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We have heard Bush supporters touting the virtues of personal and local accountability for the Hurricane Katrina disaster, deflecting responsibility away from the US federal government both for not improving the flood control systems around New Orleans, and for the lack of quick response to those suffering. No doubt there is truth that accountability for the lack of planning for the disaster and the slow response to the needy extends from each unique individual to city, county, state and federal personnel and institutions.<BR>
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However, if personal and local accountability is the approach to government and society touted by republican conservatives, and we should therefore not expect that our federal government be critically relied upon for preparations and planning for a rapid and extensive response to major disasters, what is the logic behind trying to rebuild entire nations around the globe with the resources of this same federal government we should not be so dependent upon?<BR>
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We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq, some of it to reconstruct their infrastructure, while a tiny fraction of this amount of money ($14 billion was an estimate given by one source) allocated to improve the flood control systems around New Orleans could have averted the worst of Katrina's wrath, a project a private company would certainly not undertake for profit, involving an amount of money very difficult for local and Louisiana State institutions to finance.<BR>
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Many US citizens are now questioning the wisdom of spending 100s of billions of dollars on foreign soil to improve other nation's infrastructure, ostensibly to keep the US safe from "terror," while we have neglected critical US infrastructure, such as the New Orleans's flood control system, leading to a deadly national disaster that was well known could result from a major hurricane hitting New Orleans.<BR>
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Let's let the Iraq people solve their own society's problems, and not rely on the inefficient and wasteful US federal government to solve their problems for them, right? This is the logic conservative republicans are applying to US citizens, is it not?<BR>
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This appears to be a sensible conservative approach, unlike the nonsense coming from conservative republicans squandering US taxpayers money in foolish schemes of foreign nation building managed by the same federal government the same conservative republican's insist is inefficient and wasteful in response to requests that federal public taxpayers money be spent on critical infrastructure improvements inside the USA, such as the New Orleans's flood control systems.<BR>
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Ted Moffett </FONT></HTML>