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Blogfest 2005 - Sep 2, 2005 - Printable Version
- "Not Acceptable"
by Mark Faulk
I don't even know what to say anymore. Everyone I've talked to in the past few days is angry beyond belief....even the Republicans who supported Bush right up until....well, right up until the past few days. The nation is in shock, and not the kind of shock that usually accompanies major disasters in our country and around the globe. I know. I live in Okahoma City, which has found itself at the epicenter of several tragic disasters.....the Murrah Building bombing ten years ago, the infamous May 3, 1999 tornado that leveled the eastern half of the county and several cities, and several more tornadoes that leveled areas of central Oklahoma over the past few years. Hell, I even drove into a tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, on May 8, 2003. It passed directly in front of me less than a quarter mile away, I didn't even have time to get out of my car. I watched a McDonald's explode to my left, and a hotel totally destroyed in front of me (the bricks poured down like five pound raindrops just a few feet in front of my car), and then I spent the next five hours pulling injured people out of demolished houses, helping them collect what belongings were still in the mile section, and shuttling them to nearby hotels. I heard stories that I could barely believe, which I'll tell at some future date....when the country isn't falling apart at the seams. (Here's a teaser....one person who I helped had lost his home to tornados three times in five years...at the same location. Unlike lightening, the odds of a tornado striking twice in the same place are apparently better than one might think.)
But that was different. Aside from the obvious fact that the area of destruction was far greater (Even the May 3, 1999 tornado, which recorded the highest winds in the history of the world, took 44 lives, and leveled hundreds of homes, can't begin to compare to Hurricane Katrina, both in scope and in lives and property lost. In fact, the tragic events of 9/11 can't even compare to the destruction of hundreds and hundreds of square miles of land and property in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama), the entire mood of the country is different this time. This time, our compassion is overshadowed with indignant anger and frustration, and rightfully so.
So...here I am again, trying to find words to describe feelings that can't be described. Like all of America, I'm outraged beyond belief. Outraged that our President hasn't done his job, that the greedy oil companies are gouging us again when they should be donating money and resources to help with the rescue operation...and the same goes for every other goddamn millionaire in America. They've lived like kings and queens for years at our expense, but now, when their country needs them to put a tiny bit of it back...to save lives...most of them are safely locked away in their gated communities, counting their gold. In the words of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, "You know, God is looking down on all this, and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price."
Mayor Nagin (who is being villified by right-wing talk show hosts for criticizing President Bush...instead of being heralded as the hero that he has been in this crisis) summed up the feelings of a lot of Americans in an interview on WWL radio in Louisiana last night. I'll end this with his words, and ask everyone to read the attached full transcript of that interview....in fact memorize his words. As the excuses are volleyed back and forth over the next few months, and as a few scapegoats are sacrificed in order to satisfy the masses, go back and read them again and again.
The responsibility for the (in Bush's own words) "not acceptable" response to this disaster of epic proportions lies squarely at the top. I was half expecting Bush to add to his comment...."The results are not acceptable. Who's in charge here anyway?" That's how clueless he has been through all of this. And that, fellow Americans, is simply....."not acceptable."
Excerpts from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin interview with WWL:
NAGIN: They don't have a clue what's going on down here.
I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. We ain't talking about -- you know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out here.
I'm like, "You got to be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."
That's -- they're thinking small, man. And this is a major, major, major deal. And I can't emphasize it enough, man. This is crazy.
I've got 15,000 to 20,000 people over at the convention center. It's bursting at the seams. The poor people in Plaquemines Parish. ... We don't have anything, and we're sharing with our brothers in Plaquemines Parish.
It's awful down here, man.
WWL: Apparently there's a section of our citizenry out there that thinks because of a law that says the federal government can't come in unless requested by the proper people, that everything that's going on to this point has been done as good as it can possibly be.
NAGIN: Really?
WWL: I know you don't feel that way.
NAGIN: Well, did the tsunami victims request? Did it go through a formal process to request?
You know, did the Iraqi people request that we go in there? Did they ask us to go in there? What is more important?
But we authorized $8 billion to go to Iraq lickety-quick. After 9/11, we gave the president unprecedented powers lickety-quick to take care of New York and other places.
Now, you mean to tell me that a place where most of your oil is coming through, a place that is so unique when you mention New Orleans anywhere around the world, everybody's eyes light up -- you mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need? Come on, man.
You know, I'm not one of those drug addicts. I am thinking very clearly.
And I don't know whose problem it is. I don't know whether it's the governor's problem. I don't know whether it's the president's problem, but somebody needs to get their ass on a plane and sit down, the two of them, and figure this out right now.
I don't want to see anybody do anymore goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city. And then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can't even count.
Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.
To read this interview in it's entirety, go to:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/nagin.transcript/index.html
Read "The Blood of New Orleans....," "Hell on Earth....", and "They're Trying to Wash us Away" at:
http://www.faulkingtruth.com/blog/
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