Why do they Shoot at Rescue Convoys?

I don't know the answer to this question, but after reading this Los Angeles Times story, I have a theory. It's the story of a heroic group of firefighters who rescued many from drowning only to have to abandon them on isolated patches of dry ground where no further help came. The climactic mission was to rescue doctors and patients from a hospital. Along the way they passed hundreds of desperate people, begging for water, food, and rescue, but they needed to keep rolling. Eventually they were stopped by a human wall across the road, and fled. Mothers were cradling dead babies, or dying children - people were dying by the roadside, but their mission was elsewhere. Is it then so strange that some desperate people would shoot as potential aid rolled right by them?

Not to me.

An NPR reporter told of watching a young woman dying in front of her of asthma, while heavily armed national guardsmen stood around, focussed on their mission - keeping order. She begged the guardmen for aid, and eventually one said he would try to find somebody - too late - the woman died.

In other stories, NG guarded a location for bus loading, but nobody paid any attention to telling the people waiting where the buses were going or when they would come. Nobody made any provision for the aid or comfort of those waiting. People with family in Baton Rouge were not allowed to leave when the bus passed through, but forced to continue on to whatever distant destination the bus was headed for.

I'm as angry as I've ever been about a national policy matter. I think I can understand why blacks could be angry enough to do violence against those responsible, or maybe even to anybody who looked like them. This is 9/11 and Pearl Harbon combined, except that callous indifference and governmental incompetence is responsible this time, not a foreign enemy. For Bush and his clique of kleptocrats, FEMA was just another chance to dish out millions of dollars to political cronies - like the multi-million dollar contracts to privatize FEMA functions.

I think there is enough blame to go around for State and local officials too, but their role is less clear to me at this point.

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