Scott Tibbs
blog post
September 13^th, 2005

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"This place is going to look like Little Somalia," Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. "We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control."

"I never thought that at a National Guardsman I would be shot at by other Americans," said Spc. Philip Baccus of the 527th Engineer Battalion. "And I never thought I’d have to carry a rifle when on a hurricane relief mission. This is a disgrace."

I just can't help but wonder: what is wrong with people? Are they so completely amoral?

The destruction brought by a Category 5 hurricane, according to some news reports, was not entirely unexpected. What I have been surprised by is how quickly New Orleans turned to anarchy. I expected looting, because people had no other way to get necessities like food. I expected some would exploit the situation to steal televisions and electronic equipment. I did not expect the level of violence that has taken place.

It is disgusting that the military is being forced to handle New Orleans as a combat operation. The human debris that are turning New Orleans into Somalia II are attacking people who have come to the city to help. From MSNBC:

Police shot and killed at least five people Sunday after gunmen opened fire on a group of contractors traveling across a bridge on their way to make repairs, authorities said. Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley said police shot at eight people carrying guns, killing five or six. Fourteen contractors were traveling across the Danziger Bridge under police escort when they came under fire, said John Hall, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers.

The military is going to have to show zero tolerance for the human debris that have turned New Orleans into a mirror image of a third world country gripped by civil war. If those people want to live by the sword, they need to die by the sword. Martial law will need to be imposed and the thugs will need to be treated as enemy combatants.

I suppose I should not be surprised. Human beings, since the fall, have been in slavery to sin. Adolf Hitler's regime murdered millions in Nazi Germany. Stalin's evil regime in the Soviet Union murdered millions as well, far more than even Nazi Germany did. We are surrounded by examples of how evil human beings can be. Right here in Bloomington, Indiana, people drive their cars down College Avenue, oblivious to the fact that unborn babies are being ripped limb from limb inside the Planned Parenthood facility.

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart." -- Genesis 6:5-6.