Reading notes

I only venture to LewRockwell.com occasionally — to better understand others’ passionately-held [libertarian] views — but today on dropping by I see a most remarkable way of looking at the Katrina/New Orleans aftermath (my boldface):

Bush’s single-minded focus on the “war against terrorism” has compounded a natural disaster and turned it into the greatest calamity in American history. The US has lost its largest and most strategic port, thousands of lives, and 80% of one of America’s most historic cities is under water.

If terrorists had achieved this result, it would rank as the greatest terrorist success in history.

“Greatest calamity in American history” may be arguable — though not to New Orleans and Gulf Coast residents — but it is without doubt one of the greatest calamities. That its deadly outcome would rank as “the greatest terrorist success in history” strikes me today as inarguable (from a U.S. point of view).

My observation is that catastrophic failures like this must be swiftly met, and usually are in a sane world, by the demoting or firing of the decision-makers involved. The removal from authority need not be personal, and has nothing to do with what their intent may or may not have been. It’s about removing them from the possibility of making the same grievous set of mistakes again.

2005-09-13 update: Billmon brings home the horror further in a beautifully written entry. I hereby retract any attempt to quantify the calamity; even if I knew what I was talking about, it is for most of us, living and dead, a distinction without a difference.