Blumenthal: Remembrance of Bush's fiascoes

As he travels the nation to commemorate Katrina and 9/11, the president is only highlighting the tragedy of his own incompetence.

By Sidney Blumenthal

President Bush declared a National Day of Remembrance on Aug. 29, the day of Hurricane Katrina's landfall -- not on Sept. 2, the day the federal government finally responded to the disaster. He has begun commemorating highlights of his presidency as though he were a guide leading visitors through the wonders of the George W. Bush Presidential Library. His dissociation is one element in the continuity of his methods.

The population of New Orleans is about half of the 455,000 it was when the storm hit, reduced to the size it was in 1880. Here the Bush administration has built a bridge to the 19th century. Along the Mississippi coast, fewer than 5 percent of the wrecked homes are being rebuilt. The $17 billion in federal community development block grants has only now slowly begun trickling in. Little of it will go to low-income homeowners and none to renters, who constitute about half of those displaced.

(snip)

Remembrance of Bush's fiascoes does not overshadow the reality that they are not sealed in the past but are continuing catastrophes. As new failures unfold, the old ones appear in their refracted light. Memories of Bush's damage acquire deeper meanings with each new calamity.

Consider: In the New Orleans black community of the Lower 9th Ward, only 200 of its original 14,400 residents have returned to their blasted homes. Though statistics are unavailable, it is likely that Hezbollah has already rebuilt more homes in southern Lebanon than Bush has a year after Katrina in the Lower 9th Ward.

more…
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/08/31/katrina/