Prayer Disasters remedy

Prayer is supposed to be disaster's remedy? by Sarah Littman

published 9/20/2005

One Saturday after Sabbath services my friend Stephen told the following joke:

A man of deep religious conviction is in the path of a flood. The police come to evacuate him. “The Lord will save me,” he says. The water is rising halfway up the first floor of his house when the fire department comes to evacuate him. “The Lord will save me,” he says. The water’s reached the second story when the National Guard comes by boat to rescue him. “No, the Lord will save me.” He’s up on the roof with water up to his waist when a Coast Guard helicopter comes to airlift him to safety. He refuses to leave. “The Lord will save me,” he says – then drowns.

Arriving in heaven, he confronts God. “Why didn’t you save me?”

“What do you mean I didn’t save you?” God retorts. “I sent the police, the Fire department, a boat, a helicopter…”

I was reminded of this in the last two weeks because sadly, it’s no longer a joke. It’s a tragedy of unthinkable proportions.

I’m a praying person, but in a crisis I don’t look for prayers from my elected leaders. I look for preparedness, action and leadership. So I’m wondering why, when faced with the impending force of Hurricane Katrina, was Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco (D) telling us “we should pray strongly that the hurricane will drift,” instead of lining up buses to evacuate those residents of New Orleans without resources to escape the city.

After his delayed response to the devastation on the Gulf Coast I wanted more from the President than a “National Day of Prayer” and the numbers of help lines and website addresses for people living in a communications void. I can (and do) pray for the victims of Katrina all by myself, thank you very much. I wanted the President to show compassion for those who have had little and lost much, instead of telling us he looks forward to hanging out on a wealthy senator’s rebuilt porch. I wanted a president who thought it important to abandon his vacation and political fundraising efforts in order to ensure the vulnerable and the suffering received aid promptly. I wanted a president who showed leadership instead of cronyism – who would take a hard look at the debacle on the ground and take FEMA head Michael Brown to task, instead of telling him what a great job he was doing, and who wasn’t so out of touch or disingenuous that he had the chutzpah to say no one thought the levees were vulnerable.

As right wing columnists are quick to point out, President Bush didn’t cause the hurricane and mistakes were clearly made at all levels of government. But I think it was Newt Gingrich (yes, politics does indeed make strange bedfellows) who put it best: he said the Hurricane Katrina aftermath: "puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?"

Mr. Gingrich went on to observe that "We're not in a values fight now but over whether the system is working."

And the system, as those who went days without food or water can attest, wasn’t working. Just look at the breakdown of the communications infrastructure. Didn’t anyone at the Department of Homeland Security learn anything from the heartbreaking lessons on communication breakdown we experienced on 9/11? Did any of the powers that spend our billions on “making our country safer” not pause to consider that cell phone towers and land lines might not survive a nuclear blast? Why did Katrina rescue workers have to rent satellite phones from commercial enterprises?

Let’s face it – the GOP controls both Houses of Congress and the Executive branch. They can’t blame this one on Bill Clinton.

But it gets worse. It’s beyond belief that that leader of the Senate Bill Frist still considers a permanent repeal of the estate a top priority during massive deficits - over $7 billion a month going to fund the war in Iraq and Iraqi reconstruction costs (remember, the ones that were going to fund themselves from Iraqi oil revenues) and now the rebuilding costs of Katrina, still unknown but believed to be well over $100 billion according to his own budget advisor.

It makes me wonder: do we live on the same planet?