what does it say about us?

Harvey has started his autumn habit of getting up extremely early to fill his tummy then going back to back up against warm knees in bed while I am left sleepless and pondering. This 5 a.m., there was the haze of fall mist around the streetlights across our back yard. We were in E'burg with L&L for the Kittitas County Fair yesterday, and the wind blew all day long against the slanting sun. It's coming, the mourning season that I love so much.

Much of our drive over the mountains we spent debating the government's lack of response to the flood victims. B is so much more pragmatic and, truth be told, much more clear-eyed about our country than I am. When I said something about this being the richest country and shouldn't we be able to take care of our poorest, if (god forgive us) not on an everyday basis, at least in this moment of utter immediate need, he reminded me: we became the richest by a system that emphasizes amassing personal wealth. We became the richest by blowing past the "least of these."

It is unfathomable to me that there are people in the hurricane zone still waiting for any sort of relief. I cannot understand how we can mobilize a war seemingly overnight and not get people out of a city--even a flooded one--before they begin dying of starvation, thirst, lack of basic medical supplies. President Bush, should we not attend to our own third-world country first? I read three or four newspaper articles yesterday that I could not comprehend:

• The U.S.S. Bataan is 25 miles offshore with 600 beds available and the ability to make 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day. The commander says he'll respond when called but has yet to be. His quote was something like, we won't force ourselves on anybody. Would there not be a hue and cry if this man were court-martialed because he "forced himself" on those whose lives he could save? And then I thought: maybe not, for in a few months, the charity concerts will be off TV and CNN will have moved on to other things.
• Thirty percent of residents in New Orleans lived below the poverty line. Thousands simply couldn't get out because they had no means and nowhere to go. Evacuation plans didn't account for elderly and immobile. Some people even had cars but couldn't afford to buy a tank of gas.
• An anesthesiologist at one hospital where people were sheltering has set up a place to euthanize pets of people there. People who saved their pets from the flood now cannot get them out (there is no room or time to spare for pets in the rescue operations, understandable when there are thousands of people still waiting) and are asking him to euthanize them so they won't just starve to death.

I just cannot believe we couldn't have done better. Could we have invaded Iraq 3 hours later (if it's costing about 10 billion per day) and fixed the levee instead? I heard George Bush say on the morning show Friday that there haven't really been international offers of assistance, because WE HAVEN'T ASKED FOR HELP. Goddammit, if one (more) person dies because of his stupid unwavering confidence in his own righteousness, this agnostic girl hopes there is a judgment day after all.