I don't feel like getting into a flame war over on wicked_wish's livejournal, but I find it hard to believe that if money hadn't been spent on Iraq, New Orleans would have been fine and dandy. Flood control is such a long-term project that three years of insufficient funds doesn't cause the whole thing to fail. No, that takes decades of erosion, mismanagement and removal of marshland. It also helps to have a system (levees) which is fundamentally flawed.

I sometimes speculate on what good can come out of this, and I hope a radical rethink on flood policy is one of them. The levee system is a bad system, particularly in an area like Louisiana where they are constantly sinking. On CNN the other night Aaron Brown asked the mayor of New Orleans if he had anything he wanted to say. The mayor made a plea for the federal government to do something about erosion and the removal of marshland.