Playing politics

It's the classic response of a bully. When intimidation doesn't work, when the bully is being called out, the bully pleads ... persecution.

So the ruthless, make-no-excuses, go-for-the-jugular Bush administration, for whom everything is an issue of political power, whines that criticism of its cataclysmic failures—both before and after the levees broke—is nothing but Bush's opponents "playing politics."

Fortunately, many mainstream edit pages have roused themselves from their Dubya-era slumbers to realize that the evil clowns in power (and their pathetic, less-than-useless Democratic enablers) are uncaring, reckless, arrogant and incompetent. This still doesn't excuse major newspapers from their studious avoidance of dealing with a Bush-made disaster even more horrible in the Persian Gulf, but perhaps it's a start.

Editor and Publisher has a nice roundup of fed-up editorial page commentary, including this rather to-the-point piece from the Philly Inquirer:

"I hope people don't point -- play politics during this period." That was President Bush's response yesterday to criticism of the U.S. government's inexplicably inadequate relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina.

Sorry, Mr. President, legitimate questions are being asked about the lack of rescue personnel, equipment, food, supplies, transportation, you name it, four days after the storm. It's not "playing politics" to ask why.

It's not "playing politics" to ask questions about what Americans watched in horror on TV yesterday: elderly people literally dying on the street outside the New Orleans convention center because they were sick and no one came to their aid.

The rest of America can't fathom why a country with our resources can't be at least as effective in this emergency as it was when past disasters struck Third World nations. Someone needs to explain why well-known emergency aid lessons aren't being applied here.

This hurricane is no one's fault; the devastation would be hard to handle no matter who was in charge. But human deeds can mitigate a disaster, or make it worse.

For example: Did federal priorities in an era of huge tax cuts shortchange New Orleans' storm protection and leave it more vulnerable? This flooding is no surprise to experts. They've been warning for more than 20 years that the levees keeping Lake Pontchartrain from emptying into the under-sea-level city would likely break under the strain of a Category 3 hurricane. Katrina was a Category 4.

So the Crescent City sits under water, much of its population in a state of desperate, dangerous transience, not knowing when they will return home. They're the lucky ones, though. Worse off are those left among the dying in a dying town.

The questions aren't about politics. They are about justice.