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5 septembre 2005 — Un lecteur, “Eric” (voir notre Forum, 4 septembre 2005), nous rapporte une phrase significative entendue sur la NBC vendredi soir : « J'ai regardé vendredi soir des directs depuis la Louisiane sur CNBC Europe. Les réactions des envoyés spéciaux et des journalistes américains étaient particulièrement rudes. Ils étaient en colère. J'ai noté une phrase. Alors qu'on voyait des images des mères de famille avec leurs enfants dans les bras sans pouvoir les nourrir, le commentaire était : “It is no Somalia. It is not Bagdad. It is HOME !” » Par contraste, la réaction de l’administration GW ne cesse de montrer la véritable nature de cette bande, qui est l’absence d’intérêt pour la réalité de sa tâche nationale, n’ayant été constituée que par et pour l’intrigue politicienne, et ne s’étant réalisée que dans un projet utopique marqué par la vanité de la force brutale (l’Irak et la guerre). Maureen Dowd mesure les conséquences possibles de cette situation : « But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode. »
Il faut poursuivre par le constat de la réalité américaine, — et les commentaires furieux qui éclatent de tous les côtés en sont un aspect, — l’idée que nous développions hier avec notre F&C “In America”. L’idée qu’une situation comparable à celle de Bagdad puisse s’être développée dans une grande ville américaine sans que le gouvernement responsable n’ait rien fait pour la contenir et la réduire est particulièrement insupportable. On comprend très bien ce sentiment dans le texte de Tom Engelhardt publié hier sur son site TomDispatch.com (Il faut aller à l’original, notamment pour disposer des nombreux liens utiles qu’Engelhardt nous propose). Le titre résume ceci qui est comme si nous nous trouvions à la fin du voyage : « At the Front of Nowhere at All ». Effectivement, Engelhardt, comme Dowd, suggère que le sort de l’administration est en jeu : « But when Katrina roared onto the vulnerable coasts of Mississippi and Louisiana, it swept all of the Bush administration's devastating policies — environmental, fiscal, energy, and military, as well as its plans for the unraveling of the civilian infrastructure — into a perfect storm of policy catastrophe that, ironically, may threaten the administration itself. »
Ce jugement qui se répand et se généralise implique une terrible référence, qui va désormais agir comme un aiguillon mortel pour rappeler ce qui se passe à La Nouvelle Orléans: la référence irakienne. La charge énorme de tromperie, d’erreurs, de colère et de dénonciations, de maladresses et d’incompétence, d’incurie et d’impostures, qui a caractérisé le jugement sur le désordre irakien depuis deux ans, et qui va encore se renforcer à mesure des événements là-bas qui se poursuivent, se transfère brutalement sur la situation intérieure américaine. Il y a désormais une terrible situation de “vases communicants” entre Bagdad et Washington-New Orleans. En septembre 2003, le général Sanchez, commandant les forces US en Irak, déclarait, pour justifier l’engagement américain malgré la guérilla déjà meurtrière, que les G.I.’s se battaient à Bagdad pour ne pas avoir à le faire dans les rues de Los Angeles ; le général Sanchez n’avait songé ni à La Nouvelle Orléans, ni à la réalité de la situation qui menace : ce n’est pas la présence des G.I.’s dans les rues de La Nouvelle Orléans qui est signe de la gravité de la situation, mais leur absence ; et c’est bien sûr leur présence à Bagdad qui explique leur absence à La Nouvelle Orléans. (Cela doit être compris aussi bien d'un point de vue concret, quant aux situations elles-mêmes, que dans un sens politique indirect, voire dans un sens symbolique.)
La référence irakienne va désormais peser de tout son poids pour le développement d’une critique radicale qui va mettre en cause l’administration GW d’une façon fondamentale. Cela durera, parce que l’administration, faite de gens incompétents et irresponsables pour les affaires publiques, corrompus et habiles pour les affaires politiciennes, et cyniques et brutaux quant aux moyens de conduire ces affaires politiciennes, cette administration se battra jusqu’au bout, sans état d’âme, sans hésitation, et ne cédera sur rien. Cette résistance même va exacerber la critique et la faire passer au niveau de la mise en cause directe du système. L’évolution psychologique de l’Amérique le permet désormais.
La référence irakienne est donc, dans cette circonstance, d’une particulière importance pour garder les esprits et la critique en éveil, voire en constante mobilisation et emportée dans une bataille sans merci. Nous empruntons ci-dessous une longue citation au texte d’Engelhardt, à propos de cette référence irakienne devenue désormais la matrice et l’aliment de la honte et de la colère américaines. Cela nous permettra d’ainsi mieux comprendre le fond de cette situation politique étonnante de l’Amérique, — en un sens, La Nouvelle Orléans serait beaucoup moins importante s’il n’y avait Bagdad, et Bagdad ne serait pas un événement fondamental s’il n’y avait La Nouvelle Orléans.
» New Orleans is not the only toxic sludge pool in sight. Let's not forget the toxic sludge pool of Bush administration policy which came so clearly into view as Katrina ripped the scrim off our society, revealing an Iraqi-style reality here at home. Unlike conquered and occupied Iraq, the strip-mining of this country in recent years has taken place largely out of sight. While Baghdad was turned into some kind of dead zone of insecurity, lack of electricity, lack of gas, lack of jobs, lack of just about everything a human being in a modern city has come to expect, American cities — until last week — stood seemingly untouched in what was still proudly called “the world's last superpower.” But just out of sight, the coring, gutting, and dismantling of the civilian governmental support system of the United States, that famed “safety net,” was well underway. Bush administration proponents and conservative ideologues had long talked about “starving the beast”; but, until Katrina hit, it remained for many Americans at best a kind of political figure of speech.
» Now we know for real. The beast has been starved; or rather, the beasts have been fed and the much-maligned part of the state that protected its citizens with something other than guns has been starved. What Katrina's course through Mississippi and Louisiana revealed was the real meaning of starvation. It seems we no longer have the capacity for a full-scale civilian response to a major disaster. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), absorbed into the Department of Homeland Security and led by an incompetent who had been fired from his previous job as head of the International Arabian Horse Association, has had “its ties to state emergency programs… weakened, and… has reduced spending on disaster preparation.” In the same way, we now know that the Army Corps of Engineers was financially reined in on crucial levee work in New Orleans. Much of this sort of thing was done under the guise of preparing for, or fighting, or funding the war on terror at home and abroad. Many pundits, for instance, have remarked on the obvious fact — which had previously worried the governors of many states — that significant chunks of the National Guard and, just as important for disaster relief, its heavy equipment are to be found in Iraq, not here to be called upon in an emergency. (And when the avian flu, or the next health disaster, suddenly hits our country, consider it a guarantee — the media will again be filled with the same sort of shock about the civilian response to the crisis, because our public health system has also been gutted and de-funded under the guise of the war on terrorism.)
» Over the last years, just about everything of a helping nature that is governmental, other than the military, has begun to be starved or stripped by the looters of this administration — set loose in Washington rather than Baghdad or New Orleans. If you want a signal of this, we should all be wincing every time the President gets up, as he did the other day in the presence of his father and Bill Clinton, and shakes the tin cup, urging “the private sector” and generous citizens to fill in — an impossibility — for what his administration won't pony up.
» The Bush people undoubtedly thought that they would be able to slip out of town in 2008 without paying the price. But when Katrina roared onto the vulnerable coasts of Mississippi and Louisiana, it swept all of the Bush administration's devastating policies — environmental, fiscal, energy, and military, as well as its plans for the unraveling of the civilian infrastructure — into a perfect storm of policy catastrophe that, ironically, may threaten the administration itself. By the time motorists in non-disaster states return from a Labor Day with $3-4 a gallon (or more) gas (and possibly long lines) to an ongoing catastrophe which will take months, if not our lifetime, to fully unfold, it's possible that the levees of the President's base of support — that 40% which still approved of his administration in the latest Gallup Poll, conducted the week before Katrina hit — will have been breached for the first time.
» Think of our last two years in Iraq, which has left the world's most powerful military running on baling wire and duct tape, as a kind of coming attractions for Katrina. In fact, so many bizarre connections or parallels are suggested by the Bush administration's war in Iraq as to stagger the imagination. Here are just six of the parallels that immediately came to my mind:
» 1. Revelations of unexpected superpower helplessness: A single catastrophic war against a modest-sized, not particularly dramatically armed minority insurgency in one oil land has brought the planet's mightiest military to a complete, grinding, disastrous halt and sent its wheels flying off in all directions. A single not-exactly-unexpected hurricane leveling a major American city and the coastlines of two states, has brought the emergency infrastructure of the world's mightiest power to a complete, grinding, disastrous halt and sent its wheels flying off in all directions.
» 2. Planning ignored: It's now notorious that the State Department did copious planning for a post-invasion, occupied Iraq, all of which was ignored by the Pentagon and Bush administration neocons when the country was taken. In New Orleans, it's already practically notorious that endless planning, disaster war-gaming, and the like were done for how to deal with a future “Atlantis scenario,” none of which was attended to as Katrina bore down on the southeastern coast.
» 3. Lack of Boots on the ground: It's no less notorious that, from the moment before the invasion of Iraq when General Eric Shinseki told a congressional committee that “several hundred thousand troops” would minimally be needed to successfully occupy Iraq and was more or less laughed out of Washington, Donald Rumsfeld's new, lean, mean military has desperately lacked boots on the ground (hence those Louisiana and Mississippi National Guards off in Iraq). Significant numbers of National Guard only made it to New Orleans on the fifth and sixth days after Katrina struck and regular military boots-on-the-ground have been few and far between. No Pentagon help was pre-positioned for Katrina and, typically enough, the Navy hospital ship Comfort, scheduled to help, had not left Baltimore harbor by Friday morning for its many day voyage to the Gulf.
» 4. Looting: The inability (or unwillingness) to deploy occupying American troops to stem a wave of looting that left the complete administrative, security, and even cultural infrastructure of Baghdad destroyed is now nearly legendary, as is Donald Rumsfeld's response to the looting at the time. (“Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here.” To which he added, on the issue of the wholesale looting of Baghdad, “Stuff happens.”) In New Orleans, the President never declared martial law while, for days, gangs of armed looters along with desperate individuals abandoned and in need of food and supplies of all kinds, roamed the city uncontested as buildings began to burn.
» What, facing this crisis, did the Bush administration actually do? The two early, symbolic actions it took were typical. Neither would have a significant effect on the immediate situation at hand, but both forwarded long-term administration agendas that had little to do with Katrina or the crisis in the southeastern United States: First, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it was relaxing pollution standards on gasoline blends in order to counteract the energy crisis Katrina had immediately put on the table. This was, of course, but a small further step in the gutting of general environmental, clean air and pollution laws that strike hard at another kind of safety net — the one protecting our planet. And second, its officials began to organize a major operation out of Northcom, Joint Task Force Katrina, to act as the military's on-scene command in ‘support’ of an enfeebled FEMA. The U.S. Northern Command was set up by the Bush administration in 2002 and ever since has been prepared to take on ever larger, previously civilian tasks on our home continent. (As the Northcom site quotes the President as saying, “There is an overriding and urgent mission here in America today, and that's to protect our homeland. We have been called into action, and we've got to act.”)
» There were to be swift boats in the Gulf and Green Berets at the New Orleans airport, and yet Donald Rumsfeld's new, stripped-down, high-tech military either couldn't (or wouldn't) deploy any faster to New Orleans than it did to Baghdad, perhaps because it had already been so badly torn up and stressed out in Iraq (and had left most of its local ‘first responders’ there).
» 5. Nation-building: As practically nobody remembers, George Bush in his first run for the presidency humbly eschewed the very idea of ‘nation-building’ abroad. That was only until he sent the Pentagon blasting into Iraq. Over two years and endless billions of dollars later — the Iraq War now being, on a monthly basis, more expensive than Vietnam — the evidence of the administration's nation-building success in its ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq is at hand for all to see. That country is now a catastrophe beyond imagining without repair in sight. (For Baghdad, think New Orleans without water, but with a full-scale insurgency.) So as the Pentagon ramps up in its ponderous manner to launch a campaign in the United States and as the Marines finally land in the streets of New Orleans, don't hold your breath about either the Pentagon's or the administration's nation-building skills in the U.S. (But count on ‘reconstruction’ contracts going to Halliburton.) If Rumsfeld's Pentagon — where so much of our money has gone in recent years — turns out to be even a significant factor in the ''reconstruction'' of New Orleans, we'll never have that city back.
» 6. Predictions: Given the last two years in which the President as well as top administration officials have regularly insisted that we had reached the turning point, or turned that corner, or hit the necessary tipping point in Iraq, that success or progress or even victory was endlessly at hand (and then at hand again and then again), consider what we should think of the President's repeated statements of Katrina “confidence,” his insistence that his administration can deal successfully with the hurricane's aftereffects and is capable of overseeing the successful rebuilding of New Orleans. (“All Americans can be certain our nation has the character, the resources, and the resolve to overcome this disaster. We will comfort and care for the victims. We will restore the towns and neighborhoods that have been lost in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. We'll rebuild the great city of New Orleans. And we'll once again show the world that the worst adversities bring out the best in America.”) »
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