I know I shouldn’t trust what I see on CNN, or on any of the major media outlets. I know the rule is “if it bleeds, it leads”, and I can assume that all media doomsaying should be taken with a grain of salt. But this story pisses me off.

There are thousands of people huddled around a convention center, with nowhere to go, without food or water, in the middle of the US. What the hell is up with that? This is the country that coordinates major airlifts in the middle of warzones, for fuck’s sake. We have lots of big fucking helicopers, that were made to take lots of people out of harm’s way even while being shot at by professional soldiers. We have no shortage of boats. And we have thousands of men and women with large, frightening rifles that can make it very unrewarding to shoot at the above-mentioned vehicles.

It goes without saying that I think it’s a shame that the average citizens of New Orleans, not to mention the aid workers, aren’t armed. But that’s neither here nor there – we have a full-functional national guard. There is no reason for all those people to be stranded in the middle of town. It’s not a fucking fallout zone. Let’s see some goddamn American ingenuity and guts.

Yeah, I know I’ll probably regret this post later, when I read all about the people who worked tirelessly to get those people out… but right now it just seems a little absurd that in the middle of the United States, we can’t get a bunch of people out of a flooded city.

EDIT: Leaving airlifts aside, they can’t airdrop pallets of food, water, medical supplies, emergency shelters? Volunteer EMTs? WTF?!

EDIT 2: And another thing. The news has been reporting that communications are extremely patchy and unreliable in the affected area, due to power outages, line breaks, and whatnot. My question: where are the HAMs?! This is what they train for, why they spend a weekend or more a year out in some field with no external power, radioing Timbuktu or wherever.

More and more I think this is not the country it used to be.

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4 Comments

  1. Hate to be cynical here…

    But I think you can answer your question quite easily if you stop asking “how come we can’t do [blank]” and start focussing more on “why aren’t we doing [blank]”…

    I say this.. because it is just as absurd to me that these people haven’t been evacuated.. For fuck’s sake.. in the late 1970’s Jimmy Carter set up that military task force group whose job it was to be able to drop 10,000 American troops anywhere on the globe within 24-36 hours, no matter what.

    And now.. there are ~10,000 people ON AMERICAN SOIL WHO AREN’T BEING EVACUATED A COUPLE OF HUNDRED MILES???

    that just doesn’t seem plausible to me. If the streets are flooded, then take in big ass military landing boats like you do to storm island and cart them out 100/time.. with 10 boats you’d be done in a couple of hours, I’m sure..

    the only thing, and this is where I get cynical, is that the powers that be don’t really give a fuck about these people. I mean, these are mainly the people who were unable financially to get the hell out of New Orleans–i.e. they are the poor… and someone in the paper mentioned that floods in the past–in New Orleans in particular–have often been horrific for the poor.. in 1927, i guess, when a huge flood hit New Orleans, the city, in order to save wealthier neighborhoods, diverted the waters into the poor sections of town, destroying it utterly–and then, despite prior promises to do so, completely reneged on compensating any of the poor residents that for their complete losses…

    This country has never been what it used to be..

  2. Wow… ‘s post said the two things that I was going to say: These folks are poor (or black, or both), and this country never was what it used to be.

  3. maybe just a little bit…

    someone on my friends list just posted his complaint that he’s not joining his friends for evacuation and aid missions in New Orleans. “too little too late” maybe, but just some proof that something’s getting done.

  4. I thought the answer was

    It’s Louisiana.

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