Letter: White House should face more criticism for Katrina

Editor,

Ann Coulter once said her only regret about Timothy McVeigh is that he didn't visit the New York Times building. Perhaps Dane Roberts agrees with her.

In his column criticizing the paper for its "incredibly myopic and self-serving" blaming of the Bush administration for the response to Hurricane Katrina, his word choice is much more revelatory than his so-called forward-looking solutions.

Nothing is more indicative of myopia than the assertion that people below the poverty line should be able to buy privatized flood insurance.

Tell that to the families of the 40 people who died in a hospital, or to the people who had to choose between leaving and eating the next month. Or to the brave souls with a desire to meet the hurricane head-on, rooted in a profound piety for the place they call home and faith that the government-funded levees would hold.

It's not surprising though, that Roberts clings to this "solution," since the right-wing answer to everything tends to revolve around the almighty dollar. And self-serving doesn't even begin to explain Cheney's token visit to New Orleans, when a day or so later we learn Halliburton would receive the clean-up contract. How quickly the downtrodden and utter ruin can be translated into dollar signs.

Instead of thinking about how money can be made, how about re-appropriating the money Bush cut from the maintenance of the levees? It's a job that Roberts said is "all too easily put on the back burner." How about the fact that the ocean temperature is rising, which is the fuel for these storms? And also, how about pointing more fingers at the White House, which has become a circus of negligence, depraved greed and criminal ignorance?

Buried in his rhetoric, Roberts acknowledges the federal government's failures were "many and heartbreaking," so what's wrong with exploring that issue? We're talking about the federal government here, a government that responds to proportionately smaller hurricanes in Florida like white on rice.

The New York Times is right to aggressively criticize an administration that in just five years has lost us our allies, our humanity, thousands of our military service members, our surplus, the World Trade Center, part of the Pentagon, our grip on gas prices and now the entire city of New Orleans.

And if it seems to Roberts exaggerated and sensational, then obviously it is criticism long overdue.

Jason Shaner

UNM student