Katrina

I started on a post last Friday comparing the anti-war movement in 1968, 1972, and now. I'll finish it one of these days but the oncoming threat of Katrina changed my priorities. I've been to New Orleans twice in the last five yeas and I really liked it, especially the French Quarter.

At first it looked like the city would be spared. Then the levee broke and the city flooded. The governor ordered everyone remaining in the city to evacuate.

No one is counting bodies yet but it s likely that hundreds or thousands of people are dead. The city will be uninhabitable for weeks. Cleanup will take months or years.

This might be the time to ask an important question - should New Orleans be rebuilt? It is so vulnerable to flooding it might be better to abandon most of it. Leave the French Quarter and the Garden District. Both of them were built on high ground. The rest of it is too low to be safe.

There is no good reason for New Orleans to stay were it is. It was originally built on the Mississippi but the river keeps trying to move. That is what the river does. It moves. That is how the Delta was created in the first place.

As it is now, large portions of New Orleans will need to be leveled. They are sitting submerged in an unknown mixture of sludge, sewage, and toxic chemicals. There is no way to safely clean a house that has soaked in this mess for days. Probably people will try and become sickened.

A lot of businesses will never re-open. Those that survived the hurricane and the flood were looted. If they survived all of that, their market was wiped out. This is a vicious cycle. If too many businesses are closed then unemployment will dry up the money needed to keep other businesses open. The tourist industry will be dead for months or years, especially with the highways in ruined.

Normally I have little sympathy for people who build in a flood plain or on a cliff and get hit by the inevitable natural disaster. I do feel bad for New Orleans. But is it wise to rebuild a city in a bowl between a lake and a river?

In the meantime, the New Orleans Times-Picayune is blogging current events.

Note to the goofballs at the DailyKos - a hurricane is a force of nature, not an act of George Bush. Mobilizing the National Guard on Sunday would not have helped. The plan to evacuate to the Superdome was hatched by a black mayor, not Bush as a plot to kill n_____s and being anti-Red Cross doesn't win points.