Rwanda, Louisiana?

Monday, May 01, 2006

Hurricane Katrina is almost a year old and like a lot other folks I am still stewing about how the whole disaster was handled. Oh, excuse me, did I say “handled? What I meant to say was “mishandled.”

The mishandling of Katrina leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It’s like having a mouth full of nasty food and no where to spit it out. So you swallow it and sometimes you are okay unless it upsets your stomach. If that’s the case, your body will force you to regurgitate. That’s about where I am right now when it comes to Katrina.

Can you imagine a place where neighbors kill neighbors solely on the basis of their ethnicity? That’s what occurred in Rwanda in 1994. If you haven’t read the book or saw the movie, “Hotel Rwanda”, go rent the DVD and have at it. Be warned, however, that you won’t be the same afterwards. It’s going to make you mad and it may make you cry.

For decades the Hutus and Tutsis coexisted in Rwanda. Many of them intermingled, married and yet they remained divided by government polices.On his way back from a conference in Tanzania, the president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, is assassinated. His private jet is shot out of the sky, killing all 13 passengers and crew. Tutsi rebels are suspected, which gives the Hutu militias an excuse to avenge some of their long-standing grievances. Hutu militias and members of the Rwandan military took matters into their own hand. Within hours, hundreds of Tutsi civilians have been butchered. What does Rwanda have to do with Katrina you ask?

The United Nations withdrew its peacekeeping forces from Rwanda and helped thousands of foreign citizens to leave the country. The Rwandan people begged the peacekeepers to take them with them. Yet the UN abandoned these people and the killings continued. The militia butchered more than 900,000 Rwandans before surrendering.

Can you imagine a place in the United States where a major; No, not major, but a catastrophic disaster happened and our governments did not respond until it was too late? It didn’t happen in a far away third world country as you would expect. It happened in south Louisiana; in New Orleans. All the people crowded into the Superdome reminded me of the Rwandans who were holed up in Hotel Diplomates seeking refuge from the Hutus. With all those black people walking in water and making their way to the Superdome, maybe it did look like Rwanda. I know Hurricane Katrina was an act of God. But I also know the federal, state, and local governments’ response to Katrina was an act from hell.

I keep asking myself, “How can a government stand by and watch one of its major cities be devastated?” The people of New Orleans got less response to Katrina than the people affected by the Tsunami in South Asia or the earthquake that hit Pakistan. Our government stood by for days and did next to nothing while Hurricane Katrina and her flood waters destroyed one of its major cities.

I’m glad I didn’t write this article last year in September or October. Then I looked at Katrina and our government’s reaction to it with an eye leaning toward racism. After reading the recently released congressional report, I don’t know if they acted out of indifference, incompetence or plain stupidity. Either way, they showed a total disregard to the lives of the people of New Orleans. As the report stated “Katrina was a national failure, and abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare.”

Based on newspaper articles, it looks as though Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco were more concerned about the tourism related business than they were about the displacement and deaths of their citizens. Apparently they were worried about being sued by hotels and restaurants for loss of business if the hurricane predictions didn’t turn out to be true. The congressional report went on to say that Nagin and Blanco delayed ordering a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans until only 19 hours before Katrina made landfall. The report said it was not clear how much difference it would have made since so many residents were poor and didn’t have cars or money for a bus ticket.

The report went on to say that decisions were hard to come by and nobody could figure out who was in charge. President Bush was at his ranch in Texas, Vice-President Chaney was fishing in Wyoming and the chief of staff was in Maine. The report further said that President Bush’s involvement earlier would have made a world of difference.

Last week I spent a day in New Orleans visiting the French Quarters, Bourbon Street, French Market and both the Upper and Lower 9th Ward. It will take New Orleans years to recover and man of its people will never be the same. I wonder what our government’s response would be if such a catastrophic disaster occurred in “Kenne Town.”