Christopher Hitchens: The war hasn't kept us from fighting the flood

A brilliant, brilliant article by Christopher Hitchens on Slate.com.

He demolishes one myth that has grown up since Katrina hit America's Gulf Coast and exposes one shameful betrayal of the world's poor by the left.  The myth (relentlessly propagated by the BBC) is that Iraq denied New Orleans enough troops.  The betrayal of the world's poor is that Iraq would have been worth abandoning if New Orleans had been denied troops.

EXPOSING THE MYTH

"Lt. Gen. Steve Blum was able to tell Donald Rumsfeld early last week that he could put 40,000 troops into the area at once and double that figure if he was asked to. Huge naval vessels like the USS Iwo Jima and Bataan, which can desalinize and pump thousands of gallons of fresh water, and which have thousands of potential hospital beds, were free and on call in the vicinity, as were numberless helicopters. The 82^nd Airborne and the First Air Cavalry, now deployed, have acquired huge experience in civil affairs, emergency repair, water provision, and other necessary skills—in guess which recent theater of operations. National Guardsmen from several dozen states, many of them also toughened by hard conditions in Iraq, were in position on time. The whereabouts of some Louisiana Guard units is immaterial, because they would have needed massive augmentation in any case. And only 100 National Guardsmen from Louisiana failed to show up for work, which is remarkable in the circumstances and contrasts vividly with the disgraceful performance of the New Orleans Police Department. But the president is not permitted by the Constitution to use the military for law enforcement, or not without the permission of the governor of the state, and the fuss about this is at least partly a cover for a feeble governor and a flaky mayor, who seek to displace the blame."

EXPOSING THE BETRAYAL

"A favorite trope among those who try to politicize the justified outrage over New Orleans is the plight of the slum-dwellers and the dark-skinned, and quite right, too. But it's highly objectionable to be told, by those who go on in this way, that we should instantly dump the Iraqis and Kurds who are fighting for their lives in a slum that could become another slaughterhouse and plague-spot. There is something degrading and suspect here—why lavish any of our care and resources on the wogs? Does this suggestion do anything to diminish xenophobia and resentment "at home," at just the time and just the place where we don't need it? Am I expected to tell a homeless woman in Biloxi that she has just been ripped off by an Ay-rab? A scuttle from Iraq or from Afghanistan (where the Kabul-Kandahar highway also took a lot of time and equipment and manpower to build) would add to the number of stricken and broken cities in the world, and not reduce it. If liberalism and humanitarianism do not mean internationalism, they mean precisely nothing. Shame on those who try to turn the needy and the victims against each other."

Comments

[Selsdon Man]

"But the president is not permitted by the Constitution to use the military for law enforcement, or not without the permission of the governor of the state"

So what's the point of the Department for Homeland Security?

[malcolm]

The picture of Hitchens is many years out of date.You should print a more up to date version which shows the fat alchoholic he's become.
Hitchens was an extreme left journalist when he lived in England but seems to have had a dramatic conversion since he moved to the U.S. and become a cheer leader for George Bush!

[Editor]

The picture probably is flattering and in need of an update! I don't think he's a cheerleader for Bush, Malcolm (he's very critical of many Bush policies and attacks Bush's position on Terri Schiavo in this article) but he is a cheerleader for the Iraq stage of the war on terror... and a persuasive one at that.

[Bruce]

Selsdon, the armed forces and the Dept. of Homeland Security have different jobs to do. It is NOT the job of the DHS to provide local law enforcement after a hurricane. The DHS is chartered to, and does, provide non-military security, plus intelligence coordination.

[Selsdon Man]

Bruce, surely that is the job of the FBI and CIA. Co-ordination should be the task of the State Department. DHS seems like an extra layer of bureaucracy to me.

[Peter C Glover]

I agree. I check out Slate regularly. Hitchens does an admirable job on this score and indeed many more.

He does ably rubbishes the myths about the use of the US military in New Orleans etc. Now if only Chris was not so rabidly anti-Christian (to be fair anti-all religious belief) he might actually grasp that the Judeo-Christian tradition not only underpins the whole of Western civilisation's genius (sponsoring modern science, education etc.) but also is the foundation stone of conservatism itself.

But then most modern conservatives don't understand this either. They would do well to recognise that you don't always have to be a dyed in the wool Christian (as I happen to be either). Both Winston and Maggie understood this well enough.