Unimaginable

I am sitting here listening to Pres. Bush speaking in Biloxi, Mississippi on the anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina. And I am struck by his use of the word "unimaginable". He said the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was "unimaginable."

I wish that was the only thing wrong with this administration - it's lack of imagination. When terrorists flew airplanes into the Twin Towers, George Bush told us that such a thing had been "unimaginable" before - notwithstanding any number of big screen and made for TV movies, series' episodes, and trash paperbacks to the contrary - let alone his own briefing books. The failure of the levees in New Orleans was unimaginable - though it had been front page news in Louisian for 20 years. The resistance to the US occupation of Iraq is "unimaginable" to the President, even today after it has steadily worsened for three years, despite the warnings from everyone from his Secretary of State, his generals, the advice of the UN and all of our European allies (save Britain), and newspaper editorials and the protests of good people like you and me all put him on advance notice.

No, I wish I could believe that this administration's biggest problem is merely a lack of imagination. It's real problem is an organizational mentality of denial, delay, condemn and besmirch. Find the low guy on the totem pole to fall on his own sword and then it's business as usual.

Now Bush is describing the meager efforts and modest success of relief efforts to date. To Bush, they are "remarable successes." To me they are an embarassment. A full year after Katrina the devastation is still palpably felt by tens of thousands of displaced persons (refugees). And Bush talks about clearing debris from the beaches, which he assures us look so much nicer now than last year,as though that were an accomplishment.

And here it is cleaning debris is just "the first step." "We will not rebuild until we can do it right." In other words, never.

America can do much better. The question should not be how soon will relief come, but how late. George Bush has so crippled this country that we can not even bankroll the recovery from this disaster. He has destroyed FEMA, which might have managed a relief effort, which is now hopelessly uncoordinated. And he has bankrupted our economy so we can not afford an immediate recovery. Bush talks about standing by "as long as it takes to get the job done" instead of "getting it done."

Well, here's one more thing that Bush can't imagine - The intensity of the swing against his party that will be registered at the polls in November.