Did Bush Cause Katrina?
by Vincent Fiore
 Hurricane Katrina will probably go down in our nation’s history as the greatest economic disaster to date and the country’s worst natural catastrophe in decades. Surely, the number of dead that lie beneath the petroleum and fecal-contaminated waters that cover the city of New Orleans will be high in number.
That has not stopped the liberal political and media class from dwelling upon their most dangerous enemy. Their enemy is more feared than any Class 5 hurricane or earthquake, and certainly more hated than any terrorist this side of Osama Bin Laden. That enemy is George W. Bush.
I am not in the habit of writing for the sole purpose of protecting Bush, or any Republican. Indeed, I, and I will recklessly speak for many conservatives in this, know that this president has been abysmal on nearly anything to do with immigration reform or border control. Bush’s Medicare prescription drug bill, which will cost taxpayers in excess of $720 billion over 10 years, is not a highlight of achievement for him. The signing of the McCain/Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill was a direct assault against the First Amendment. The bloated Farm Bill, which came in at $190 billion over ten years, is nothing if not wasteful. The recently signed Highway Bill, with its 6,000 put-aside pork projects, is a mockery that begged for Bush’s first presidential veto. Needless to say, that never happened, as that veto pen seems lost in this administration.
Even the way Bush has handled the war in Iraq has at times irked those who support him. If you were to ask me why, I would tell you that Bush has--at times--held back the military in Iraq for the sake of political concerns. What he should be doing is flattening dens of terrorism like Fallujah, and sending terrorist enablers like Syria a serious and time-sensitive ultimatum. Putting this aside, Bush has had a lot on his plate these last five years, and none of the problems he has had to deal with have been particularly easy. The recession, the war, bitter Democrats, the economy again, Democrats, natural disasters, Democrats, Democrats, Democrats…
The left never seems to tire of being absurd. Former Clinton senior advisor Sidney Blumenthal proabaly took the prize, by citing cuts that the Bush administration enacted over the course of his presidency, saying these directly led to the disaster we see on television today. Never mind the fact that the levees were built to withstand no more than a Category 3 hurricane, and that local city and state government have known of this problem for decades, as Hurricane Betsy showed to all in 1965, swamping New Orleans under 8 feet of water.
Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, who, last seen disguised as a talking memo board for nearly every radical liberal group that now runs the Democratic Party, dispels any doubts as to her political “savvy” and general “functionality” by blaming Bush for Hurricane Katrina. Sheehan goes on to say that Bush is “heading to Louisiana to see the devastation that his environmental policies and his killing policies have caused.”
But the fact remains that the Democratic Party, or people long-associated with the party, have never missed an opportunity to politically grandstand atop the misery of others. The party of Howard Dean did this after 9/11. Democrats did this (and are still doing it) regarding the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They did this during the recession of 2001. So no one should be surprised that Democrats, or liberals, or whatever they want to call themselves, do it now with eyes-wide-open as death and suffering are taking place in the Gulf area.
Yet we are always surprised. Though we have seen and heard some of the vilest and politically motivated performances from the left since Bush took office, nevertheless, we are surprised.
At least after 9/11, the Democrats managed to submerge for a few weeks their basic instinct of party politics over the broken bodies beneath the World Trade Center, long enough to make some people believe that certain things are bigger than the party and politics. But like a shark is drawn to blood, so too are today’s modern-day leftists, who cannot wait to even let the dead start to decompose in New Orleans and Mississippi before they are blaming Bush for random acts of nature.
Vincent Fiore is a freelance political writer who lives in New York City.
Email the Editor |
