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<DIV class=kicker><EM>NY Times</EM></DIV>
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<DIV class=kicker>Op-Ed Columnist</DIV><NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type=" ">
<H1>A Can't-Do Government</H1></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV class=byline><FONT size=3>By </FONT><A
title="More Articles by Paul Krugman"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/paulkrugman/index.html?inline=nyt-per"><FONT
color=#000066 size=3>PAUL KRUGMAN</FONT></A></DIV></NYT_BYLINE>
<DIV class=timestamp><FONT size=3>Published: September 2, 2005</FONT></DIV>
<DIV id=articleBody><!--NYT_INLINE_IMAGE_POSITION1 --><NYT_TEXT>
<P><FONT size=3>Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the
three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on
New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New
Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in
December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential
catastrophe very much like the one now happening.</FONT></P></DIV></FONT></DIV>
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<P>So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared? After 9/11, hard
questions were deferred in the name of national unity, then buried under a thick
coat of whitewash. This time, we need accountability.</P>
<P>First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive? Katrina
hit five days ago - and it was already clear by last Friday that Katrina could
do immense damage along the Gulf Coast. Yet the response you'd expect from an
advanced country never happened. Thousands of Americans are dead or dying, not
because they refused to evacuate, but because they were too poor or too sick to
get out without help - and help wasn't provided. Many have yet to receive any
help at all.</P>
<P>There will and should be many questions about the response of state and local
governments; in particular, couldn't they have done more to help the poor and
sick escape? But the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both
preparation and urgency in the federal government's response. </P>
<P>Even military resources in the right place weren't ordered into action. "On
Wednesday," said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., "reporters
listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High
School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel
playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and
performing calisthenics!"</P>
<P>Maybe administration officials believed that the local National Guard could
keep order and deliver relief. But many members of the National Guard and much
of its equipment - including high-water vehicles - are in Iraq. "The National
Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission,"
a Louisiana Guard officer told reporters several weeks ago.</P>
<P>Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken? After 2003 the Army
Corps of Engineers sharply slowed its flood-control work, including work on
sinking levees. "The corps," an Editor and Publisher article says, citing a
series of articles in The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, "never tried to hide
the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland
security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the
strain."</P>
<P>In 2002 the corps' chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired,
after he criticized the administration's proposed cuts in the corps' budget,
including flood-control spending.</P>
<P>Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness? The
administration has, by all accounts, treated the emergency management agency
like an unwanted stepchild, leading to a mass exodus of experienced
professionals.</P>
<P>Last year James Lee Witt, who won bipartisan praise for his leadership of the
agency during the Clinton years, said at a Congressional hearing: "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."</P>
<P>I don't think this is a simple tale of incompetence. The reason the military
wasn't rushed in to help along the Gulf Coast is, I believe, the same reason
nothing was done to stop looting after the fall of Baghdad. Flood control was
neglected for the same reason our troops in Iraq didn't get adequate armor. </P>
<P>At a fundamental level, I'd argue, our current leaders just aren't serious
about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but
they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on
preventive measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice.</P>
<P>Yesterday Mr. Bush made an utterly fantastic claim: that nobody expected the
breach of the levees. In fact, there had been repeated warnings about exactly
that risk.</P>
<P>So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do
government that makes excuses instead of doing its job. And while it makes those
excuses, Americans are dying</P></DIV></BODY></HTML>