2001, the president, thinking as a federalist, might have been slower to call for Washington's intervention. He might have said: "this is a job for Kathleen Blanco, the governor of Louisiana. With a little help from Washington." And that, alas, probably would not have been sufficient.

September 11 changed Mr Bush and the country. Many of Mr Bush's critics remarked that he looked like a deer in the headlights in that moment at the primary school when aides first whispered to him the news of the aircraft hijackings. But Mr Bush grew into a new role of leader in emergencies, and so did the federal government. In addition to its old Federal Emergency Management Agency, it created the Office of Homeland Security to co-ordinate local, state and federal responses.

The level of preparedness for a giant storm may not have been obvious outside the country. But the US was prepared for Katrina. All the old and new federal offices worked together and confronted the storm early. Nearly two days before Katrina hit New Orleans, the president made millions available to Louisiana by declaring the state an official disaster area. In a press conference on Sunday morning, he instructed the country to listen for any alerts -- and warned straightforwardly that he could not "stress enough the danger this hurricane poses to Gulf coast communities". On Sunday too, Alabama and Mississippi received access to cash when they in turn were declared disaster areas. Citizens of New Orleans with special needs were instructed to go to the Superdome. Sunday also brought a mandatory evacuation order from the mayor of New Orleans. The hurricane made landfall only on Monday morning. And so on, in military fashion. As for troops, 30,000 will be in the south soon -- hardly a shortage.

What of the future, when the waters recede? Katrina is likely to change the US, and lead Washington to spend more to protect against certain eventualities: another California earthquake; worse forest fires than those of 2000. But the odds of another natural disaster on a Katrina scale are still less than the odds of a terrorist poisoning of a water source or, heaven forfend, a dirty bomb at an airport. And those terror odds are currently increasing -- after all, terrorists see chaos as opportunity. Most Americans know all this and are trying to rise to the special challenges this year has brought. To introduce politics at such a point would be not only wrong but low.

One of the Financial Times's great advantages to me is that I kinow I can count on it not to print things by people who are deliberately lying to me. Or, rather, one of the Financial Times's great advantages was that I thought I could count on it not to print things by people who are deliberately lying to me.

Comments

[ogmb]

September 1?

[christo]

Are we going to have to reference the foreign press for fair and balanced news about the U. S.?

[LM]

Wow. Even the Washington Post would be too embarrassed to publish that (unless it were penned by Krauthammer).

[Randolph Fritz]

Good gods.

Maybe it's the toxins in the water.

Discussion of anthropogenic climate change and hurricane intensity:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=181

[hans Suter]

you missed yesterday's Shlaes:

Blame delays on federalism:
The Federalist Pause is that little intake of breath, that clearing of the political throat that American leaders instinctively demonstrate before plunging forward. Mr Bush provided a classic demonstration of the pause last week when he considered invoking a little-known law, the Insurrection Act, to take over Louisiana – and chose not to, out of deference to the authority of Kathleen Blanco, the governor.

[Ralph]

As a long time subscriber of FT I agree that Amitay Shlae's column surprised me when it first appeared. It is definitely a lowering of the FT's otherwise high standards.

[bad Jim]

I'm definitely going to pick up a copy of the salmon-colored rag tomorrow and turn immediately to the weather section, to learn the color of their sky and the number of suns and moons in the neighborhood of their planet.

[Tadhgin]

Look the Irish Times has Mark Steyn, the FT has Amity. I think that these types of columnists are included for two reasons

1. As a public service, to show European readers what ridiclous things some Americans are thinking. The average reader wouldn't believe it could be true if a journalist wrote it, so it is kind of directly presenting the evidence; and

2. A way of making readers feel very intelligent and superior to these writers in particular, and even less admirably to Americans in general.

[BC]

I think of Amity Shlaes as the FT's editorial cartoon, viz a cartoon version of the WSJ editorial page.

[BC]

... and regarding federalism, Fafblog, as usual, puts it best:
"[O]ne must recognize that there are limits to what powers the federal government should exercise in a crisis. Yes, it is the right and duty of the president to override state drug policy, to determine who can or cannot marry, to indefinitely detain citizens without due process and to torture and kill prisoners as he sees fit, but disaster relief is a matter that should be left to the states. Yes, the images of the drowned, the diseased, and the desperately dying drove much of the country to outrage, but how much more outraged would America have been if FEMA had fed the Superdome refugees without the full oversight and authorization of the State of Louisiana? Had the president sent rescue helicopters to evacuate New Orleans the day the levees burst, he might have saved thousands of lives, but he would also have overstepped his authority - and if there's one thing George W. Bush refuses to countenance, it is abuse of power."
http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/with-great-power-comes-little-else.html

[kharris]

A related funny -- google "failure" and look at the top item.

[danejaneiro]

What rubbish!

[Ginger Yellow]

"The Federalist Pause is that little intake of breath, that clearing of the political throat that American leaders instinctively demonstrate before plunging forward. Mr Bush provided a classic demonstration of the pause last week when he considered invoking a little-known law, the Insurrection Act, to take over Louisiana – and chose not to, out of deference to the authority of Kathleen Blanco, the governor."

So he paused, and then didn't plunge forward. Great argument.

[Timothy Burke]

That column isn't even a lie, though. It's like something that slipped in from an alternate universe, a print-hallucination. The penultimate paragraph is just plain weird.

[Michael McIntyre]

Brad, why had you not gotten the memo on Amity Shlaes earlier? She's been FT's nod to the WSJ editorial page for years.

[LowLife]

A more just and true column I have never read. All youse guys are looking at this way wrong. Politics is something that should only happen when things are going well - like when the economy is booming, when the Federal budget is in surplus, when we are engaging in successful foreign wars while suffering zero American casualties. That's the time to undermine American leadership. But when an administration is flitting from one disater to another, when it is more concerned with faulty anti-missile defense systems in response to non-existence missile threats, when it is lying about non-existent threats from a surrounded, destitute and weakened country, when it's lethergy allows hundreds, maybe thousands of Americans die in a well predicted natural disaster, when its crazy foreign adventures are killing brave American men and woman and earning worldwide condemnation, when it bust the Federal budget and gains world-historical record debt, when it declares war on ecology, undermines international cooperation and contest the validity of science - well, that's when we should stand behind our government. What's wrong with you people? Why can't you see that?

[bakho]

The response of Bush to Katrina is the ugly face of his "ownership society". In the "ownership society", individuals are responsible for themselves and should not expect the Federal Government to bail them out. People who stayed in the big Easy and sat on their rooftops failed to hear the message that Mr Bush has been delivering. Mr Bush will not preside over the "Nanny State" like Bill Clinton. Mr Bush is moving the US to the ownership society. People who make bad decisions need to be punished. If the Federal Government were to move quickly to bail out people who made bad decisions (like those that stayed behind in NO for whatever reason), then the Nanny State would have won. IF people want a Nanny State Government that responds quickly to people caught in disasters, they should vote for Democrats like Bill Clinton, not Ownership Society Republicans.

[bill]

Bush Supports Home-Bred Terrorists

The administration and the Bush appointed Justice Department are so obsessed with a foreign “war on terror” that they have chosen to look the other way concerning home-bred terror perpetrated by our own government officials against U.S. citizens.

Below is a quote from an American prosecutor that President Bush and Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department believe is just fine,

"The last claim involves a statement made to attorney xxxxxxx warning that the defendant would be charged with additional crimes if he did not clam[sic] down. The statement is a reference to the defendant's continued harassment of the victim and the investigating officer in this case through the court process. The defendant has filed a civil action against the victim because of his participation in this criminal case. The State is currently reviewing a contempt charge against the defendants because of this activity. The statement was a proper warning made through the defendant's representative."

This is an actual written quote from a powerful republican prosecutor filed in court documents. It is a federal crime to threaten someone for filing civil litigation in federal court or for their participation in federal civil litigation. Threatening someone with adverse consequences whether it be breaking their arm or threatening them with an illegal and frivolous criminal prosecution is known as extortion and obstruction of justice. The above open-ended threat also constitutes violation of the federal racketeering statutes and federal civil rights crimes. The fact that the criminals in this instance carry government issued badges and guns heightens the terror, which is now also approved by the President and Attorney General Gonzales.

A glance at the legal system’s own ethical cannons explain very clearly why threats of this nature against civil proceedings are forbidden and criminal,

…“ The civil adjudicative process is primarily designed for the settlement of disputes between parties, while the criminal process is designed for the protection of society as a whole. Threatening to use, or using, the criminal process to coerce adjustment of private civil claims or controversies is a subversion of that process; further, the person against whom the criminal process is so misused may be deterred from asserting his legal rights and thus the usefulness of the civil process in settling private disputes is impaired. As in all cases of abuse of judicial process, the improper use of criminal process tends to diminish public confidence in our legal system.” …

Obstruction of federal civil litigation by the government itself is not only a crime against individual victims, it constitutes an attack on the integrity of the federal court system signaling a demise of the rule of law and adversary court process in this country. This trend is advocated by the current administration and the Justice Department. The courts have become a powerful tool for the government to abuse and manipulate.

In correspondence, President Bush failed to respond to this issue. Alberto Gonzales and his Justice Department indicated that the conduct was fine and not even a civil rights violation. Senator Elizabeth Dole had an equally callous and unethical response to this crime targeting the federal courts.

The above quote constitutes the on-going threat of violent arrest and incarceration for exercising a right clearly protected by the first amendment –redress of grievances in federal court. Government threats of criminal retaliation for a citizen’s pursuit a civil claims in federal court is also an impermissible coercion tactic violative of Due Process.

Constitutional rights of our own citizenry must be secured before preaching abroad concerning foreign constitutions, rights and freedoms.

In the same series of correspondences, the President, Attorney General Gonzales and Senator Dole expressed no concern about the threats of violent arrest and incarceration targeting citizens for merely attempting to exercise the clearly established first amendment right to attend and observe courthouse proceedings. Secret courts are not a precept that should be sheltered or embraced by our President or the Justice Department.

While the above instances reveal how this country is evolving into a police state with zero concern for rights, liberties and freedoms, ironically, we hold ourselves up as the example for others to emulate. President Bush, lets get it right here before we attempt to impose our system on others. Our military is risking their lives in foreign lands to protect rights, freedoms and liberties that currently exist only on paper in this country. The politicians that have directed our troops to engage in foreign conflict are the very same individuals who have waged a war to undermine our constitutional rights within our own borders.

The willingness of those in power to inspire fear in the public with threats of political imprisonment for stating a position, filing a paper in court or merely attending a court proceeding is terrorism. The President and Justice Department’s willingness to allow these practices support and encourages further terrorism.

Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department concludes that the above, “does not involve a prosecutable violation of federal criminal civil rights statutes [18 U.S.C., §§ 241, 242].”. See statutes below. In the United States today, the mere exercise of basic First Amendment rights is met with terrorist threats of arrest and political imprisonment reminiscent of Stalinist Russia while the courts have become government manipulated secret tribunals hiding the terror acts.

Bill Smith
North Carolina
bush_crimes --at-- yahoo.com

This piece authored under a penname to avoid retaliation.

UNITED STATES CODE Title 18

Sec. 241. - Conspiracy against rights

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or

They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death

Sec. 242. - Deprivation of rights under color of law

Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death

[jerry]

"But the odds of another natural disaster on a Katrina scale are still less than the odds of a terrorist poisoning of a water source or, heaven forfend, a dirty bomb at an airport."

Intriguing. I would bet that more lives are at risk due to a water poisoning in LA than if a dirty bomb exploded at LAX.

[johne]

It has been said that Karl Rove's forte is successfully attacking at an opponent's strongest point -- thus John McCain was unhinged by his captivity, and John Kerry's medal was a hoax. Is this a probe to test the corollary, that Bush's incompetence can be converted into a brilliant example of presidential omnicompetence?

[christo]

For faster results while googling "failure", hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button. Now that's competence.

Visit soon before the stinkin service takes it down.

The Star Wars 2 shield, shoot, I knew there was a reason I should be feeling secure. And it's a bargain compared to the other good things our conservative govt brought us.

[glenn hefner]

But in all honesty, aside from writing for the FT, does she have any credibility? Does anyone rate her at all? I kinda figured she was either the journalistic equivalent of a cheap slut - paid for the hour with greasy, grubbby right wing dollars - or she doesn't actually exist at all; just an atavar and the alto-ego of Pat Buchanan or some other nut.

I think an article like this is proof that she has no functioning nervous system at all. She was born without a cerebrum or she was pithed at a young age.

[nate]

http://tinyurl.com/drkax

"competitive, profitable and sustainable"

?

[camille roy]

Often have I rolled my eyes at the FT's lady columnists. Is there some arcane quota over the pond that female colunmists for the FT have to be pretty, young, airheads who blow smokerings for the toxic stew of ideologies and craven strategies & corruption of today's Republican party?

Yuck.

But really. This Amity Shaes column took the cake! The silver lining: it shows how utterly out of it these soupy apologists are.

[jonathan W. King]

kharris writes:
>
> A related funny -- google "failure" and look at the top item.

And the most impressive thing about that is that the referenced page doesn't seem to have the word "fail" or "failure" anywhere on it. Interestingly, Google can tell me that the word "failure"only appears in links to Bush's biography. And the obvious follow-up query:

link:www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html failure

gives some idea of the games people have been playing with this.

[alex]

Actually, it's hard to imagine a better spot for a dirty bomb than an airport. They are easy to secure and evacuate, nobody lives there, and there's plenty of real estate to scrape all the contaminated junk into and cap while you wait for the short half-life products to decay. Build another access road and terminal and you're back in business.

I don't mind people wringing their hands over semi-plausible disaster scenarios, but it would be nice if they devoted even two minutes worth of thought to them.

[Dave L]

"...a terrorist poisoning of a water source"

- Does anyone else find this a bit, uh, jarring? Has this been a favorite recent tactic of terrorists, or is she borrowing from a much older hysteria?

[ogmb]

A first:

Bush Takes Responsibility for Blunders

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
23 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - President Bush for the first time took responsibility Tuesday for federal government mistakes in dealing with Hurricane Katrina and suggested the calamity raised broader questions about the government's ability to handle both natural disasters and terror attacks.

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," Bush said at a joint White House news conference with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

"And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong," said Bush.

http://tinyurl.com/cj2ar

[dsquared]

I have to say that like several other commentors I'm surprised at the surprise here; neither the Amity Shlaes column nor its dreadful quality is exactly new.

[Jack]

But does anyone write to complain?

[aretino]

I thought Amity Schlaes a Brit. Tadhgin suggests otherwise. Please tell me he's wrong. This belief has been a great comfort to me: "She's a wingbat, but at least she's *their* wingbat."

[ogmb]

"gives some idea of the games people have been playing with this."

It also works with "Miserable Failure"...

[Roger Bigod]

And so on, in demented fashion.

[John Emerson]

Dear L "irishhistory@hotmail.com":

You write as if Ms. Shlaes' piece appeared in a vacuum. The reason no one bothered to refute her piece is that it simply repeats, in an especially egregious form, things we've seen before.

"Large issues like this usually have two sides": but this does not mean that every contribution to every debate deserves a repectful response.

Your high-minded, above-the-battle prissiness is, unfortunately, very well-represented in the comments here. I have never been able to understand people who think that by always saying "the truth is somewhere between the two extremes" they somehow show intelligence. A windup doll could be programmed to say what you just said, insults and all. Where's the intelligence in that?

[ogmb]

Dear irishhistory, as can be seen from my clip above, even George W. Bush has rebutted Amity Shlaes. It really needs no further comment.

[John Emerson]

Dear Mr. Irish History:

No one here has absolved the local officials, and Brad has criticized them very sharply. Except for the grossest political hacks, most people find "There's enough blame to go around" quite an easy concept to understand.

We have been criticizing Bush's lack of fulfilment of his own federal responsibilities, both before and after the event. Nothing you have said has anything to do with Bush's performance.

Instead, mostly you've been changing the subject -- the famous "But what about...." ploy. Some of what you say is simply made up (e.g., about "longstanding US practice and policy".) And you are formally correct that political appointees are **not necessarily** worthless hacks -- but most of the management of FEMA **actually were** worthless hacks, so why make that point?

Here's a link to a report on the Clinton administration's far superior response to the 1997 Grand Forks flood: http://www.startribune.com/stories/562/5610904.html

Your air of wounded superiority is pretty offputting in the face of the mediocrity of your own dogmatically "moderate", off-topic post. If you think that Bush did a good job, say so.

And finally -- the reason why most of us are more upset by the federal response than by the state and local response is that most of us live in the federal jurisdiction, but not in the LA or NO jurisdictions. Bush's incompetence and indifference potentially affects many times more people than the LA and NO officials' incompetence.

[Gray]

Hmm, I don't read the FT regularly, but the articles I have stumbled across where always examples of an underlying agenda and a lack of honesty, especially the opinion pieces. I'm not surprised about this new sorry effort of a schizophrenic. I'm just wondering if you really recognized the bias of FT only today. I seem to remember that there have been several critical reviews of FT reports and statistics here, or am I confused and I have seen them at Yglesias' or Drum's site?

[ogmb]

"Nice to see at least one Gov't offical take responsibility for the poor planning and execution of Katrina disaster response, without crying and/or wailing that its all someone else's fault."

I'm laughing too hard now to respond.

[Steve Hill]

Alas, the Financial Times has been in the FOX house for some time. After giving up on The FOXonomist, I bought a subscription to FT (or is that WTF?) because I really thought I needed objective financial information. FT is riddled with magical thinking. Get an issue at the newsstand and see for yourselves if you don't believe me. I got some financial info. for you'all: don't waste your $100. The worst investment of my life.

[ogmb]

"Military history shows that making good decisions, esp. by politicos not trained for it, under these conditions is rare."

See: Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association

[MTC]

Ms. Shlaes is former member of the editorial board at The Wall Street Journal. Robert Bartley was her mentor and spirit guide.

That just about says it all as regards her bona fides.

In her gig at the FT she is the token supply-sider, employed for the entertainment value. Nobody actually reads the commentary she produces.

[glenn hefner]

....and I actually don't share the views that the FT is biased, unless it's happened VERY recently. And certainly compared to the WSJ, it's refreshingly honest and open-minded.

[Urinated State of America]

I'll also concur with the general opinion of the arse-wipingly bad columns by Schlaes.

Replacing Schlaes' column with any random thought by Martin Wolf was thinking while brushing his teeth and/or scratching his balls that morning would be an improvement. Or what any random person was thinking while doing said acts.

"....and I actually don't share the views that the FT is biased, unless it's happened VERY recently. And certainly compared to the WSJ, it's refreshingly honest and open-minded."

Interestingly, the FT had the largest number of paid-up, real-life, card-carrying Communists on its staff of any British newspaper in the 1970s and 1980s; when British Trade Unionism was stronger and more strike-prone, it was valuable to have correspondents who had insider knowledge of what the shop stewards were thinking. One of the CPGBs intellectual heavyweights, Charles Leadbeater, was the labor editor at the FT. So the FT was pinkish in more than one way.