The National Guard MIA

As the newspeople repeat, our hearts go out to the millions stranded in Louisiana and Mississippi. And we ponder the unimaginable environmental devastation. The Coast Guard, we are told, is on the job, but cannot satisfy the enormous demand for help. Interestingly, we hear little about the National Guard, the first and largest responder to natural disasters, on the news. For the past two years, the National Guard has been largely unavailable to fight forest fires as more than a third of the Guard has been dedicated to the war in Iraq. Now, they are unavailable for the REAL CRISIS IN THE GULF and the very LITERAL QUAGMIRE at home. The Southwest will burn, and the South will drown, with nary a peep about the MIA Guard in the wall-to-wall coverage.

Guard Stretched Thin - Washington Post, June 6, 2004. Ah, and here's someone who knows what he is talking about. And please see Ken Rufo's intelligent breakdown of the politics of Katrina.

Addendum:
I am also wondering how the "question that has been on everyone's lips," the "elephant in the living room" - that is to say, the "race and class question" - is going to pan out. I'm not confident that anyone with any real power will take it seriously. But what all this talk does provide is a framework for understanding the spectacle as a kind of "third world chaos," as network newspeople everywhere are putting it. That is, it is a picture of black anarchy (surrounded by white noise) that feeds everything from Cops to the L.A. Riots to the MTV brand hip hop. If it can't be ignored wholesale like Rwanda or Darfur, what remains is racist spectacle of misery packaged for the consumption of those who live in the other America. As Geraldo Rivera barked tonight (the fifth day, when the Guard finally did show up), "When night falls this place [the convention center] is going to blow."

This is a one time when I have to give it up for Fox News' Shepard Smith. He has been camped out in the former city of New Orleans for five days. Tonight he was a via satellite guest of Bill O'Reilly's. I don't know if they were jousting for Fox territory or what, but they got into it a little. O'Reilly of course made the argument that it's not a race thing but rather bad planning and poor leadership. Smith, cutting O'Reilly off in a rare moment, brought up the fact that rich tourists at a waterfront hotel received transportation privileges and were ushered to the front of food lines at the dome. Smith literally sounded like he was undergoing some kind of crisis of conscience. He later tempered his remarks with an "I am not placing blame" comment, but his message clearly did fit into O'Reilly's scheme.