Thomas, Evan, Gegax, T. Trent, Campo-Flores, Arian, Murr, Andrew, Meadows, Susannah, Darman, Jonathan, Skipp, Catharine, Wolffe, Richard, Bailey, Holly, Hosenball, Mark, Lipper, Tamara, Barry, John, Klaidman, Daniel, Isikoff, Michael, Hirsh, Michael, Conant, Eve, Brant, Martha, Wingert, Patricia, Clift, Eleanor, and Tuttle, Steve
The article focuses on U.S. President George W. Bush's response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina on the United States Gulf Coast. How the president of the United States could have even less "situational awareness," as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century--is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace. The war in Iraq was a failure of intelligence. The government's response to Katrina--like the failure to anticipate that terrorists would fly into buildings on 9/11--was a failure of imagination. On Tuesday, within 24 hours of the storm's arrival, Bush needed to be able to imagine the scenes of disorder and misery that would, two days later, shock him when he watched the evening news. Liberals will say they were indifferent to the plight of poor African-Americans. It is true that Katrina laid bare society's massive neglect of its least fortunate. The inner thoughts and motivations of Bush and his top advisers are impossible to know for certain. Though it seems abstract at a time of such suffering, high-minded considerations about the balance of power between state and federal government were clearly at play. It's also possible that after at least four years of more or less constant crisis, Bush and his team are numb.