Bush oblivious to shifting winds

JESSE JACKSON

_{_T} he poor stranded on
rooftops, the bodies floating
lifeless in the waters -- that
was not in some impover-
ished nation across the sea,
that was New Orleans, and the
abandoned were Americans. It
took a week for the troops to get
there. A third of the Louisiana
and Mississippi National Guard
and half of the equipment were in
Iraq.
One million people are dis-
placed, with Hurricane Rita
adding thousands more. The news
media call them ''refugees'' from
the storm. But they aren't
refugees; the homeless are Ameri-
cans.
President Bush finally woke to
the scope of the catastrophe and
promised an unprecedented recon-
struction effort. You might expect
the devastation to change ever-
thing -- from our nightmares to
the president's priorities.
Katrina had that effect on most
Americans. Support for war in Iraq
tanked. Fears about the economy,
the soaring gas prices and the stag-
gering deficits rose. With Katrina
showing how shoddy our planning
has been at home, most Americans
now believe that the occupation of
Iraq has made us less safe. Most
now believe the war of choice was-
n't worth what it has cost in lives
and resources. Most think it is
time to turn our attention to re-
building America, not nation-
building in Iraq.
But the president's agenda is in-
creasingly our nightmare. Just as
Katrina's furies couldn't rouse the
president to shorten his monthlong
vacation, its biblical trail of de-
struction did not move him to
change his priorities.
Katrina's victims were still wait-
ing for temporary housing in are-
nas across the country when the
president announced that U.S.
forces would remain in Iraq as long
as he was at the helm. He saw no
reason to delay his new tax cuts for
the wealthy, much less let some of
his old ones expire.
According to Bush, we can af-
ford nation-building in Iraq, and
the rebuilding of New Orleans and
the Gulf Coast and still give the
__________
Bush came back from
vacation, finaly, but he
still is out of touch.

wealthiest Americans another tax
break. Bush came back from vaca-
tion, finally, but he still is out
of touch.
Why doesn't the administration
simply declare victory and an-
nounce a phased withdrawal of the
forces? The United States got rid
of Saddam Hussein, the brutal dic-
tator. His army is dismantled. We
helped push for national elections,
creating a constitutional process.
The United States has sacrificed
with 2,000 deaths and thousands
more wounded or scarred. We've
spent nearly $200 billion. Surely,
we've done enough.

Now we are mired in nation-
building in Iraq, when we've got a
nation at home that needs to be re-
built. We've wasted billions in no-
bid contracts to rebuild Iraq's in-
frastructure, even as Bush budgets
were slashing the funds requested
to strengthen the New Orleans lev-
ees. We're generating more terror-
ists from the occupation than we
killed in the invasion. Our Iraqi
clients are happy to let us do the
fighting against their rivals, even
as they divide up the country, cre-
ating a Shiite theology in the
South under Iranian influence,
and a separatist Kurdistan in the
North. Should young Americans
continue to die for that reality?
More than 100,000 citizens
marched against the war last week-
end. The massive anti-war move-
ment that opposed the war of
choice before it began is reviving to
challenge the occupation. But the
president isn't listening.
This war of choice was built on a
false foundation. The Bible says a
house built on sand will not with-
stand the winds. Everything the
Bush crowd told us about the war
turned out to be false. There was
no imminent threat, no weapons of
mass destruction. Saddam had no
working ties with al-Qaida and
wasn't involved in the Sept. 11 at-
tacks. We weren't greeted as liber-
ators. Iraq did not pay for its own
reconstruction.
It is time to go another way.
This nation should reassess a for-
eign policy that is foreign to our
values. Let's put our clients in Iraq
on notice: They must take respon-
sibility for their future, for we have
done enough. Announce a timeta-
ble for bringing the troops home. It
is time to turn our attention to re-
building America.