Katrina: the anti-9/11

This is the blog of Ross Douthat, mentioned by David Brooks. Here's what Ross wrote:

The Anti-9/11: On September 11, there was little looting, no violence, tremendous unity. As I woke up this morning, in New Orleans they were suspending the evacuation because people were shooting at the helicopters.

On September 11, there was Rudy Giuliani, covered with ash and projecting authority. With Katrina, we've had Kathleen Blanco and Ray Nagin, projecting grief and confusion and uncertainty - and our President, playing the guitar.

On September 11, everyone was equal in death - stockbrokers and secretaries, lawyers and waiters, firemen and soldiers. With Katrina, the lines of race and class seem much, much brighter.

On September 11, someone had done it to us, and we could hit back. With Katrina, there's no revenge or justice, only misery.

In a sense - and I don't mean to be flip about this at all - 9/11 was a tragedy well-suited to the neoconservative vision, and Katrina is better suited to a paleoconservative view of the world. The fall of the twin towers was a nightmare, but the lessons of that dreadful day felt bracing - that America was still a great and united country; that we had been too long asleep while threats gathered; that the time had come to put aside irony and drift and experience a new birth of resolve and martial vigor. 9/11 allowed people, and especially writers (myself included), to strike quasi-Churchillian poses, tell "hard truths" and talk tough about what needed to be done to defeat our enemies. It made us feel awful, but it also made us good about ourselves.

Whereas the only lessons of Katrina are that life is dark and death is everywhere, that nature isn't our friend and that Americans, too, can behave like savages under duress, and that all the blessings of liberalism and democracy and capitalism can't protect us from the worst. There's nothing we can do, except give money and pray, and there's no lesson to be learned - except, perhaps, be careful where and how you build your cities.

PS - Since this post (thanks to the Times' finest columnist) is getting more traffic than, well, anything in the history of this blog, I thought I should clarify that there are, in fact, some lessons to be learned from the aftermath of Katrina - about crisis management, about the incompetence of Louisiana's government, FEMA, and DHS, about the importance of being better prepared for a predictable disaster, etc. etc. But even had the governmental response been perfect, Katrina would have still been a disaster of epic proportions, and one to which we couldn't say, as we said after 9/11, "never again," and feel good about ourselves for saying it. You can't say "never again" about hurricanes.