Hurricane Katrina and the meaning of September 11

It is clear that, for all the political rhetoric about the “war on terror,” the Bush administration’s primary concern was not that the events of September 11, 2001 could be repeated within the borders of the United States. Instead, it seized on the killing of nearly 3,000 people as an all-purpose political pretext for initiatives which had no demonstrable connection to the events of 9/11—the war in Iraq, the passage of the USA Patriot Act, and an enormous buildup in the powers of the police/military apparatus over the lives of American citizens.
...
It is clear that the US government conceives of response to a mass casualty event not from the standpoint of humanitarian aid or saving lives, but as a threat to its own authority. Its principal concern in post-attack planning is how to preserve what is referred to in official terminology as “continuity of government”—maintaining the chain of military command, up to an including the commander-in-chief in the White House.

The government response to Hurricane Katrina has, in fact, demonstrated that the focus of so-called anti-terrorist preparations since 9/11 has been the working out and rehearsal of plans to impose martial law and military rule. That is why when the massive dimensions of the hurricane’s impact became clear, the federal government had no serious plans in place to effectively respond, and turned to the only option that had been prepared—the military option.

One conclusion being drawn from Katrina is that longstanding restrictions on the use of the military within the United States should be scrapped. The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that “the Bush administration was studying whether to expand the president’s powers to deploy the US military in natural disasters.”

White House counselor Dan Bartlett told the Times in an interview that the administration was reviewing whether federal troops could be given police powers. A top congressional Republican, Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, has conducted closed-door meetings with Bush aides and military officials to discuss changes in the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the use of troops in domestic policing.

The events surrounding the Hurricane Katrina disaster have placed in sharp relief the calculated exploitation of the 9/11 bombings by the Bush administration, with the collaboration of the Democratic Party and the media, to vastly undermine democratic rights at home while pursuing a policy of unbridled militarism and war abroad. This is being carried out in the interests not of the American people, but rather of a financial aristocracy that controls all levers of political power and is embarked on a policy of global hegemony.
...
http://wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/911-s12.shtml