Katrina is the subject that just won’t go away. Yesterday, it was “revealed” in a newly released video that President Bush and other government officials were warned the day before Katrina struck that the levies would break, or so it has been argued by the crusading media. In reality officials argued that they did not know whether the levies would hold. Is this a new revelation? Certainly not, this fact has been recognized for some time. Considering that the levies were designed and built to withstand a Category 3 Hurricane, that fact that the levels failed under Category 4 conditions should come as no surprise in the first place, particularly to New Orleans officials.

For this issue to rise above the level of a non-issue, there would have to be proof that as a result of this recognition that the levies could people died. People, however, because of a video warning the day before the disaster struck. Such evidence is lacking for the simple fact that such a warning had no impact. Officials in New Orleans and Louisiana were well aware of the structural conditions of the levies, and if they were not then they should have been. People in New Orleans died because they failed to evacuate when evacuations were ordered and state and local officials failed to implement their own evacuation plan which would have allowed all residents to escape the impending disaster.

Most complicit in the failure is New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who did not take advantage of the resources made available to him when it became apparent that an evacuation was necessary. Yet Nagin was one of the first to lay blame. Even Governor Blanco, a wholly inept state leader, called Nagin to task for his failures during the disaster.

Is the federal government absolved of any responsibility for the debacle that was Hurricane Katrina? Certainly not, FEMA dropped the ball on numerous occasions, but the federal government’s role is secondary and advisory next to the state and local government, who have persistently argued that the primary responsibility for confronting emergencies rests in their hands. Therein in lies the basis of a federalists system of government, something statists on the left simply cannot and will not understand. Those who seek to absolve the likes of Blanco and Nagin, while castigating Bush and Chertof are clearly motivated by a political agenda, divorced from both fact and reality. Certainly, Bush could have acted more aggressively and made use of the government’s resources to command and more efficient federal response to the disaster but the fact of the matter is this: Had state and local officials followed their own guidelines the scale of the disaster could have been limited.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13995723.htm