Katrina and President George W. Bush Forever

KATRINA AND THE devastation that the hurricane caused the Gulf Coast is now forever linked to the presidency of George W. Bush. Hundreds of deaths, the destruction of the Gulf Coast, and the permanent destruction of parts of New Orleans exposed to the world the dangers of the conservative policy of privatization which, in the context of the United States is the corporatization of government services and which has crippled the ability of the government to respond to the terrible flooding and the destruction of the levees. The United States government has been undermined by almost forty years of a policy that began during the Nixon administration and that has now become global and the basis of the current free market capitalist crisis of the state. In the United States, the crisis has become apparent because of Katrina and the inability of the world’s only superpower to wage a successful war in Iraq. The United States is so weakened by this crisis that it is increasingly unable to provide to its citizens the services that are necessary for legitimation (that is the maintenance of social order and a compliant citizenry) and the wars that are necessary for the accumulation of capital. We should remember that crises are also moments of opportunity for they often provide increased capital investment for the corporate sector but for an organized left they become an opportunity to raise consciousness. Why then has the left been so silent in the face of the current crisis?