Katrina exposes our national priorities
We need to promote the concept of "real security" as more than the military

Ten ways to help.

Dear Friends:

The images from the TV screen play in my head. The cries for help sound in my sleep. Photos of floating, unattended dead bodies shock my system.

It’s Katrina.

I send off my Red Cross check. I hope someone is collecting clothes I can send somewhere. I help a neighbor find a way to get to the South to help. But, like you, I feel helpless.

Yet, I know that for years many of us have been warning the nation that our values are displayed in how we spend our federal dollars. Katrina proves it. The federal budget matters. It affects people's lives.

In a Times Picayune story on August 31:

This fact should be enough to alarm us. But there is more.

The so-called Homeland Security Agency should make us more secure. It obviously does not make us safe against natural disasters, nor does it manage the aftermath. Imagine a surprise attack. Has it been organized to handle the shock and awe of a nuclear blow or a dirty bomb?

After 9/11, the government vowed that the chaos caused by lack of communication would be fixed. Amazingly, aid was swifter in the hours and days following the shock of that September day than it was in August of 2005 on the Gulf Coast. And we knew that staggering blow was coming!

WAND and others labor tirelessly to acknowledge respect for the need for a strong defense, including appropriate pay and health care for the military and veterans. At the same time, we urge everyone to understand that a bloated and excessive military budget puts big unneeded weapons systems ahead of urgent unmet domestic needs. It is alarming that elected leaders shun recognition of simple reality: you get what you pay for.

Not only are military expenditures over half of the domestic budget, but that portion of the budget only allots 7% for homeland security and 4% for preventive measures. Even within the military budget, our priorities are skewed toward war, and not for basic protection.

Real security is a phrase we at WAND use frequently. We say that education, jobs, housing, health care and a clean environment is security. We now see with incredible focus that the poor are not secure in this country.

We also see that we are not ready for any kind of major tragedy here. The administration has lulled the country into believing that fighting over there will protect us over here.

There are so many lessons to learn from the heartbreak and catastrophe of Katrina. Let just one be that we can have smart security without being imprudent.

And while I’m at it, here are just some of the reasons I am angry as well as frustrated:

• Everyone, it seems, except the President, FEMA and Homeland Security knew a major hurricane was coming and disaster loomed.
• Everyone knew the levees could break and there would be flooding of monumental proportions.
• FEMA had thrown itself into helping Florida post hurricane in 2004, including giving out checks to communities where the hurricane did not hit. It was an election year.
• Leaders assumed people could get out. Not everyone has a car, nor is able bodied.
• Leaders forgot about the elderly in nursing homes, the sick and dying in hospitals, the jailed, the mentally ill.
• When help came, it was sometimes turned away because it did not have the proper clearance.
• When soldiers diverted their flight to drop off supplies to other soldiers to airlift over 100 stranded citizens, they were reprimanded.
• Firefighters were used for a backdrop for President Bush’s visit to the Gulf and trained for public relations rather than deployed to those in need.
• FEMA and Homeland Security did not know there were thousands awaiting aid without food or water while the rest of us saw them on tv.
• And, finally, some believed they were so poor they were better off after the flood.

It is mind boggling.

But the good news is that so many people care. Now, let’s turn that caring into another flood, one that deluges our leaders with the message: get it right. We can’t continue to squander billions of dollars in Iraq while our military dies in a war that has a new mission every time the President decides to redefine it.

We need to have federal policies that prove that we care about people and our environment. Not plans to reduce government that helps people and largely spends on war, not peace.

Yours in peace,

Susan

Thank you!

Women's Action for New Directions Education Fund
781-643-6740 | e-mail: info@wand.org
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