Forget everything you thought you knew about Hurricane Katrina, Kevin Aylward urges in today’s D.C. Examiner:
“[T]he story of the flooding in New Orleans that the media is telling is largely wrong.
“The Great Flood of New Orleans was not a natural disaster. It was an engineering disaster bound to happen sooner or later.”
Meanwhile, the reliably infuriating Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post has a Katrina column today:
“Before I try my very best to make you care about levees, floodwalls and wetlands, first let’s deal with a more engaging question: Why rebuild New Orleans at all?
“After all they’ve been through, New Orleanians tend to just sputter and fume when asked whether their city hasn’t somehow forfeited its right to exist. I don’t blame them one bit — they don’t owe anyone an answer. …”
Actually, they do owe us an answer, especially if they want our money to rebuild their failed city. We should have some assurances that we aren’t pouring money into a city that is going to squander it. The public should not be asked to put a whole city on welfare.New Orleans was a beautiful city, and I hope it will come back. But, other than fixing some engineering problems, the fate of the city is up to those who live there.
And so far they they’ve just sat around, waiting for us to send bushels of our hard-earned money.
The left said repeatedly during the aftermath of Katrina that the plight of New Orleans, especially those so visually stranded in the Superdome (itself built with a great deal of political corruption), should trigger a national discussion on poverty.
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