America as She Should Be
The despair is creeping higher like the floodwaters. But I suspect a lot of it is exhausted anxiety, hype and plain ol’ political residue from before the hurricane. God is moving in this situation, so I am going to focus my blog on sharing stories of His hands through all of this.
I’m going to start with the Anchoress’ recap of the last 100 hours:
Meanwhile, let’s think - really THINK - about everything that has been done in a little over 100 hours:
Between 2,500 and 3,000 people have been rescued by the Coast Guard, National Guard and First Responders.
National Guard and Regular Army have deployed 50,000 troops…the biggest domestic relief effort in U.S. history after Monday’s onslaught by killer Hurricane Katrina.
The Navy is sending the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman to join an armada of vessels off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
The Air Force said it was adding a high-flying U-2 spy plane to the relief effort to take pictures to help relief efforts at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The Army has put on alert roughly 3,000 active-duty ground troops from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to be prepared to deploy to New Orleans…The brigade-sized force, likely to be from the 82nd Airborne Division, would engage in crowd control and site-protection activities.
Pipelines are being restored and refineries are beginning to get back into operation.
Levee repairs are underway - reportedly one break has already been fully repaired as of this evening. See You Big Mouth You for Poop about Pumps which is very informative.
Refugees are being taken in in Texas, and the University of Texas, Rice University, Texas A&M, Texas State and Baylor University (and many other schools) are opening their doors to displaced students.
In other words, American generosity and pragmatic idealism is kicking in, as it always does. And things are going to get better. Things are going to get better. And I do think that within a week, as flood waters continue to receed, and the people who are trapped have been rescued, things will look markedly better than they do at this moment, because Americans will do the hard work of making it better - as they always do.
Even President Clinton’s keeping a mature head on things:
And so I just think that we need to recognize right now there’s a confident effort under way. People are doing the best they can. And I just don’t think it’s the time to worry about that. We need to keep people alive and get them back to life — normal life.
Read the whole thing here at Captain’s Quarters.
If you run across any other stories of America as she should be, let me know.