What in the world happened in that city? Why is it that the local and state authorities bungled the job so incredibly that we are left with pictures like this one of buses that should have been deployed to help in the evacuation, leading to pictures like this one of a makeshift grave in the street? Why is it that the mayor of New Orleans thinks that inexcusable whines that he was waiting for federal help can make people forget the deadly cost of his delays? And what kind of city is New Orleans that 200 police officers could walk off the job at the moment when they are needed the most? (I don’t for a second take for granted the enormity of what they are facing right now, but consider what the 9/11 firefighters were facing, or what the soldiers in Iraq face. I’ve never heard of those who have chosen that line of service to their fellow man coming up short in the hour of truth. To know that your lack of courage will literally cost lives — I can’t believe police in any normal city would throw in the towel under those circumstances.)

It all makes me wonder what kind of place New Orleans was before Hurricane Katrina. I’ve never visited it, so I don’t have any firsthand knowledge to draw from. In the past few days, I’ve read glowing praise like this about its cultural heritage, its rich history, its special people who know how to laugh and love. But then you have viewpoints like this one from Wall St. Journal’s Opinion Journal:

The New Orleans crime rate during normal times is 10 times the national average, Gelinas writes, and “the city’s economy is utterly dependent on tourism. . . . New Orleans has experienced a steady brain drain and fiscal drain for decades, as affluent corporations and individuals have fled, leaving behind a large population of people dependent on the government. Socially, New Orleans is one of America’s last helpless cities–just at the moment when it must do all it can to help itself survive.”

I think the sad lesson from this might turn out to be that when a big city becomes dispirited and largely inactive, you get civic authorities to match.

And I’m told by rocket scientists like David Brooks at the NYT that we Americans are just mad as hell not because of the horrible cost of this failure of city and state officials, but over the failure of America. Or I’m told by many, many liberals who are rubbing their hands together in gleeful abandon that surely, SURELY I must blame George Bush and take it out on him and Republicans in 2006. It’s mind-boggling how many times these guys can be wrong and in how very many ways.

There’s work to be done in that city, and in all the other cities and towns hit by this disastrous storm. Now that national help has finally arrived — and in as timely a fashion (thank you, liberal pinheads) as anyone could ever expect national help to arrive — perhaps it can begun to get done. Cities like Houston didn’t wait for federal orders, funds and manpower. Hundreds of charitable organizations of all sizes didn’t waste a second trying to figure out how to do something without exhausting any of their own coffers. So if it’s all right, maybe it’s not too much to ask at this point that the local governing entities of those regions could begin to actually do something. It would be late — too late for the hundreds that have died in the wake of the storm — but it still may not be too late for many others.