The Lessons of Katrina - A Private Fantasy
I will not restate the obvious about what Katrina will mean to the people of Louisiana and Mississippi, or about what Katrina means to, specifically, the city of New Orleans. So let's, instead, fast-forward six months to March of 2006.
The "Katrina Commission" - as it was dubbed by Bill Clinton on September 5, 2005 - has just finalized its report about how we responded to that terrible storm, as well as subsequent hurricanes during what turned out to be a very rough hurricane season. The report contains recriminations, not only of the Bush administration, but of the Clinton administration as well, and the two administrations before them. It points the finger at the state governments of Louisiana and Mississippi for not, ultimately, doing all that could have been done to protect the people of those states. There are discussions of corrupt officials (once winked at and deemed a "charming but mostly harmless" fact about a region of the country) who served themselves at the expense of those they were elected or appointed to protect. There are recommendations to reorganize FEMA and to account for the failure of other federal and state emergency management officials to address the aftermath of the hurricane within the first seventy-two hours of it hitting the Gulf coast, as well as the forty-eight hours before it ever reached land.
The report contains a heading on race and class and under it is the sub-heading, "Did Race and Class Play a Role in the Response?" The nation is fully engaged in public soul searching over that question, with a new discussion of race and class in America under way. There is a renewed focus on poverty, on America's cities, and new leaders have emerged - some from unlikely places. The meanings of terms like "liberal" and "conservative" have become further strained, as political conservatives see their ideology, which often and dogmatically denigrates the usefulness of government, erode further.
In six months, most of those who are displaced (the formerly so-called "refugees") will have been relocated, with many finding jobs as well as training to take them down other career or employment paths, the result of the remorse the country feels for their plights, and for its sins. Many are afforded opportunities to attend college for the first time in their lives. There are stories and documentaries on CNN and the BBC about what so many have lost in the Gulf States region, the desire of many to return there to rebuild, and about the many who have indeed returned, and rebuilt, against all odds - and even, so many still think, against reason. There are stories about what it means to lose an entire city, and stories about the powerlessness felt, once again, by the most powerful nation on earth, but this time with no whipping boy on which to take out its more adolescent frustrations.
In six months, after being reminded that nature can take as many lives as any terrorist, and given the needs of so many people touched by so great a natural disaster, Americans have started to look inward - not in the sense of "America First" but in the sense of "Let Us Take Better Care." We have also begun to look inward in another sense, i.e. to look in the mirror, as individuals. There is a growing commitment to redouble our efforts to undo the structural legacies of our racial and class differences, which lock so many people into transgenerational poverty that ultimately, and certainly, causes both literal and social death. There is a great discussion about moving the country in a new direction, about plotting a new course into the future so that we may "achieve our country," as James Baldwin had faith we could. We have concluded that this will require that we leave off the gratuitous claims about a "rising tide lifting all boats" in any substantial sense, and instead rise to the call to first lift those boats as an act of collective will, boats that are barely seaworthy, barely able to remain afloat. Young Republicans are
| declaring that "If that means bigger government, then so be it." Progressives are explaining, for the first time in a long time, that big government need not mean stupid or intrusive government, but moral governance. For, it is noted on one news show, that it was not the concern of markets to make it so that the poor of New Orleans had the means to flee. The markets, we will recall, paid little attention to the deaths of thousands; they are indifferent, as perhaps they must be. They are but a tool, after all, albeit a vital one. They respond, they do not act. We, however, are the toolmakers and may no longer remain indifferent. It is government that reflects our morality - markets must be constrained by it, and it is government that must lead the way in response to the moral demands of the people who, in a democracy, control its levers. Government has a role to play in crafting our souls in the direction of our ideals, even though it has little right to coerce our wills, it has been agreed by panelists on talk show after talk show. And right now, if it would be that we achieve our country, we need our government to remind us of those ideals, for it is the most powerful antidote to a culture that has been ruled and dominated, for far too long, by markets and executives. We are a people, a nation. We must rise to tame the beast of our self-interest and greed. The "Katrina Commission" report, though not using that language specifically, has clearly sent that message, and the nation seems ready to hear it.
The report also talks about what other things we have been ignoring, now that we know what can happen if you ignore Gulf Coast marsh lands and ignore a city that happens to be full of poor folks - when you ignore "the least of these." And just what other things might we be ignoring?, the commissioners wondered out loud. More hurricane preparedness for one. The need for better responses to crises, yes. And yes, that includes man-made ones. But what about something even bigger. Something like, say, La Palma, in the Canary Islands, which threatens to unleash a tsunami that could affect much of the East Coast of the United States? Is it not time to get some perspective about a few crazy men with weapons and focus instead, or at least contemporaneously, on the question of why we turn our backs on our duty to protect millions from natural disasters? Is it because, as James Baldwin suggested, too many Americans "don't really believe in death"? And as for those crazy men with weapons, do they really want to kill us, or is there something else they are after?
It is concluded, in a hybrid and paradoxical spirit of resignation, hope, and mission, that perhaps Katrina was one hell of a wake-up call; one horrific and prophetic warning. Perhaps it may be apt to borrow the words of Baldwin one final time: Katrina told America "no more water, the fire next time." That fire may not be literal, but rather take the form of the anguish we may yet feel for our neglect, for our shortsightedness, for our lack of concern for the weakest and most vulnerable among us - here and abroad.
And so the "Katrina Commission" report concludes that we must use the lessons of that hurricane. We must, finally, engage in one more, massive, moral push, so that we may indeed, achieve our country. And in that push, we must look at what we are doing in the world that would cause those who are crushed by their own (self?-)denigration and poverty to take aim at us and visit man-made disasters on our door step - a discussion that our arrogance and fear have silenced, until now.
David E. McClean - Public Ministries
September 5, 2005
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The London Bombings
Not long after the second Gulf War one of my good friends and I had a disagreement about the death toll in Iraq.We were, mind you, not talking about the number of dead American or coalition soldiers, but about the number of dead Iraqis - civilians and soldiers alike. But whatever the number, we noted that we rarely see Western corporate media give significant coverage to the real human cost measured by the dead and maimed of Iraq itself.
Yesterday in London tragedy struck, although a tragedy long anticipated by both the Left and the Right. The media handling of the London bombings over the next several weeks and months will be interesting to see, as it has already proven interesting. Fewer people died in the several bombings that took place there than die in most two or three week periods in Iraq, but the eyes of powerful Western media interests will be focused on London and will remain so focused in a way that they have never been focused on the more than 100,000 Iraqis who have died due to the immoral war that the US and British governments have led against Iraq under the pretense of bringing freedom to the Iraqi people (or was it to root out terrorism?, or destroy WMD capabilities?, or retaliate for September 11?) - a pretense that, because of its terrible cost, should have led the heads of both governments into impeachment proceedings rather than to re-election, regardless of what one may feel about some of the salutary results of the conflict.
Our hearts rightly break for the families of the victims in London, and for the victims themselves who have had their dreams ended by butchers who have not yet figured out that they cannot possibly win the things that they seek using their preferred methods. Terrorism, like unjust war, violates the basic rules of morality.
But our hearts must also break for the nameless and faceless Iraqis who have suffered at the hands of the US and British governments, or by the civil conditions we caused in Iraq, since the first Gulf War. The number killed or injured since then is much larger than 100,000. Through sanctions and military conflict (and its aftermath), our governments, in the names of the American and British people, share responsibility for the deaths of over 1,000,000 Iraqis. These were mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, tiny infants and adolescents, husbands and wives, friends and lovers, civil servants and professionals. People. People with faces. People with dreams. People with passion for life. People just like us. Each one. Each one made in the image of the Great God. Not some huge blob of humanity captured by a large number that we cannot get our imaginations around. One by one they lost their chance to live, to be, to become. They are you and I.
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So as FOX news, CNN and other media outlets bleed dry and spin the story of the London bombings, as they deepen the dangerous idea that the world is, fundamentally, about "Us" vs. "Them" rather than about "We", and as they incite many viewers to anger and hatred by their drumbeat of fear, vengeance and jingoism, let us reflect on the multiple tragedies that affect not just New Yorkers and Londoners, but all of us suffering injustice in the world. Let us reflect on this, as well: Perhaps "bombs bursting in air" and explosions on commuter buses and trains are both the easy way out - the failure of imagination, nerve and commitment that leads to death and more death, rather than to life and more life. May the American and British people learn to mourn not just their own dead, but the dead around the world whose blood flows back to our doorsteps in one way or another, generation after generation. For had we had such sensitivities before, had we heard the cries for justice from people all over the Middle East, we would not have the world that we have today. Had we learned that strength and justice are not mutually exclusive, we would not have the world that we have today. We in the West consistently misunderstand the meaning of greatness when we survey the world's nations. That is because we rest on an immature moral sensibility. A nation whose status in the world is based upon its vast material wealth and military power is not great, but resourceful and generally more secure from external aggression. A nation whose resourcefulness is accompanied by equal measures of compassion, charity and restraint in both its domestic and international dealings is the nation that is truly great. This notion of greatness derives from a higher morality, a morality to which we must aspire, especially those of us who call ourselves people of faith. There are no great nations in the world today, although there are nations with everything it takes to in fact achieve greatness. Let us mourn with our friends in London. Let us expand our circle of friendship, however, so that we may also mourn with those whom we continue to overlook, and forget. David E. McClean, Public Ministries July 8, 2005
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Strategy or Love in the Middle East?
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Benjamin Barber is a renown professor of political science and is the author of many articles and well known books, including Jihad vs. McWorld. Professor Barber lectured recently at the Shelter Rock Unitarian Universalist Congregation, on Long Island (New York), on the subject of September 11 and our response to terrorism. He spoke of the strategic need to engage the Islamic world; that it was in our interests to do so. He predicted that more death would be coming our way if we didn't. I agree that more death will be coming our way if we don't. However, the concern that more death will be coming our way if we don't is a cold strategic calculation. It is therefore an insufficient calculation, because a purely strategic response to the problems faced by people in the Middle East, especially in Muslim communities and states, is not a moral response, but an immoral one, or at best an amoral one. It is rather hedonistic, as strategic thinking often tends to be. Nobody wants more terrorism. But the key to its elimination is not simply watching our own necks, but entails as well watching the necks of our brothers and sisters of the Islamic World who are still struggling with the reconciliation of Islam and Modernity as well as with the need to fashion democratic governments. A strategic response, i.e. a selfish response, to the problems of the Middle East is what has gotten us into the trouble we are in. Provided we were getting what we wanted from Arab states, for example, we were content to let Arab regimes step on their subjects and brutalize their populations. As long as the oil was flowing and the Israelis were secure and the former Soviet menace was checked in that part of the world, we in the West were happy. The plight of the peoples of the Middle East was, well, their problem. This is the logic of political realism, the asinine and immoral political philosophy that views inter-state intercourse as a state of nature in which individuals (as in the populations of other countries) are expendable.
| Political realism is an evil capitulation to an evil status quo, and while Barber may not be a naive political realist, his lecture did not pay sufficient attention to the moral premises underlying his strategic solution to the problem of terrorism (which I tried to point out to him during Q & A). While there will always be lunatics that want to kill innocent people, most people in the world just want justice, food and security for their families. The peoples of the relatively rich West should insist that foreign relations not be merely a matter of political realism or state-to-state engagement, but rather be primarily about assuring that the basic human rights and aspirations of peoples are respected. We must, also, make sure that there be no legitimacy in the outcry of foreign populations that our rich boots are on the weak necks of those populations in the form of policies that care little about their plights. The foreign policy we need is one with a love ethics built into it. Yes, statesmen and stateswomen will always be faced with hard choices, but they cannot be permitted to forge policies in our behalf that dump on peoples of other states. If we permit them to do so, we will simply be sowing the seeds of future 9/11s. If we don't learn the lesson of love now, those future 9/11s may well come from other directions, perhaps from the poor of Latin America, or from the African continent which has been raped and pillaged for hundreds of years. David E. McClean, Public Ministries March 3, 2005
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