Blaming Bush for New Orleans disaster is irrational

Blaming President Bush for the evil that emerged from New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina makes as much sense as blaming him for the Beslan massacre in Russia a year ago. It doesn't hold water (no pun intended).

Nicole Gelinas writing in the City Journal, succinctly points out the true causes of the New Orleans disaster -- the city residents and officials themselves. Here are some excerpts from her clear-eyed column:

In truth, the looters, rapists, and murderers who have terrorized New Orleans since Monday began their post-Katrina reign of terror a full day before the situation grew truly desperate -- —and it was their increasingly lawless behavior that kept willing but unarmed professional and volunteer rescue workers away from the city and from the poor people who needed saving.

Katrina didn'’t turn innocent citizens into desperate criminals. This week'’s looters (not those who took small supplies of food and water for sustenance, but those who have trashed, burned, and shot their way through the city since Monday) are the same depraved individuals who have pushed New Orleans'’ murder rate to several multiples above the national average in normal times. (New Orleans, without Katrina, would have likely ended 2005 with 330 or so murders -- compared to about 65 in Boston, a city roughly the same in size.) Today may not be the best day to get into New Orleans' intractable crime problem, but it's necessary, since it explains how this week's communications and policing vacuum so quickly created a perfect storm for the vicious lawlessness that has broken out.

New Orleans, first off, doesn't have the middle-class or affluent tax base to afford the professional police or prosecution force it needs, crime has created a vicious cycle, pushing out taxpayers who fund the police.

The "blame Bush first" crowd seems to blame every American happenstance, no matter how trivial or no matter how far removed from the responsibility of the federal government, on President Bush. Whether its the spread of West Nile virus, the dismal Summer in Oregon, or the accidental breaking of little Suzie's doll by little Sally, the "blame Bush first" crowd seems to be able to make a link to the President. Sadly, such accusations, which used to be the purview of the looney left, now seem to be filtering down to Republicans and Libertarians. It is not just a symptom of lazy thinking, it is irrational.

And, this matters.

When normally rational people start engaging in irrational indictment of competant, legitimate authority, they contribute to the undermining of all social order. To put it another way, irrational thinking and discourse brings New Orleans-type anarchy that much closer for all of us.

The irrationality is so seductive that even Gelinas gets into it a bit at the end of her piece when she criticizes the slow response of the federal government to the disaster. She is wrong. The looting of New Orleans did not happen because of Katrina. New Orleans knew it was living dangerously. The city was warned to prepare over and over by reputable scientists and other government officials. It had the entire last century to prepare it's infrastructure to handle a hurricane like Katrina. It failed to do so. The city had decades to have effective emergency plans and adequate supplies for its citizens in place, particularly for a disaster which everyone knew was likely to happen! The fact that the city did not prepare is no one else's fault. The looting of New Orleans is the very predictable result of decades of corruption, mismanagement, and incompetence by its own, Democrat city officials, and decades of stifling and paralyzing government dependency on the part of tens of thousands of its own citizens.

It is certainly NOT the fault of a Texan named George W. Bush, currently a resident of Washington, D.C..

Gelinas' entire column can be found here.