Engelhardt, Tom. “At the front of nowhere at all: the perfect storm and the feral city.” TomDispatch.com, September 4, 2005.

Summary: The civil institutions of the United States are no longer able to respond adequately to disasters. Even when federal, state, and local governments, non-governmental organizations, and volunteers have good intentions and adequate advance warning, poor management and lack of public resources have made it impossible to meet the crisis initiated by Hurricane Katrina and will make it impossible to meet the next crisis, whether it takes the form of an avian-flu epidemic, a major earthquake, another major hurricane, or a terrorist attack.

The parallels between the current administration's incompetence and dereliction in conducting the war in Iraq, and its incompetence and dereliction in responding to the hurricane crisis, are numerous and striking:

• Everyone in the world can see how craven and impotent the erstwhile superpower has allowed itself to become.
• In both cases, the appropriate government agencies drew up useful and detailed contingency plans, which were contemptuously ignored by the ideologues who made the actual decisions.
• In both cases, those ideologues tried to do the job with too few people and too few resources, compounding the difficulties and ultimately failing.
• In both cases, the administration's delay and the inadequacy of its response made it possible for criminals and looters to proliferate and form gangs.
• In both cases, the administration's efforts at reconstruction are pathetically inadequate and largely directed to enriching its corporate friends and allies.