Truth Comes Out About N.O. "Violence"

The reports of widespread murders and rapes in New Orleans during the Katrina aftermath turn out to be largely fictitious. Not to say I told you so, but I told you so. From the start, I thought that the armed gangs of looters seemed improbable, and the mass rape of women and children in the Superdome was completely unbelievable. I also thought it strange that people would shoot at relief helicopters and as The New York Times said in its September 29 issue:

For military officials, who flew rescue missions around the city, the reports that people were shooting at helicopters turned out to be mistaken. "We investigated one incident and it turned out to have been shooting on the ground, not at the helicopter," said Maj. Mike Young of the Air Force.

That particular piece of misinformation really riles me. Many people around the country said something to the effect of "Stupid n-----s. We're trying to save them and they just shoot at us. Screw them if they don't want help." Part of that blame-the-victim mentality that conservatives fall back on so easily.

People were scared and repeated rumors they heard. Rumors grew more outlandish and circulated widely. Looting of a Wal-Mart and other stores is well documented, but that morphed into imaginary armed gangs of angry black youth rampaging the streets. I expected to see chalk drawings of black tribesmen with spears and loincloths, carrying screaming white girls thrown their shoulders. At the bottom of the screen there would be a tiny scrawl saying "Dramatization, events might not actually have occurred" like the tabloid TV show "Rock Bottom" on The Simpsons.

I blame these rumors on four groups:

1. Irresponsible local officials. N.O. police superintendent Edwin Compass, who just resigned, claimed that tourists were being robbed and raped on the streets. Mayor Ray Nagin, who SHOULD resign, made similar comments. These two African-American city officials should be ashamed of themselves for repeating unverified rumors that slander the mostly black victims of Katrina. I think they were panicked and desperate, trying to get more police and military assistance, so they went with the scariest possible reports, true or not. This does not justify their actions, because it enabled the press to quote them ad infinitum with these exaggerations and outright lies.

The rumors of chaos had the added benefit of making government failures seem more understandable. The local government tried to help, but these gangs out of Escape From New York took over the city and the government was powerless. Uh-huh. The state and federal governments were only happy to accept the rumors for the exact same reason.

2. The Press. Unfortunately all media now, not just Fox News, likes sensationalistic stories, and will repeat them constantly until something more outlandish comes along. What happened to independent verification before airing/printing a story? Like I said above, N.O. officials gave the press some fantastic quotes, but how about looking into them and seeing if they are true? If the streets were so unsafe, how come I saw reporters in New Orleans on live TV throughout the worst of the trouble? The press was there, they could see the lack of "violence" themselves, and should have known better.

3. Scared residents. Hysterical flood victims were often interviewed (only the most out-of-their-minds with panic would do), and they would tell crazy stories of stuff they heard and thought they saw. These people are understandably shaken and terrified, so it is hard to blame them for letting their imaginations run wild. Of course, the TV crews were there to videotape the craziest crazy talk and disseminate it to the world.

4. Scared stupid white people. I mainly refer to tourists, but also reporters, who would see black man walking down the street and think "looter." Two or more black men together was a "gang." I won't say these out-of-towners were racists exactly - they might not dislike black people - but they damn sure categorize them. I doubt many residents of the Ninth Ward were dressed in suits (or Polos and slacks) when they were getting out of the flooded areas. Many white rubes see a young black man with a baseball cap turned to the side and think the worst. I saw tourists huddled on the balconies of their hotels looking down on pedestrians (literally and figuratively), saying to a reporter "See look at that guy! I think I saw him earlier. What is he doing?" Uhh, walking? Looking for help? Trying to find his family?

The way the tourists were acting, you'd think it was the Night of the Living Dead, and they were barricading themselves inside to keep the zombies out (actually that comes full circle, since George Romero's undead movies satirize rich people who live in exclusive enclaves while shutting out the poor).

Katrina was helpful in one respect - it jarred me out of my liberal complacency. I am not SO idiotic as to think we have an egalitarian meritocracy, but I didn't realize how bad things still were. Race relations have a LONG way to go. We are not an assimilated American society at all, but three separate societies (white, black, Latino), intertwined but segregated.

9/11 vs. Hiroshima

A friend of mine posed an interesting question - what similarities are there between 9/11 and Hiroshima? I think there are obvious similarities between 9/11 and Pearl Harbor (surprise attack, shock to the nation, a "where were you when you heard..." feeling that few other events possess). As far as 9/11 and Hiroshima/Nagasaki, there are some things in common: both 9/11 and H/N targeted civilian populations. Both attacks were seeking political objectives: the removal of American forces from the Middle East and the capitulation of Japan, respectively.

One big difference: America didn't consider itself as war with al-Qaida on September 10, 2001 but the Japanese certainly were at war with us. More importantly, the magnitude of the events are on completely different scales. Anyway you cut it, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were far worse events. Tens of thousands of people were incinerated instantaneously, with many thousands more to die of horrific burns and radiation sickness. I think the bombing of Hiroshima is the single most important act in human history, because it shows the limitless violence man is willing to use on other human beings, and it demonstrated that the human race now has the capacity to destroy itself.

All that said, 9/11 is less morally justifiable than the atomic bombings. The reasons for al-Qaida to kill 3,000 Americans are certainly sane, but dubious. American money props up autocratic regimes in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and all the Gulf States, so we are indirectly responsible for the oppression of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. We back the barely legitimate state of Israel and allow it to oppress the Arab population under its control. Finally, American troops occupied the Holy Land of Islam by being in Saudi Arabia (at the time 9/11 occurred). If you are a Muslim radical, those are all really good reasons to hate the U.S.

However, we also have done good things toward Muslims: American troops defended Muslims in Kuwait and restored its independence, we (belatedly) helped Bosnian Muslims against racist Serb oppression, we pressured Israel to give the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt, and we helped the mujadeen in Afghanistan fight the Soviet Union. These acts were in our best interest, but we did do these (basically) good things nevertheless. Supporting Israel and other perceived anti-Muslim, anti-Arab acts are done for political reasons, not out of some Crusade-like hatred of Islam.

Assassinating Mubarak or killing all the wacko Jewish settlers in the West Bank would have been much more justifiable acts of violence in my opinion. Obviously, I don't think big enough. Osama directed his hatred at the U.S., so killing 3,000 Americans and destroying symbols of American capitalism makes sense in an evil sort of way. Some have argued that 9/11, as appalling as it was, worked. We have moved our forces from Saudi Arabia (one of Osama's biggest hangups), and our occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq are casting us in the role of villainous superpower perfectly. The invasion of Iraq in particular was a huge gift to Osama's recruiting efforts.

Killing civilians is vile. Many of 9/11's victims had to make the choice of burning to death or plummeting 100 stories. The cruelty of using civilian planes to kill civilians is an especially diabolical twist. For reasons I have listed above, the WTC attack cannot be called "unprovoked" but I don't think the average American thought we were in a global war either. In that sense 9/11 and the atomic bombings of Japan are very different.

Despite my deep regret that my country is the only one to use atomic weapons in combat, and my feeling that we did not HAVE to incinerate Hiroshima and Nagasaki to make Japan surrender, I think it is very smug of Americans today to second-guess Truman's choice to use the Bomb. Frankly, we care a lot more about civilian deaths in war today than we used to. Both Allies and Axis attacked civilian populations regularly and intentionally.

World War II was a total war, mobilizing every participant's full human resources. Civilians played a huge part in the war machine of a country - mass industrial capacity required massive numbers of workers. Both sides though destroying factories and the people that worked in them would hurt the enemy war effort. Killing 3,000 office workers didn't change the United States' military capacity one iota. Bombing factories in World War II turned out not to be nearly as effective as was thought at the time, but that is 20/20 hindsight. Military leaders THOUGHT destroying cities helped weaken the other side, and so they kept doing it.

Then there is the revenge factor, which is a base human instinct but no less real. Japan attacked us. They tortured American prisoners of war in unbelievably ghastly ways. Because of the fog of cultural insensitivity and plain old racism, we did not understand Japan's motives or the viciousness of their warrior ethic. And let's be clear, the Japanese Empire was a cruel, expansionistic, xenophobically racist regime. It was a military junta masquerading as a monarchy. It murdered millions of Chinese and other East Asians. Everywhere they conquered, they were first greeted as liberators and then despised as they persecuted the native populations. Ho Chi Minh was on our in WWII, fighting Japanese occupiers.

President Truman was under enormous pressure to end the war as quickly as possible. Germany was already defeated and Japan was on the ropes, but every day Japan did not capitulate, it meant more American deaths. It can be convincingly argued that America SAVED Japanese civilian lives by the atomic bombings. The alternative was to conventionally bomb every city, village, and hamlet in Japan, while continuing to starve the Japanese people in a blockade, until we were ready for a massive amphibious invasion. Plus, some of Japan might have been occupied by the Soviet Union, leading some Japanese to enjoy Stalinist-style Communism like their neighbors in North Korea.

Also, would the Japanese have cooperated with the American occupation forces like they did if we hadn't scared the shit out of them with the A-bomb? This isn't a demeaning question - there was virtually no resistance to American occupation (compare that to some other places we know!). Japan transformed itself from a brutal authoritarian state to a parliamentary democracy peacefully and very quickly. Japan was an American ally in the Korean War just five years later. Maybe if the Japanese were conquered in a brutal conventional invasion, there would have been pockets of resistance that would have delayed Japan's transformation into an extremely rich democracy.

But I digress. The bottom line is Truman wanted to end the war ASAP and as the American president he had the responsibility to prevent American deaths first and foremost. An amphibious invasion was projected to cost hundreds of thousands of American lives (I am almost sure this is exaggerated, but again, hindsight). The atomic bombings were a way to hit Japan in such a devastating way that surrender would be quick, with the happy side-effect of warning the Soviet Union to back off. Some people think using the deaths of two cities as a warning to the USSR is appalling. That was NOT the main reason Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked, but it is hardly a bad idea to intimidate a potential enemy, one that was poised to swoop into Western Europe and all of East Asia, and that was ruled by one of the most evil men that ever lived. So even as the first salvo in the Cold War, Hiroshima and Nagasaki's destruction is somewhat justifiable.

I wish the U.S. didn't do it. I wish we didn't firebomb Tokyo either. And guess what? I wish we didn't imprison Japanese-Americans, I wish we treated the Indians decently, I wish we never had slaves, and I wish we always allowed women to vote, and so on and so on. If I were to make a list of all the shitty things America has done, Hiroshima would be down on the list (I originally wrote "pretty far down the list" but not really - third behind 1. slavery and 2. murdering/displacing Native Americans).

I hope history makes clear the full complexity of the decision Harry S. Truman had to make. History will show Osama Bin Laden to be a murderous asshole.

Worst Episode Ever?

I thought I would post something today because it marks not only the fourth anniversary of 9/11 but the fourth anniversary of one of the worst things that ever happened to me. In late August 2001, I started a trip by myself to the Galapagos Islands and Ecuador. On September 6, 2001, I was riding a bus from Quito to Baños when this Ecuadoran dude sat down next to me and started talking. I had a clunky Spanish conversation with him for about an hour, and he offered me a fruit drink (in one of those little plastic bottles that look like miniature milk jugs). Then I got sleepy...

Next morning, seventeen hours later, I was on a bench in Baños...somewhere. I was so groggy I can't recount exactly what happened or where I was, but somehow I got to a police station, where the cops asked me where I was from. I talked to them (in Spanish or English - I have no idea which) and they put me on a bus back to my hotel in Quito. My money belt was missing with its contents ($200 cash, my passport, and two credit cards). Also stolen - my sunglasses, regular prescription glasses, backup contacts, camera, and my Ecuadoran guide books. Most importantly, I was unharmed (except for the drug hangover which lasted for days). Also good, all my Galapagos photos were in a suitcase I left back in Quito, along with some extra clothes.

When I arrived back at my Quito hotel (in a free taxi ride? I don't know), I told my story to the hotel staff that recommended Baños in the first place. They were horrified. I called my parents, who were also horrified. My dad contacted my travel agency and wired me some more greenbacks (Ecuador used US dollars as its currency). My half-Ecuadoran, half-Russian tour coordinator gave me the money and arranged for me to stay at another hotel (my current Quito hotel was booked for Sunday night). I cancelled my plans to go to the Amazon and slept most of the weekend.

My dad raised Cain with the US Embassy in Quito, and I was able to get a "travel letter" from an American bureaucrat who came in on a Sunday to meet me. This letter, with a passport photo stamped and attached to it, allowed me to leave Ecuador on Monday, September 10. After anxious flights to Miami, then Charlotte, then finally to my hometown of Columbia SC, I wanted to kiss the tarmac. I was tense because I didn't have enough money for a taxi, so I almost wept with relief when I saw my then-girlfriend in the window of the terminal.

I was already making up "funny" jokes about what happened to me when I was knocked out. At the Miami airport, I made myself laugh thinking about a Ecuadoran gay porn movie - "Jose and The Sleepy American" - that would be wildly popular. Basically I was trying to think up some funny lines to beat my friends to them.

Here is the weird part - I arrived in Columbia around 8 pm EST, September 10. If I HADN'T been drugged and robbed, I would have been due to come back to America on Wednesday September 12, 2001. As we know, the events of September 11 forced all air traffic to be grounded, so I would have been stuck in Ecuador for who knows how long. I'm sure 9/11 would have been even more bewildering and scary if I had to get all my news in a foreign country in a language I can barely understand.

As it turned out, my father called me Tuesday morning to tell me a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I watched live when the second plane hit. My mom immediately called and we agreed that it had to be terrorism. I was glued to the television at that point, and saw both towers collapse live. To this day, I still find it hard to comprehend that the World Trade Center doesn't exist anymore. It is like the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal just disappeared. Not seeing them on the New York skyline is still jarring.

It was a weird six days. Drugged and robbed one week, witnessing a national catastrophe the next. I'd like to say that since these events, I appreciate life more and don't take small things as seriously as I used to. That is true in the broadstrokes I guess, but it certainly wasn't a neatly delineated epiphany like a fictional character would have.

Do life-changing epiphanies EVER happen? I'm not sure. Getting robbed in Ecuador was definitely NOT the worst thing that ever happened to me, as I learned in June of this year when my stepfather died. Most likely, I will have to deal with the deaths of other loved ones in the future, and in comparison, my Ecuador adventure will be a fond memory.

As for the national tragedy that happened four years ago today, I don't think 9/11 can be called the worst single event in American history. For a recent example, Hurricane Katrina might have killed more people, and undeniably cost more money, displaced more people, and damaged a much larger area than 9/11. Of course, 9/11 was a much bigger shock, and indirectly led to the Iraq War, which has killed tens of thousands of people. However, Katrina will resonate historically too. Not only because of the bungled relief efforts - it also shows how quickly a First World society can dissolve into anarchy and misery.

For the nation, there will be worse days to come, but I will elaborate on that later.

Spineless Media Assholes

NBC aired a concert special for Gulf Coast disaster relief. That's great. What isn't great is that the West Coast feed of the concert edited out rapper Kanye West's comments criticizing George W. Bush. West said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people" and that America is set up "to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible." Here is the entire story from the condescending Frazier Moore of the AP.

Kanye West's statement went out live on the East Coast (fortunately) but NBC's spineless, quivering TV executives were able to excise these sentences before they reached the tender ears of West Coast Americans. Now, NBC had every right to edit its broadcast any way it wanted to, but why did it do so in this case? Kanye West did not use profanity and he certainly expressed an opinion that millions of other Americans share (including myself). He certainly isn't a gangsta rapper - one of his most popular songs is about his love of Jesus.

AND his comments were relevant to the disaster relief concert. Do Bush-lovers honestly think the U.S. government responded as quickly as possible to the plight of the mostly poor, mostly black New Orleans residents trapped by the flooding? If Hilton Head Island (a rich enclave off the coast of my home state of South Carolina) was cut off by a hurricane, the United States Air Force would airlift the entire fucking island to Hawaii. I'm exaggerating, but not by much.

Kanye West spoke his mind during a concert. His comments were not inappropriate or profane. The NBC execs probably didn't even disagree with it (or at least didn't understand it). NBC was motivated by cowardice, the same cowardice that makes them terrified to air condom ads and anti-war political messages. Television's self-censorship is depressing. If television is afraid to air statements critical of the government, how exactly does our media differ from Russia's, China's, or Iran's?

Two reasons for this - 9/11 and Janet Jackson. After 9/11, radio stations were afraid to play songs that weren't "patriotic." Criticism of Bush and his administration were muted. Public service announcements emphasizing patriotism were the norm. Police and firemen were praised to the point of absurdity. I thought the United States was going to start a First Church of Christ The Emergency Responder, and have all cops and firemen canonized.

The overreaction to the Janet Jackson nipple exposure, led by then FCC chairman Michael Powell, started a pathetic round of media appeasement. Fines for all sorts of "indecency" started to be imposed or threatened by the FCC, so live broadcasts are now routinely aired with a delay, and nudity (but not violence) has been allegedly reduced. Bono was almost fined for using the word "fucking" on broadcast TV (I read that thousands of children were made deaf just by hearing that horrible, horrible word).

At the time, I hoped this media overreaction was going to be social conservatism's Battle of the Bulge, the last desperate counterattack by fanatics, deluding themselves that they could turn the tide. In my mind, the Moral Offensive, like the Bulge, would have some surprising early successes, only to be crushed in inevitable failure. Now, I'm not so sure. If liberals keep allowing their voices to be drowned out, conservatism could triumph, and in an Orwellian twist, the victorious right-wingers will pretend everyone agreed with them in the first place. Control of information lets you control the reality of the past, present, and future. Write NBC and tell them they are a bunch of cowards.

Blame The Victim

Pop quiz - The bungled relief efforts in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast are to be blamed on:

A) the federal government, which has fleets of ships, helicopters, trucks, and thousands of troops and care givers at its disposal, with billions of dollars available to buy every conceivable item needed for the hurricane victims

B) armed Negro thugs roving through the streets, driving back all emergency responders

Anyone with any wits would pick A, but the government and its apologists sure would like to talk about B. Let's be clear, shooting at paramedics and firemen is bad, but is that why 20,000 people were crammed into the Superdome with no aid or transportation? Did the armed Negro thugs prevent the government from mustering relief supplies days before Hurricane Katrina? I was watching the news, and I'm pretty sure every media outlet mentioned Katrina - oh, I'd say about a few hundred thousand times - before it even hit the Gulf Coast.

This was not an unforeseen emergency. I have been hearing for years how New Orleans was the most endangered city in the country because of its geography. Why weren't levees maintained, why weren't supplies stockpiled, and why the fuck didn't the poor and the infirm get evacuated from the city with Army trucks and helicopters? This IS the federal government's fault. New Orleans is a desperately poor city (which is also partially the feds' fault but anyway). Louisiana is a poor state. This is where the federal government and the combined resources of the "most powerful nation in the world" get applied to those in need.

"Zero tolerance for looters" is what our Chimpanzee-In-Chief has been saying. Does that include desperate people looting pharmacies for water and medicine? We ignore a whole underclass of American society, and in typical fashion, we want to jail them or kill them if they don't like it and get uppity.

Americans like to boast about our power and supremacy, but we've been responding to this disaster like we're a Third World country. Can the poverty and race of the victims have anything to do with that? Surely not! Surely Beverly Hills, Orange County, and Hilton Head would've suffered just as badly if they were cut off from the rest of the nation. Yeah, and a couple of black kids with handguns caused this mess.