posted by Chris @ 9/02/2005 04:41:00 PM  
New Orleans: American Baghdad

Snipers shooting at aid convoys and military helicopters? Police stations taking gunfire? Policemen taking defensive positions inside their stations to repel expected assaults by armed agressors? Looters running rampant, stripping store shelves bare? Men roaming the streets sexually assaulting women? Scared citizens barricading themselves inside their houses and businesses ready to fend off intruders? Dead bodies, some with multiple gunshot wounds, littering the streets? Mobs of angry citizens protesting the government?

Baghdad, Iraq?

No: New Orleans, USA

Not enough troops to do the job?

Iraq?

No: Southern United States

Others are comparing the New Orleans situation to apocalyptic movies. Escape from New York comes to mind.

The anarchic scenes from the city are shocking and troubling.

The city needs the National Guard, but it also needs a couple of Marine Scout Sniper platoons, SWAT, the FBI, and Predators flying overhead to combat the cockroaches that emerged from the rubble.

Every video of the looting needs to be scrutinized, and every person identified as a looter needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

What is especially troubling about how the people of New Orleans so quickly descended into abandon is that now we (Americans) have an example of what will happen the next time America is struck locally, regionally, or nationally by a catastrophic event.

As I look around the Dallas area where I live I see a lot of potential trouble. New Orleans has shown us that things can go to hell in a handbasket overnight. Like many major U.S. cities, and like New Orleans, Dallas has a large underclass. It won't take but a night or two for the gang bangers, drug runners, and other assorted criminal elements from this underclass to come out and play in a catastrophic event.

New Orleans is a wake up call. Here's what we've learned:
1. Criminal elements, left unchecked, will emerge in areas of a catastrophic event.
2. There may not be ANY federal, state, local or any other kind of help for days or weeks after a catastrophic event.

Here's what I've learned:
It's time to buy a bigger gun. I'm leaning towards an M4!

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